Table Of ContentArchitecture, Liberty And civic Order
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Architecture, Liberty and civic Order
Architectural theories from vitruvius to
Jefferson and beyond
carroll William Westfall
University of Notre Dame, USA
© carroll William Westfall 2015
All rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
carroll William Westfall has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the british Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Westfall, carroll William.
Architecture, liberty and civic order : architectural theories from vitruvius to
Jefferson and beyond / by carroll William Westfall.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSbn 978-1-4724-5653-3 (hardback : alk. paper)—iSbn 978-1-4724-5654-0 (ebook)—
iSbn 978-1-4724-5655-7 (epub)
1. Architecture and history. 2. Architecture—Philosophy. i. title.
nA2543.h55W47 2015
720.1—dc23
2015004202
iSbn: 9781472456533 (hbk)
iSbn: 9781472456540 (ebk—PdF)
iSbn: 9781472456557 (ebk—ePub)
Printed in the united Kingdom by henry Ling Limited,
at the dorset Press, dorchester, dt1 1hd
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Imitation in General 1
2 Vitruvius 13
3 Alberti on the Art of Building 25
4 Alberti, Architect and Urbanist 39
5 Vitruvianism and Palladio 61
6 Events in the Classical Tradition on the Continent 77
7 The Classical Tradition’s Fate West of the Channel 97
8 Jefferson, Architect, and the Classical Tradition 119
9 Imitation and Architecture’s Restoration 147
10 The Beautiful and Good City 167
Bibliography 183
Index 201
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List of Figures
1.1 Sir Banister Fletcher, “The Tree 6.1 Claude Perrault, The Five Orders
of Architecture”
6.2 Gianbattista Piranesi, Carcere di
1.2 Columns, trees, and men as models inventione 14, c.1749/50–c.1761
of resistance to nature’s forces, at the
University of Virginia 6.3 Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Barrière de la
Villette, Paris, 1788, by an unknown artist
4.1 Leon Battista Alberti, façade, Santa in 1810
Maria Novella, Florence, begun 1458
7.1 Roland Freart Sieur de Chambray,
4.2 View of Florence with a Chain, Palladio and Scamozzi, Ionic Order
c.1480? c.1510? Woodcut, in the Staatliche
Museen Pruessischer Kulturbesitz 8.1 Maison Carrée, Nîmes
in Berlin
8.2 Thomas Jefferson, Capitol, Richmond,
5.1 Francesco di Giorgio Martini, “Man, 1786, engraving, c.1840
Church, and Proportions”
8.3 Richmond, Virginia, seen from the
5.2 Sebastiano Serlio, Temple of James River in 1817. Drawn by C. Fraser;
Vesta, Tivoli printed by Hill
5.3 Sebastiano Serlio, Bramante’s Dome, 8.4 Thomas Jefferson, sketch plan for
Basilica of Saint Peter national capital, made between March 10
and 21, 1791
5.4 Sebastiano Serlio, The Five Orders
8.5 Central section of Jefferson’s 1791
5.5 Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Doric at sketch superimposed on the Washington/
the Theater of Marcello L’Enfant scheme
5.6 Andrea Palladio, Villa Capra, 8.6 Thomas Jefferson, Poplar Forest, view
la Rotonda of the site, 1806f
viii ARCHITECTURE, LIBERTy AND CIVIC ORDER
8.7 Thomas Jefferson, Poplar Forest, from 9.2 Images of the seven building idea
the garden, 1806f types: 1, tholos; 2, temple; 3, theater;
4, regia; 5, domus; 6, taberna; 7, hypostyle
8.8 Thomas Jefferson, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, 1817–25
9.1 Léon Krier, Civitas: res publica
and res private; monuments without
streets and squares, streets and squares
without monuments
Preface
A civilization is said to be a large society, but we are not told clearly what kind of
society it is. If we inquire how one can tell one civilization from another, we are
informed that the most obvious and least misleading mark is the difference in
artistic styles. This means that civilizations are societies which are characterized
by something which is never in the focus of interest of large societies as such:
societies do not go to war with one another on account of differences of
artistic styles.1
This book is about the most important thing people make, which is the city. We
build it to assist our pursuit of happiness, which each of us defines according to
our own lights. To serve that pursuit the city must be a community that preserves
and protects the liberty of each citizen. In a well-ordered and well-built city the
good that its citizens seek is served by buildings whose beauty is the counterpart
to the good.
The good city and the beautiful building have a common source. It is nature,
and imitating nature as it has been understood in the classical tradition has always
connected the aspiration for the good and the beautiful.
That is what the classic treatises on architecture teach. Their authors are few:
Vitruvius, an ancient Roman, then Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio, the
Renaissance architect–theorists who modernized Vitruvius, and finally Thomas
Jefferson, the American Founder who left only snippets of theory. This narrative
will review what they wrote supplemented by what they built and other
ancillary material.
This book will immerse architecture within the political life that it has served
from antiquity down to the present when the civil order has come to preserve
and protect liberty and justice. The narrative will stress the continuity within the
classical, western tradition of the innovative changes that have made architecture
the servant of liberty and present the resistance and threats to that service.
A common thread will be the obvious truth that buildings, the cities they make,
and the rural countryside express the purposes their builders expect them to serve.
