the clocktower controversy

The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

The Clocktower ControversyAuthor(s): Rebecca WilliamsonSource: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 34 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 85-100Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum ofArchaeology and EthnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20140408 .

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The Clocktower Controversy

REBECCA WILLIAMSON

Introduction

Venice's Piazza San Marco is a unique yet visually familiar place, the site of monumental architecture and impressive ceremonies. The controversy concerning the eighteenth-century alterations to one building on the piazza, the late-fifteenth-century Torre del Orologio, or Clocktower (fig. 1), is an obscure moment in the history of this site that reveals the important role of architecture in Venetian public life during the eighteenth century.1

The alterations, which included new attic stories and the insertion of eight columns in the lower facade, are now virtually invisible to the multitudes of tourists who see them every day. At the time of their insertion into the facade, however, the added columns were debated among architects, architectural theorists, and others. The controversy reveals how Venetians at the time understood the problems, both architectural and political, associated with the intervention. It is precisely the minor, almost forgotten aspect of this controversy, usually obscured by the monumental quality of other structures and events in Piazza San Marco, that offers the opportunity to shed new light on the relationship between architecture and public life in Venice during the eighteenth century.

Piazza San Marco

The Clocktower's principal facade actually faces three piazzas: Piazza San Marco proper, running perpendicular to the facade of the Basilica of San Marco and framed by the two long procuratie; the smaller piazzetta between the Marciana Library and the Doge's Palace, opening to the lagoon on one side; and the much smaller Piazzetta dei Leoncini on the opposite side of the basilica (fig. 2). This tripartite space results from the assemblage of several imposing buildings: the basilica, the Doge's Palace, the Marciana Library, and the two procuratie. In contrast to these massive structures, the Clocktower is a small building similar in type to clocktowers found in other Italian cities, including nearby Padua.2

In the context of the tripartite piazza ensemble, the Clocktower functions not as an independent structure but rather as an articulation within the scene set by its more imposing neighbors. Its role, however, is an important one, for while the ornate facade of the basilica anchors the primary axis of the main piazza, the lesser facade of the Clocktower is the termination of the view from the water, through the two giant columns of San Teodoro and the Lion of San Marco that frame the formal entry into the city, across the piazzetta and parallel to the main facade of the basilica. This termination, upon approaching the building, reveals itself to be an opening into the merceria, the market street that leads through the dense fabric of the city to the Rialto market area beyond (figs. 3-4). Thus the site of the Clocktower is at a hinge point between the festive and official functions of the great piazza and the day-to day life of Venice's markets. Indeed, in his 1 663 guidebook, Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare, Francesco Sansovino describes the Clocktower as the "door to the city of Venice."3

The merceria and the Basilica of San Marco predate the Clocktower by hundreds of years. In 1 310, when the piazza had already begun to take on its characteristic form and importance, the location that the Clocktower

1. The eighteenth-century controversy over the Clocktower alterations has received brief mention in twentieth-century texts on Venetian architecture. The most extensive book on the topic of eighteenth-century Venetian architectural theory and practice, Manlio B rusati n's excellent Venezia nel Settecento: stato, architettura, territorio (Turin: Einaudi, 1 980), includes a few sentences on the controversy (pp. 115, 136, 228).

Some material contained in this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Dallas, Texas, March 1997. An abstract of that paper appears in the conference proceedings. I am indebted to the many people and institutions that facilitated this research, which is part of a larger study of Lodolian architecture. Joseph Rykwert and Marco Frascari inspired and encouraged my curiosity about footnotes, including those in which I first encountered the Clocktower Controversy. The Delams Foundation, the Council for European Studies, and the Salvatori Foundation funded travel to Italy. The staff of the Marciana Library, the Correr Museum, and other Italian archives granted access to their collections. Finally, the School of Architecture, the College of Fine and Applied Arts, and the Research Board of the University of Illinois supported the final preparation of the manuscript with equipment and research assistance.

2. The Venetian tower was modeled on Padua's older clock tower, which was later altered to resemble the Venetian tower more closely.

