The City Rehearsed: The Architectural Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries (The Classical Tradition in Architecture)

310 Pages·2009·14.42 MB·English

by  Christopher P. Heuer

The City Rehearsed
The City Rehearsed examines architecture and print culture after the Reformation.
Centered on the strange Netherlandish painter Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526–1609),
it discusses changes in the definition of perspective and ornament under Protestant
critiques of the image, and looks at some of the fascinating ways architecture was
redefined by the ability of art to circulate globally.
The first sustained study of Vredeman in English, Heuer’s book tracks the
movement of his works to Spain, Mexico, and beyond, arguing for a new way of writing
about European art around 1600. Aside from criteria like beauty and humanism, it
turns to categories like collaboration, copying, and failure to map the intellectual horizons
(and art-historical afterlife) of a moment after the “Renaissance” had matured. This
engaging book will be of interest to any student of architectural history, art history,
philosophy, or early modern culture.
Christopher P. Heuer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at
Princeton University.
The Classical Tradition in Architecture
Series Editor: Caroline van Eck, Leiden University, Netherlands
Classical architecture not only provided a repertoire of forms and building types
capable of endless transformation; it was also a cultural actor and provided cultural
capital, and was used to create political and religious identities. This series provides a
forum for its interdisciplinary study, from antiquity to the present day. It aims to publish
first-class and groundbreaking scholarship that re-examines, reinterprets, or revalues
the classical tradition in the widest sense. The series will deal with classicism as a
cultural phenomenon, a formal language of design, but also with its role in establishing
the agenda, method and grammar of inquiry in Western history of art and architecture
and recent reconsiderations of these roles.
Power & Virtue:
Architecture and Intellectual Change in England 1660–1730
Li Shiqiao
Landscapes of Taste:
The Art of Humphrey Repton’s Red Books
André Rogger
The Picturesque:
Architecture, Disgust and Other Irregularities
John Macarthur
The Florentine Villa:
Architecture History Society
Grazia Gobbi Sica
Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century France
Richard Wittman
Festival Architecture
Edited by Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine Macy
The City Rehearsed:
Object, Architecture, and Print in the Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries
Christopher P. Heuer
Architecture, the City, and the Public in Eighteenth Century France:
A Reader
Edited by Richard Wittman
The City Rehearsed
Object, architecture, and
print in the worlds of Hans
Vredeman de Vries
Christopher P. Heuer
First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2009 Christopher P. Heuer
Cover design by Mark Rakatansky Studio, Brooklyn
This book was made possible by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
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
Heuer, Christopher P.
The city rehearsed : object, architecture, and print in the worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries / Christopher P.
Heuer.
p. cm. – (The classical tradition in architecture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Vredeman de Vries, Hans, 1527-ca. 1604–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Architecture and society–
Netherlands–History–16th century. 3. Architecture–Aesthetics. 4. Architecture– Philosophy. I. Title.
NE670.V74H48 2008
769.92–dc22
2008014932
ISBN 0-203-86600-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–43306–1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–43306–8 (hbk)
for EAM, who waited

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of abbreviations xi
Introduction: Iconoclasm’s faces 1
Part One: Performances of order 23
1 Unbuilt architecture in the world of things 25
2 Antwerp: the city rehearsed 57
3 Guidebooks to chaos 99
Part Two: Perspective and exile 137
4 The vanishing self 139
5 Hidden terrors: the Perspective (1604–05) 165
6 Epilogue: Vredeman and the modern 211
Notes 215
Bibliography 265
Index 285
Photographic credits 295
vii

Acknowledgments
“What’s the verb behind it all?” Dennes Boon’s simple question drove the first incarna-
tion of this book, which was submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the Department of
History of Art at Berkeley in December 2003. Subsequent reading, thinking, and traveling
for the project have been possible only through the generosity and the support of many
people and institutions. For funds assisting with photography, permissions, and pro-
duction costs, I am grateful to Columbia University, the Spears Fund of Princeton’s
Art & Archaeology Department, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the
Visual Arts. The last two entities transformed this study from an unwieldy thesis into a
grown-up publication. Research and travel was underwritten by the Samuel H. Kress
foundation and the Kunsthistorisch Instituut Leiden, and was facilitated by grants from
the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst and the Bibliographic Society of Great
Britain. Without the assistance of staff at the Stadsarchief Antwerp, the Rijksprenten-
kabinet Amsterdam, and the Rare Book Room at the Universiteit Amsterdam, this book
would not have been finished.
Two fortunate years at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2002–04
permitted time and space to write, and the intellectual hospitality provided by Thomas
Crow, Charles Salas, and the scholars around the theme-year “Biography” shaped this
book’s arguments in unexpected and helpful ways. I am indebted to Cassie Albinson,
Tatiana Senkevitch, Isabelle Tillerot, and, above all, Andrew Perchuk and Sebastian Zeidler
as sources of criticism and advice. Elizabeth Honig, a teacher, advisor, and friend, con-
tinued to inspire the book through her sustained intellectual unselfishness and her own
writing on Netherlandish art. Matthew Jesse Jackson, whom I met on my first day of
graduate school, made work possible at Berkeley and the Getty by reminding me what
mattered, and what, ultimately, did not.
This manuscript was completed in the Department of Art & Archaeology at
Columbia University and at the Centre Canadien d’Architecture in Montréal. I am grateful
to both institutions, and to Mario Carpo, Jonathan Crary, Vittoria di Palma, and Phyllis
Lambert for making the respective stays happen. At Avery Library, particularly, I owe
thanks to Gerald Beasley. Elsewhere at Columbia, Graham Bader, Francesco Benelli,
Kate Bentz, Nikolas Bakirtzis, David Freedberg, Clemente Marconi, Keith Moxey, Amy
Powell, John Rajchman, Tanya Sheehan, and Alicia Walker were important sources
of encouragement, and at the CCA, Alexis Sornin an irrepressible host. Final edits
were completed during an exhilarating first year at Princeton, where I have benefited
ix