Ignacy Potocki, Remarks on Architecture. The Vitruvian tradition in Enlightment Poland.

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Ignacy Potocki
Remarks on Architecture
The Vitruvian tradition in Enlightment Poland

Edited and translated by Carolyn C. Guile

The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015

The manuscript found in Warsaw

Lovers of literature, reading the name Potocki, will have immediately thought of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, the novel published (in French) by the Polish Count Jan Potocki in 1814. Ignacy Potocki belonged to the same magnate family (the term "magnate" means here the members of the high nobility of Poland). More prosaically, his manuscript ("Uwagi o architekturze") was found in Warsaw (and not in Spain) at the Central Archives of Ancient Documents. According to Carolyne C. Guile, the curator, it should have been composed before 1786. Perhaps, it was intended for circulation for a few close friends, or perhaps for publication. Anyway, it does not seem to have ever been published, although Ms Guile is quick to say that the disasters of World War II, and, even before that, the theft that the Polish archival heritage had to endure from the Russians, do not allow excluding an occurred publication. Simply, all printed copies may have been destroyed. Moreover, in support of the manuscript there must have definitely been a series of drawings that, in unknown circumstances, have been removed, thus leaving us devoid of the graphic apparatus.

One thing is certain: The Remarks on architecture witness the interest of Ignacy Potocki for the matter; an interest which Ignacy shared with his brother Stanislaw Kostka and with a group of other Polish nobles of the late eighteenth century. Ms Guile has produced the first printed edition. The editor provides the transcript in Polish of the work and its translation in English. Needless to say that in Italy the treatise of Potocki is totally unknown. However, before talking about the writing, it is essential to make an introduction on the situation of Poland in those years.

Alexander Kucharsky (?), Portrait of Roman Ignacy Potocki, 1783-1784 ca.

The historical context

Speaking of Poland, at the end of 1700, is not entirely correct. We must speak rather of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; a political link between Poland and Lithuania existed, in fact, since the end of 1300 and was indeed formalized by the Union of Lublin of 1569. At the peak of its extension, in 1600, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth included today’s Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and the western Ukraine. The Union of Lublin had established a political system which provided an elective monarch and a proto-democracy controlled by the nobles (the principle of so-called aurea libertas, the Golden Freedom). The political system deteriorated when the prerogatives of the nobles widened with the establishment of the principle of liberum veto, the Free Veto, according to which it was enough that any of the members of Parliament would oppose to the approval of a law to make it decay. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was, during 1700, a multi-ethnic confederal organization, essentially paralyzed by the veto power of each noble and exposed to the expansionist ambitions of the neighbours: Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Between 1772 and 1795 (specifically, in 1772, 1793 and 1795), with the so-called "partitions", one of the largest States in Europe disappears off the map, and their territories just become part of the three above-mentioned States. De facto, a political suicide. When Ignacy wrote his treatise, the first partition (with the loss of about 30% of the territories, most of which do not speak Polish) had already occurred.

Ignacy belongs to a portion of the Polish magnate nobility which understands that, due to the risk of an inexorable decline, it is necessary to reform the system (while maintaining its political control). Traditionally these years are defined as those of the Polish Enlightenment. Ignacy is one of its heroes, first with his civil commitment, which aims to reform the education system, an effort of which undoubtedly the Remarks on architecture are integral part; then with his political commitment, which leads him to be one of the main drafters of the Constitution of 3 May 1791 establishing a constitutional monarchy that had a very short life.

The emblem of the Potocki family

Ignacy Potocki

Like most members of the high Polish nobility, Potocki has a European education. Born in 1750, in 1765 he moves to Italy, where he attended the Collegium Nazarenum in Rome, and where he remains until 1769. But his "European" education also leads him to live for long periods in France. He also visits Germany and Britain and returns home in 1771. In political terms, he remains conquered by the English constitutional monarchy (and this will be the example inspiring him for the 1791 Constitution); in terms of ideas, he is influenced by French Enlightenment and rationalism (he produces a Polish translation of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws). The interest in architecture is, of course, something that is born in Italy; fortuitously, even some of his architectural drawings of the Italian period were preserved. He shares the interest with his brother Stanislaw Kostka. We are in the neoclassical atmosphere inspired by Winckelmann. One need only recall that Stanislaw financed some archaeological excavations in Nola around 1785, and above all that he was the author of the first history of art in Polish; the work (published in 1815) has a title which on purpose marks a precise choice: On the history of the art of the ancients, or the Polish Winckelmann.