3. Francesco Sansovino, Venetia citta novilissima et singolare (Venice: Curti, 1 663; reprint, Venice: Filippi, 1968).



86 RES 34 AUTUMN 1998

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Figure 1. Clocktower, Piazza San Marco, stereoscopic photograph, mid-late nineteenth century. 2 7/8"1 x 5 1/2". The principal facade of the Procuratie Vecchie (rebuilt circa 1514-1 532) is on the left of the building in both images. Photographer unknown [Carlo Ponti ?1. The photograph includes the text "3606. Torre dell'Orologio (Venezia)" on its left side. It is mounted on a yellow card embossed with "C. Ponti, Venezia." On the reverse of the card is handwritten "G. T. Jaques 75." Photo: Courtesy of Joy Malnar. X__~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Figure 2.Coktwr Piazza San Marco. Hand-rawncoinkan whtgash, pidlan. Au nthor hcetuy

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Natioal Lirary



Williamson: The Clocktower Controversy 87

would later occupy acquired notoriety. The narrow space where the merceria opens into Piazza San Marco became the site of a turning point in a rebellion against the Doge, Pietro Gradenigo, led by members of the Tiepolo and Querini families. The Doge had proposed alterations to the political structure of the Venetian Republic that served to concentrate political power among fewer families. The Tiepolos and Querinis, related by marriage and united in their opposition to this

maneuver, hatched a plan to topple the Doge. The rebels descended on Piazza San Marco from two directions at dawn on Sunday, June 14, 1310. Unfortunately for them, a terrible storm arose, drowning their cries of "Liberty!" and "Death to the Doge" in thunder and heavy rain. The group led by Baiamonte Tiepolo had just reached the entrance into the piazza from the merceria (now the rear of the Clocktower) when a woman dropped a stone mortar from a window above, felling the rebels' standard-bearer. Tiepolo's house in Venice was subsequently razed and a "column of infamy" erected in its place, but this attempt at eradication only ensured that the episode would remain both an inspiration and a

warning to would-be reformers of the government of the Venetian Republic until its demise in the late eighteenth century.4

The Clocktower

In introducing her discussion of the late medieval and early Renaissance development of the two Venetian piazzas of San Marco and Rialto, Donatella Calabi observes that the piazzas do not result from a clear urban plan or formulated architectural project, but rather from a series of often contradictory decisions, reconsiderations, and renouncements that nevertheless

P. SAN MARCO_

Figure 3. Plan of Venice showing the merceria as a pedestrian link between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto market area.

Diagram: Rebecca Williamson, adapted from an anonymous French nineteenth-century hand-drawn plan, courtesy of the French National Library, and from Simone Bonvecchiato, Novissima e piu' perfetta pianta della citta di Venezia, 1838, hand-colored, engraved map, scale 1:50 cm, 49 x 65 cm, courtesy of the Map and Geography Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

reveal "a selective intention regarding the form of the lagoon city and its parts."5

Like Piazza San Marco, the Clocktower acquired its present form through a series of reactions rather than a single project. By the late fifteenth century, the ancient clock in the piazza had fallen into disrepair and needed to be replaced. The previous clock on the piazza, called the Orologio di Sant'Alipio, was located in a tower on

4. Angelo Querini, a descendant of one of the rebel families, saw the fourteenth-century rebellion as a precursor of his own frustrated efforts to change the Venetian political structure during the second half of the eighteenth century. After twice being imprisoned for his political activities, Querini placed Tiepolo's "column of infamy" in his garden at Alticchiero, near Padua, as one stop along an instructive itinerary meant to serve as an analogue for the reformed state he could not bring about through direct political means.

In an anachronistic painting thought to date from between 1779 and 1792, the painter Gabriella Bella frames Tiepolo's band, dressed in vaguely classical Roman garb, in front of the (late 1490s) Clocktower archway, through which Palladio's (late-sixteenth-century) church of San Giorgio Maggiore can be seen.

5. Donatella Calabi, "Le due piazze di San Marco e di Rialto: tra eredita medievali e volunta di rinnovo," Annali di architettura: Rivista del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio 4-5 (1992-1 993):1 90-201.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~01.

Figure 4. Jacopo de Barbari, view of Venice (detail), 1498-1500. Woodcut print, 135 x 282 cm, Venice, Correr Museum. The detail shows Piazza San Marco in the foreground and the Rialto bridge and market area in the upper left. Courtesy of the Correr Museum, Venice.




- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~7

Figure 5. Jacopo de Barbari, View of Venice (detail), 1500. Woodcut print, 135 x 282 cm, Venice, Correr Museum. This image shows the central portion only of the Clocktower shortly after it was built. The wings have not yet been constructed, and the original Procuratie Vecchie building still stands. Courtesy of the Correr Museum, Venice.

the side of the basilica. It was a simple type of clock, called orologio a maglio, which rang the hours but lacked a quadrant to visibly show them. Clockmaking had improved since the time in which the older clock had been made, and the Venetian ruling class wished to demonstrate through the purchase of a better clock that Venice, despite its military involvements, was not short on funds. On October 21, 1493, the Venetian signoria commissioned the father and son Giampaolo and Giancarlo Raineri of Reggio di Modena, famous clockmakers, to construct a new clock for Piazza San Marco.6

On November 3, 1495, when the clock was nearly complete, the signoria began to discuss plans for a

building to house it at the end of the Procuratie Vecchie, where an opening led into the merceria. The original procuratie had been built as a two-story building in 11 72-11 78. A two-bay portion of this structure was demolished during the late fifteenth century to make room for the new Clocktower construction, and for a few years the tower existed as an interruption of that building's facade, which continued for three bays beyond (fig. 5).7

Within a year or two after the central tower was completed, additional three-bay portions of the procuratie were demolished on each side of the tower

6. Tommaso Temanza, Vite dei piu celebri architetti e scultori veneziani, ed. Liliana Grassi (Venice: Palese, 1778; reprint, Milan: Labor, 1966), repeats Francesco Sansovino's attribution to Rinaldi. See Francesco Sansovino, Venetia citta novilissima et singolare (Venice: Curti, 1663; reprint, Venice: Filippi, 1968).

7. John McAndrew argues on stylistic grounds that the central portion of the Clocktower is the work of the Renaissance architect

Mauro Codussi. He suggests that the proportions of the facade may have been altered through the addition of molding in a manner that detracts from Codussi's original idea. John McAndrew, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press, 1980).




1'1O-LO G,9 I rossfl

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Figure 6. Vincenzo Coronelli, Orologio di Piazza De San Marco, late

seventeenth-early eighteenth century. Correr Museum, Venice. This

image shows the Clocktower after the construction of the two lateral

wings but prior to the eighteenth-century alterations. Courtesy of the Correr Museum, Venice.

and two lateral wings were added (fig. 6). These additions made the structure appear to be a distinct building at the end of the procuratie, symmetrical on the lower levels but asymmetrical at the roof line. In 1513-1514 the original procuratie was demolished and a new, three-story building was erected on the same foundations, leaving the Clocktower intact (fig. 7). The buildings remained in this state for the next two and a

half centuries, the roof line a collection of "rough walls of private dwellings, with disordered windows, and without symmetry of any kind."8

Then, in 1750, the Procuratori de Supra, the superintendents of the buildings on Piazza San Marco, determined that the Clocktower building and the clock

8. Temanza (see note 6), p. 87.




Figure 7. Luca Carlevarijs, "Procuratie vecchie," from Le fabriche e vedute di Venezia disegnate poste in prospettiva et intagliate da Luca Carlevarijs (San Gio. Grisostomo: Finazzi, 1703), p. 44. The Clocktower is shown on the right. Courtesy of the Correr Museum, Venice.

itself were in need of restorative work.9 They hired the architect Giorgio Massari, one of the most prolific builders in Venice at the time, to survey the building and execute the restoration work. Massari's project went beyond restoration. He added symmetrical attic stories above the upper terraces to regularize the cluttered roof line that no longer seemed appropriate to the grandeur

of the piazza (fig. 8). He matched the materials and rhythms of the existing building in his intervention,

which was begun in March of 1755 and completed over the course the next two years.10

Massari's attic additions solved the roofline problem but made other structural and visual flaws of the building more evident. It was not long before the procuratori were considering a much more controversial alteration to the Clocktower. Massari died in March of 1 757, and the Procuratori de Supra chose his assistant,

Andrea Camerata, to take his place. Immediately after taking up his position as the principal architect in the service of the procuratori, Camerata proposed his own alteration to the Clocktower: the insertion of eight new columns, two in each of the intercolumnations of the ground floor facade (fig. 9).11 A scale model showing the

9. Procuratori de supra is an abbreviation of Procuratores supra Ecclesiam Sancti Marci (distinguished from Proc. de Citra, de Ultra). The three procurators represented the church of San Marco. They were also superintendents of all the buildings on the piazza, administrators of the Commissarie, and were responsible for the tutelage of wards and beggars residing in the sestiere of San Marco. See Nicol6 Erizzo, Relazione Storico-Artistica della Torre dell'Orologio di S. Marco in Venezia (Venice: Tipografia del Commercio, 1866), p. 39.

