Scamozzi, Vincenzo (1552–1616)

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The most prominent architect in Venice at the turn of the century, and a final holdout for classicism, Vincenzo Scamozzi represented the end of the Mannerist approach in northern Italy (Wittkower, 1980). At a time when aspects of the Baroque were starting to surface, his buildings constituted a reworking of Palladio’s ideals, with strong theoretical basis in Pythagorean theory (Hersey, 1976). Born in Vicenza, he was the son of the contractor/carpenter/surveyor Gian Domenico Scamozzi. His first documented commissions were for a villa in Barbano for Girolamo Ferramosco (c. 1520) and Palazzo Thiene-Bonin (1572–1593). He moved to Venice in 1581, and finished Palladio’s Villa Rotunda with minor alterations and completed renovations for Teatro Olimpico from 1584 to 1585. Scamozzi was widely traveled, visiting Paris, Prague, Salzburg, Rome, parts of Germany, and Venice, where he died in 1616. With a prolific architectural career, his later projects included large buildings such as Procuratie Nuove on the Piazza of San Marco and a commission for the Palazzo Contarini at San Trovaso on the Grand Canal in Venice.

One of Scamozzi’s legacies includes his theoretical treatise, L’idea dell’Architettura Universale, 1615, which many historians agree represents the final codification of the orders. Despite its publishing date, the book clearly speaks to the previous century, as he finds both literary and historical evidence from antiquity to support his assertions. In the tradition of Vitruvius, Alberti, Filarete, Serlio, de Giorgio, and Lomazzo, the square was the essential element, and he illustrated his treatise with ‘Man the Beautiful procreates both square and circle’ (Hersey, 1976, p. 99).

This sketch from the Uffizi Archives in Florence presents variations on column capitals in both ink and graphite. Although a freehand sketch, the column capitals appear more complete. The controlled crosshatch ink technique exhibits his great skill with pen and ink; rendered with shadows, the page of sketches was a way to visualize and understand, possibly even to locate a particular resolution. The attention to the ‘look’ of the images reveals his interest in presenting the capital’s materiality and shape. This suggests that Scamozzi was rendering the proposals either to discover a form yet unknown to him, or to match an image in his ‘mind’s eye’ (Gombrich, 1969; Gibson, 1979). The very detailed and conventionally classical appearance of the capitals reveals his intention to carefully work out the necessary details. The columns are not placed to investigate a structural composition; instead they overlap, and others are inverted. This implies he needed to see them in proximity for comparison. The method he used to draw alternatives questions how he employed the images to formulate decisions. Viewing these variations in some semblance of three-dimensional realism may have allowed him to compare visually the impression from his imagination.

To support this suggestion, Scamozzi began to sketch a capital, and at the point it became solidified, he abandoned the sketch for another attempt. It may have been a method to test the threedimensional volume, as he would do with a model. Perhaps he was employing the sketch to replace a model, or as a precursor to the capital’s sculpted form. Reinforcing this proposition, a small elevation presents the columns in context, referencing this comparison between detail and the larger picture.

A sketch may imply the quick capturing of escaping ideas, but in this case Scamozzi may not have been able to receive sufficient information from a brief sketch to answer his specific question. The finished qualities provided the necessary information to visualize the form for decision-making.