Back in Poland, Ignacy was a member for nearly two decades (1773-1791) of the National Commission for education (in fact, the first ministry of education in history); and within the Commission he founded and chaired the Society for elementary textbooks. Two choices that reflect in a clear manner the commitment of Ignacy for a reform of the Polish educational system (in fact, a system left in the hands of the Jesuits and the Piarists until a few years before), following the Enlightenment’s belief that precisely from education could derive the greatest benefits to a nation; especially in a country where different languages were spoken and where, in fact, only the nobility was using French as a common language. It is the belief of the curator - from internal evidence of the manuscript - that the Remarks have been drafted during these two decades of intense work in favour of educational reform; and, in particular, before 1786. [1]

Anton Graff, Portrait of Stanislaw Kostka Potocki, 1785

The Remarks on Architecture

The Remarks are a text of didactic nature, where Potocki addresses the Polish nobles and urges them to study architecture. Thus, this is a writing drafted by a noble for the nobles, in the belief that the exercise of proper architecture will be of great benefit for Poland. And here we must immediately make a clarification: it is clear that Ignacy moves within the cultural references that are characteristic of European neo-classicism; the influence exerted upon him by French authors as Marc-Antoine Laugier with his architectural rationalism is equally evident. Laugier believed that architecture and architectural theory originate from nature, and that they can (indeed, must) be guided in all aspects by reason. In this sense, Potocki adheres to a vision of the history of architecture that is the one of a discipline that has experienced a sharp decline because of Baroque and Rococo, and only in those years is waking up in the wake of the rediscovered classicism. I believe it can be intuitively understood that this vision comes well across with the history of Poland in those years; a confederation which has just suffered the first of three Partitions and that has urgent and extreme needs to reform and to be reborn. In this sense, I think we can talk, on the one hand, of Potocki’s affiliation to a European ideal and, on the other one, of a national "patriotism" (a feeling which is not always shared by the rest of the nobility; let's not forget that the confederation had been reduced to a state of extreme weakness precisely because of the excessive privileges of the nobility, which with their veto right cared more for the own interests than for the public good).

Architecture, for Ignacy, is not a technical discipline, but a direct branch of (Enlightenment) philosophy. In this sense, it is not left to the judgment of just only architects, but rather must be addressed to a wider audience (that of the noble patrons) in whose ranks obviously the author enrols himself. This is a matter that directly involves the public good and civil liability. It is a specific task of the nobility to invest their money in the construction of public works (and not only private mansions): churches, hospitals, schools, and public baths needed for hygiene. In a very enlightened mood, Ignacy writes: "if the rich learned more diligently the art of managing their money, I assure that idleness, poverty and vices everywhere would turn into industry, financial self-sufficiency, effort and work" (p. 17). The scope of measures to free architecture from the excesses of Baroque and Rococo leads the author to think in proto-urban terms, like when he suggests that, for aesthetic reasons, commissions of not more than two or three architects should be created that regulate the external appearance of the facades of the buildings, making the virtuous example of the city of Turin. His views are - after all - not so different from those concerns which could have animated the Neapolitan architect Vincenzo Marulli, when he publishes, in 1808, the treatise Su l’architettura e la nettezza delle città (On the Architecture and the Cleanliness of the Cities), a sign of how universal was the language spoken by Neoclassicism.

The Remarks display a preface and six chapters which discuss respectively the typologies of architecture, the beauty, the benefits that architecture can bring, ornaments, comfort and, finally, the knowledge that is required to architects.