10. Ibid., pp. 94-97.

1 1. Manlio Brusatin, in his Venezia nel Settecento: stato, architettura, territorio (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), 136 n., attributes the added columns to Temanza. Documentary evidence suggests that Temanza was involved with the decision to add the columns. Andrea Memmo, in his Elementi dell'architettura lodoliana ossia I'arte del fabbricare con solidita scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa, 2 vols. (Zara: Battara, 1833-1834; reprint, Milan: Mazzotta, 1973), refers to them as Temanza's "invention" (vol. 1, pp. 125, 252).




Figure 8. Giorgio Massari, attic additions to the Clocktower, 1755-1 757. Photograph: Rebecca Williamson.

proposed addition of the columns was displayed for public viewing.

Between 1755 and 1757, the procuratori had called upon Giovanni Poleni to give his opinion on the Clocktower alterations. This Paduan professor of mathematics and experimental philosophy was an observer of natural phenomena in the tradition of Galileo.12 He was at the forefront of studies in the performance and failure of architectural structures and acquired renown for his contributions to the analysis and repairs of the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, published in a 1 748 text.13 Poleni seems, however, to have been reluctant to provide his opinion in the case of the

Clocktower and delayed his written response.1 4 In a

letter to Poleni dated April 1 7, 1 757, the engraver Pietro Monaco seeks advice on the matter. 15 Monaco states that the problems to be resolved in the building were the poor proportion of the openings and a lack "not only

12. For more on Poleni's influence on architectural theory, see Joseph Rykwert, "Lodoli on Function and Representation," in The Necessity of Artifice (New York: Rizzol i, 1982), pp. 11 5-12 1.

13. Giovanni Poleni, Memorie istoriche della Gran Cupola del Tempio Vaticano e de' Danni di essa, e de' Ristoramenti loro (Padua, 1748).

14. The letters discussed here are in the Marciana Library's collection of mostly unpublished manuscript correspondence between Giovanni Poleni and various persons, including several important Venetian architects (Biblioteca Marciana di Venezia Mss. It. IV 594 [55561: Carte Poleni: Lettere e carte relative a varie fabbriche). Among

the manuscript letters is one that Poleni wrote to Temanza on September 10, 1 755, asking Temanza for news on the Clocktower affair and urging that his inquiry be kept secret.

15. Pietro Monaco (b. Belluno, September 22, 1707, d. Venice, June 9, 1772) was a printmaker who specialized in engraved portraits and vedute as well as etchings from paintings. He was active in Venice from 1732. Having been involved with Poleni's studies of the dome of St. Peter's in the 1 740s, he was asked to provide engravings for the text of Poleni's Memorie.

From his correspondence with Poleni, it appears that Monaco's role in the Clocktower episode went beyond that of engraver to encompass consultation on the architectonic aspects of the project. This correspondence reveals that other issues entered into the debate. In the same letter from Monaco to Poleni, there is an account of bribes paid by a shopkeeper. The claim of truth, here as elsewhere, has something to do with the arguer's advantage. See the appendix (p. 101) for a translation of portions of the Monaco-Poleni letter.

For more information on Monaco, see Dario Succhi, ed., Da Carlevaris ai Tiepolo: Incisori veneti e friulani del settecento (Venice: Correr, 1983), pp. 256-259.

For Milizia's expression of disdain for Temanza's judgment, see his life of da Ponte in his Memorie degli architetti antichi e moderni (Bassano: Remondini, 1785; reprint Sala Bolognese: Forni, 1978), vol. 2, p. 1 09.




of strength but also of ornament" in the piers. This pairing of strength and ornament demands double service of the columns. Monaco mentions that in addition to the proposal to place two columns in each opening, Andrea Camerata submitted an alternate scheme with only one column in the center of each opening. Monaco describes this alternate scheme as being, as he put it, "too dry" (troppo secco).

