Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention?. (3rd July 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Thoenes, Christof; Byatt, Lucinda
• Is Part Of: Art in translation. Volume 9:Number 3(2017)
• Page Start: 296
• Page End: 311
• Publication Date: 2017-07-03
• Subjects: column -- capital -- entablature -- architectural Orders -- Tuscan -- Doric -- Ionic -- Corinthian -- Composite -- Vitruvius -- Italian Renaissance architecture -- Alberti -- Filarete -- Francesco di Giorgio -- Pacioli -- Cesariano -- Serlio -- Raphael -- Vignola; Art -- Periodicals; 700.5
• DOI: 10.1080/17561310.2017.1357995
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1756-1310

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, first published in 1985, Christof Thoenes argues that the notion of a progressive evolution of the architectural Orders from the Tuscan to the Roman Composite was an invention of Italian Renaissance scholarship, with no historical basis in antiquity. Indeed, even the word Order ( ordine ) was an invention of the early modern period. It was not used in the modern sense by Vitruvius in De architectura, but emerged with the system of tectonics first created by Brunelleschi. From Brunelleschi, the linguistic and semantic evolution of the term Order is traced by Thoenes through the writings and treatises of Alberti, Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio, Pacioli, Cesariano, Serlio, Raphael, and Vignola.