Vitruvius and Polish specificities

The subtitle of the work cites the Vitruvian tradition. There is no doubt that Vitruvius, for anybody interested in architecture, is a landmark. But we do not think that the text which Potocki wrote is anachronistic. The phase in which Vitruvius is considered as the absolute canon to refer to has greatly passed [2] and the lessons of Perrault on the distinction between positive beauty and arbitrary beauty, as well as the change of proportions depending on the taste of the times, are fully assimilated. Vitruvius, however great his work may have been, is a mortal man; not the author of a secular Bible. From this point of view, again, Potocki proves to be well aware (obviously through his travels, but more generally because of the treatises he can read) of the most recent debates.

The questioning of Vitruvius (albeit in full awareness of his importance), however, creates a problem to the author. We would not be honest if we omitted to say that, from a methodological point of view, Ms Guile expresses interest especially in two aspects, in many ways inter-related:

• to understand how ideas circulate and are perceived in a border region to Western civilization; it is more important to consider architecture from the point of view of the history of ideas, or to take into account geography and boundaries? does every nation develop "his" own theory of architecture? If so, what is that of the Polish-Lithuanian confederation?
• to understand whether the model of transmission of culture from the center to the periphery may be applicable in the Polish case or should be revised.

To be honest, it does not seem that these questions are always been provided clear answers, probably because the manuscript material was virtually annihilated by historical vicissitudes of Poland.

It seems obvious, as already said, that Potocki’s ideas are those propagated by European Enlightenment. It appears equally clear that, while belonging to an elite and also representing only a part of it, Ignacy not only represents himself, but also a group of cultivated people who see an element of identity in the adherence to the principles of the Enlightenment and in the belonging to a European civilization with common Greek-Roman roots. Then it is clear that there are specificities; the first of these - we have already seen - is the political one. But also in terns of architecture there is a need to adapt the Vitruvian tradition to existing and local needs.

In this regard the curator flags that already in 1659 the first treaty with a Vitruvian flavour has been released, by an anonymous author (maybe Lukasz Opaliński) entitled Short study for the construction of mansions, palaces and castles according to the the sky and the uses of Poland. Also Potocki is attentive to reconcile the provisions of Vitruvius with those of the "Polish sky", and takes into account, for example, the different climatic conditions. Similarly, the habit must be reflected (and not rejected) to build the roofs of houses in wood and not in bricks (while bearing in mind the risk of fire). And yet, in a broad sense, it cannot be said that this kind of discourse was "only" Polish. We have already met it, for example, in the Netherlands, where to be reworked is especially the treatise of Scamozzi, and with the same concerns. If what is attempted is to separate a "Vitruvian" language from another one of "purely Polish" derivation, we cannot exclude that we are simply faced with the need to reconcile diverse practices historically emerging in all Europe.

As for the circulation and transmission of the architectural prescriptions, it is difficult to talk about a path that follows inexorably the way from the centre to the periphery. First of all, we do not know exactly where the centre is. For Potocki, it is, formally, Rome. But then, as we have seen, the architectural language of Ignacy is heavily contaminated by French influences. However, we are witnessing a proliferation of centres, corresponding to the flourishing (or decline) of the great European monarchies. We can assess Poland as a border region, certainly; but without forgetting that, more at the East, St. Petersburg was architecturally an Italian city; or that Potocki himself cites a reality like Sweden and the Royal Palace in Stockholm realized by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger.

In the end, the main merit of the book is to remind us that even Poland, in late 1700, is a participant of the neoclassical style despite a thousand of vicissitudes of political nature. That style affirms itself as a truly universal art language in Europe. And to remember that Poland makes culturally fully part of it is not bad for anyone.

NOTES

[1] Although the curator is convinced of it, however, there is no certain proof of the date. Therefore, Ms Guile does not rule out that the wording may have occurred in the years of his old age, after 1800. But the first hypothesis seems convincing.

[2] See in this respect the essential essay by Pier Nicola Pagliara, Vitruvio da testo a canone (Vitruvius from text to canon) in Memorie dell'antico nell'arte italiana (Memory of the ancient in Italian art) III, Turin, Einaudi, 1986.