Finally, on April 16, 1 757, Poleni wrote a long letter on the matter to the Venetian Procuratori de Supra.16 In this letter, Poleni attributes the relatively wide openings of the bays to the "gothic" tendencies of the original architect of the lateral wings of the Clocktower. The effect of lightness and delicacy the original architect attempted through wide bays and many windows was, in Poleni's estimation, "against good rules" and a sign that the original architect of the Clocktower had not passed entirely into the "antique Roman taste" of what we now call the Renaissance. Poleni notes that according to Rusconi's Vitruvius, the Clocktower wings' wide "araeostyle" intercolumnations of five-column modules are appropriate only for wood construction, not stone.17 Poleni concludes that the construction is "against the rules of the best architecture." After demonstrating the necessity of a visual restriction of the opening based on architectural authority and habit, Poleni then adds that from a structural point of view, the addition of the proposed columns is necessary to shorten the span. He cites cracks that had begun to appear in the architrave as proof of this.18

On the basis of Poleni's letter, Camerata's proposal was accepted, and the added columns remain in place

today. The eight columns are similar in appearance to the two existing columns in the portal that connects Piazza San Marco with the merceria beyond. They are a variation of the Corinthian Order in keeping with the rest of the building. The capitals of the new columns mimic the forms of the original two, one of which is figured only with plant forms, the other with human faces. The newer and older faces gaze dispassionately at the activity in the piazza, reminding passersby of the traditional analogy between the human body and the column.19

The complaint

Controversy about the columns flared up as soon as they were proposed. The morning after the scale model of Camerata's column proposal was displayed in public, passersby in Piazza San Marco found the following satirical note: "Illustrious columns, what are you doing here? In truth, we do not know" (Lustrissime siore

Itia 2W i

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Figure 9. Andrea Camerata, columns added to the lower

facade of the Clocktower, 1 757. Photograph: Rebecca Williamson.

16. Poleni's letter, which is probably the same one published in Erizzo (see note 9), pp. 172-173, was well received. In a postscript to a letter dated April 28, 1757, Monaco informs Poleni: "You would not believe the pleasure and applause with which his Excellency Sig. Foscarini read your most virtuous letter and the information on the Clocktower building. He went back and read your letter a second time and said that it is a pity such a thing is not published."

17. Vitruvius defines araeostyle temples as having "intercolumnations wider than they should be." On Architecture, 2 vols., trans. Frank Granger (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), vol. 1, p. 171.

18. Numerous cracks are now visible in the stonework facade. Cracks adjacent to the eight inserted columns may have been among those present at the time of Poleni's examination of the building. Their position suggests, however, that some of the cracks may have resulted from the eighteenth-century addition of the eight columns. This portion of the facade has been reinforced with metal pieces that connect the architrave to wooden beams behind it.

19. Erizzo (see note 9), p. 98, identifies the columns as "Lombard Corinthian," consistent with Poleni's contention that the building was "Gothic." The capitals bear a strong resemblance to the figured "pseudocorinthian" capitals that Ennio Concina associates with early Renaissance Venetian architecture. The use of such capitals in the eighteenth-century alterations is consistent with the long-standing desire of Venetians to follow in their architecture "a line that was distinctly more veneto (in the Venetian fashion)." See Ennio Concina, A History of the Venetian Renaissance, trans. Judith Landry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 116-131.



94 RES 34 AUTUMN 1'998

colonne, cosa feu qua? No lo savemo, in verita).20 This question is layered with puns in the original Venetian dialect. Lustrissime (illustrious), the title used for the columns, was a term of address for noblemen, here attributed to the "lady" columns. It can also be understood as "lustrous," remarking on the shiny newness of the columns in the weathered facade of the Clocktower.

The language of the note is echoed in a brief statement by the architectural theorist Francesco Milizia in his 1 763 life of Pietro Lombardo, the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century architect to whom both he and the architect and historian Tommaso Temanza attributed the preexisting Clocktower design. In a twist on the satirical note, Milizia rearranged the language of the note to read: "There were then added columns, which do not know what they are doing there" (Vi si sono poi aggiunte delle colonne, che non sanno che cosa vi facciano).1

Milizia's complaint arises from the fact that similar elements are placed in different situations in the same building, since the new columns flanking the piers appear virtually identical to those supporting the central arch. Giulio Carlo Argan describes this aspect of

Milizia's theory: "In the pure taste of Milizia, every element had its precise job of spatial indication and to this, its spatial function, it was tightly bound." Argan notes that, for Milizia, the practice of placing the same element in different conditions "signifies the loss of all spatial meaning on the part of that element; it signifies also giving to two different intensities of space the same formal value, negating that sense of parallelism and of coherence between form and space, which was at the basis of classical taste."22

The requirement that a building's members fulfill some structural or visual necessity had been outlined by Teofilo Gallacini in his 1621 manuscript treatise Degli errori degli architetti, a work that was revived and amplified in the eighteenth century by the Venetian

theorist/architect Antonio Visentini.23 Gallacini states: "Let us then say that one of the abuses in the ornament of buildings occurs when for ornamental purposes some elements are added which are not necessary, either to support some [other] elements, or for correspondence of parts."24

The problem of ambivalence in the repetition of similar elements in diverse situations is illustrated by comparing details of the placement of the columns in the original construction to those where the columns have been added. The new columns are similar enough to the existing ones to read as the same when the building is viewed as a whole. They are the same height and appear to be the same shape. Yet on closer inspection, differences become apparent. The original columns have a direct relationship with the adjacent piers; each of the new columns, however, is paired with a new squared-off "respond," or pilaster embedded in the pier (figs. 1 0-1 1). The relation of the new capitals to the piers is also different. In his 1 778 Vite dei piu celebri architetti e scultori veneziani, Tommaso Temanza notes of the original columns:

Above all, consideration is merited by the setting of the capitals of the four columns of the great arch of the portico through which one passes from the Merceria to the Piazza.

The cauliculi [curved elements resembling sprouting plants] under the horns of the abacus, crowded by the piers, could either penetrate them or be truncated, and cut off (as has happened often enough to imprudent craftsmen) so that they would remain imperfectly isolated. Seeing this, our shrewd architect, in omitting the turning and recurrence of the molding of the upper panel of the pier, made it so that the depth of this panel provides the space required for the horns and cauliculi to spread out. T-his is one of those inventions known only to professionals of great value.25

Temanza refers here to a piece of molding that has been omitted to allow the capital to be placed close to the pier without having to be mutilated (figs. 12-13). This snug fit, which Temanza admired in the original, has been avoided in the new construction by the use of a half-capital on each respond, running into the side of the pier, and ample spacing between the capitals of the

20. Various accounts describe the note as being attached either to the columns themselves (presumably full-scale wooden mock-ups) or to a nearby building. Memmo (see note 11), vol. 1, p. 125.

21. Francesco Milizia, "Vita di Pietro Lombardo," in Memorie degli architetti antichi e moderni, 4th ed. (Bassano: Remondini, 1785; reprint, Sala Bolognese: Forni, 1978), vol. 1, p. 172. (First published anonymously in Rome in 1 763-1 768).

22. Giulio Carlo Argan, Studi e note dal Bramante al Canova (Rome: Bulzoni, 1970), p. 72.

23. Antonio Visentini, Osservazioni che servono di continuasione al trattato di 7T Gallacini (Venice: Pasquali, 1 771); Teofilo Gallacini, Trattato sopra gli errori degli architetti (Venice: Pasquali, 1 767).

24. Gallacini (see note 23), part 2, chap. 6, p. 45.

25. Temanza (see note 6), p. 87.




- ~ ~~~ .- - __ -

Figure 10. Facade detail comparing placement of older column (right) and eighteenth-century additions (left). Photograph: Rebecca Williamson.

new columns and those of the pilasters. The abacus is carved out to allow for the molding of the pier. Thus the new detail is executed in contrast to the admired original.

In his text, Temanza mischievously mentions (without contradiction or refutation) the contemporary popular belief that the author of the note criticizing the new columns was Carlo Lodoli, a well-known Franciscan friar and architectural gadfly. This slur against Lodoli was twice answered by Andrea Memmo, pupil of Lodoli.

Memmo's defense of his teacher reveals the contentiousness of discussions of architectural theory in Venice at the time. The hostility between Lodoli and Temanza was intense. In his recounting of the Clocktower Controversy, Memmo characterizes Temanza as a gluttonous carnivore and Lodoli as a sober vegetarian.26

In the public and private discussions that animated Venice during his time, Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) was a notorious figure, loved by some but despised by others. His conversations often centered on architectural questions, and Massari himself was the unhappy

beneficiary of Lodoli's architectural critique on more than one occasion. According to Memmo, even

Giovanni Poleni preserved his close friendship with Lodoli only by avoiding any talk of architecture.

Lodoli favored an indirect form of critical expression based on Aesopean fables, anecdotes, and other narrative forms. Through his conversations, he promoted a new way of understanding architecture, which had repercussions both inside and outside the discipline. He saw architecture both as a practice rooted in the forming of materials in specific conditions and as an analogue to political and social institutions that were more difficult to discuss openly.

Andrea Memmo (1729-1792) was one of Lodoli's most faithful followers. He had become a disciple of Lodoli after he was already advanced in his studies, yet he found in Lodoli an architectural and political theory that became the foundation for his later work as a governmental figure involved with architectural projects. A descendant of one of the founding families of Venice,

Figure 11. Facade detail showing relationship between new columns, new "responds" (flattened half-columns attached to piers), and original pier. Photograph: Rebecca Williamson. 26. Memmo (see note 1 1), vol. 1, p. 124.




Figures 12-13. Facade details showing indentation in pier to allow for capital of original column. Photograph: Rebecca Williamson.

he would later come close but fail in a bid to become Doge of Venice.

Memmo compiled his version of Lodoli's theories in several texts, the most extensive of which is his Elementi di architettura lodoliana.27 In his Elementi, Memmo discusses the Clocktower episode twice; on both occasions he takes the opportunity to revile the memory of Temanza. In the first account, which occurs as the final part of the introduction to the Elementi, Memmo cites Temanza's postmortem accusation against Lodoli,

who had died in 1761, as yet another example of the former's "irregularity."28 Lodoli, says Memmo, had nothing to do with the note and in fact had defended the addition of the columns "because the architrave

would thus be better preserved." Citing the episode a second time, Memmo repeats

Milizia's 1 763 statement, with a slight change: "Then columns were added, and it is not known what they are doing there [emphasis added]" (Vi sono poi aggiunte delle colonne, che non si sa cosa vi facciano).29 This change shifts the problem from the columns to the viewer. It is not that the columns serve no purpose, but rather that the viewer does not see their purpose. Truth in this situation is not an abstract absolute, but the result of a crafted event: a factum.30 In a footnote, Memmo then takes Milizia to task for misunderstanding the situation:

27. His other Lodolian texts include a fable, written with the Paduan scholar, translator, and poet Melchiorre Cesarotti, entitled La luna di agosto. Apologo postumo del P Lodoli.... Dagli Elisj presso Enrico Stefano Tipografo di Corte, I'anno dell'Era di Proserpina 9999 M. V. (Bassano, 1787) (see Brusatin [see note 1 1 1, p. 105) and a collection of Lodolian fables entitled Apologhi immaginati, e sol estem poraneamente in voce esposti agli amici suoi (Bassano, 1787). Memmo published the first of the two parts of the Elementi in Rome in 1783 but withheld the second for fear that readers would judge Lodoli's theories without fully understanding them. Memmo's daughter, Lucia Memmo Mocenigo, edited the manuscript for the second part of the Elementi and published the two volumes together in Zara in 1833-1834.

28. Memmo (see note 1 1), vol. 1, pp. 123-125. 29. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 252 n. 3. 30. Carlo Lodoli's understanding of knowledge and his position

regarding the pairing of truth (verita) and making/doing (fare) play a role in this controversy. The Neapolitan jurist Giambattista Vico's equation of verum and factum appears in the pairing of the word feu, a Venetian form of the verb fare (here meaning "to do"), with verita.




Here, among too many things, Sig. Milizia picked up a few misunderstandings: while Lombardo's columns do their job perfectly well, because they support the arch in the middle, the others inserted in the intercolumnations can also be defended. They seem praiseworthy because they shorten an architrave that is too long, and render more proportionate the space between the columns, which had become almost square due to the three pavements which since the time of [the construction of] that building had covered the

whole plinth.31

According to Memmo, Lodoli's defense of the alterations, which Temanza "did not want to cite when he wanted to justify his invention," was that the two existing columns support an arch, while the eight added columns shorten the span of the architrave in each of the four openings. The span is not only a structural but also a visual distance. Memmo defends the alterations primarily on the basis of visual proportion: he allows the structural condition to be considered together with the visual, as if the correspondence between the two aspects of the building, its structure and its appearance, could be assumed to be congruent. Memmo's account of Lodoli's position regarding the added columns is similar to Poleni's in that both consider visual and structural aspects together. Unlike Poleni, however,

Memmo's Lodoli does not cite the authority of antique Roman taste. This difference was the source of much of the disagreement between Lodoli and Poleni.

The addition of support under an existing span is reminiscent of a case described by Galileo and cited by

Memmo.32 In Galileo's case, a new support was added at mid-span beneath a beam resting on two end

supports. This additional support was added in the center of the span of the beam out of fear that it might

break under its own weight. It was not long before the beam did break; its failure was provoked by the added

support, which left half of the beam unsupported when the two original end supports settled unevenly.33

The original proposal of one column in each opening was not only "too dry," but, more important, in contradiction of Galileo's observations. The two-column proposal might have been offered with this in mind: in moving the added support closer to the existing support, Galileo's problem could be avoided. If, as had been proposed, a single column had been added in the center of each bay of the portico, it would have corresponded closely to Galileo's negative example. Yet this solution would have eliminated the problems associated with the relation of the column capital to the pier. Along with this, the semantic impurity of using the same element (the column) in two different situations

would have been more forthrightly expressed. As it stands, the proximity of the column to the pier increases the number of elements complicit in the false structural analogy between the old and the new columns. At the same time, it is a better structural solution, as the added columns and pilasters with their flaring capitals act to broaden the bearing surface of the existing piers.

Whether or not the added columns were appropriate at the time, they have made themselves necessary as the building has continued to settle unevenly (fig. 14).

A final hypothesis concerning the meaning of the controversial note regarding the columns takes into consideration a Venetian tradition of public satire that ridicules built structures for what they represent. Like the Romans with their Pasquino, a chipped Roman statue to which political complaints (particularly those directed against the pope) were attached, the Venetians vented their frustration on architectural interventions. This practice is exemplified by the anonymous critique lodged two decades later, in 1 777, against another new structure, the festival apparatus for the Sensa (Venetian

Ascension Day celebrations):

Arches of wood and columnations in paper, the ideas of Rome and the poverty of Sparta ... Everyday novelty, the Sensa put into architecture, the novelty of French expense

which maddens and ruins the country.34

31. This passage refers to a plinth, and indeed a late seventeenth-early-eighteenth-century print (fig. 6) shows thick bases below the pedestals on which the piers rest. These bases appear to have been completely or partially covered as the piazza level was raised (by perhaps as much as two to three feet) by repaving over the course of the centuries, including that executed according to a design by the architect Tirali between 1723 and 1 735. The disappearance of these bases would account for the visual shortening of the openings.

32. Memmo (see note 1 1), vol. 2, p. 156. 33. Memmo mentions Galileo's example to explain Lodoli's

invention of a new windowsill and door threshold detail to counteract the observed tendency of these horizontal members to crack owing to the uneven settling of the building (a particular problem in Venice,

which is built on unstable islands). Making an analogy between the phenomenon observed by Galileo and that observed by Lodoli in

Venetian doors and windows, Memmo describes Lodoli's solution: a three-part element consisting of a (catenary) curved central piece the

width of the opening, dovetailed with two side pieces below the jambs. See Rykwert, "Lodoli on Function and Representation," in The

Necessity of Artifice (New York: Rizzoli, 1982). 34. Manlio Brusatin, Venezia nel Settecento: stato, architettura,

territorio (Turin: Einaudi, 1 980), p. 21 5.




Figure 14. Facade detail showing architrave and column capitals. Photograph: Rebecca Williamson.

Perhaps the columns appeared as symbols of an ineffective ruling class: hence the use of the title lustrissime, commonly used to address male members of the patriciate. That the columns are being addressed as if they were female might reflect anxiety on the part of some Venetians over what was perceived as excessive political power on the part of certain highly placed women during this period.

The feminine noun colonna derives from the Latin columna, which is a support in both the architectural and political senses (that is, "pillar of state"). In the case of the Clocktower, the older columns, which exist expressly to support the central arch, are mimicked by the new columns, whose role and relation to the existing structure are ambiguous. By analogy, the political structure of Venice could be understood to suffer from redundancy, inefficiency, and other unresolved problems.

The Apologhi

The entire debate about the column additions was a mixture of public satire and secretive dealings among some of Venice's most influential architectural and political personalities in a charged atmosphere in which architectural discussions were used to cloak personal

and political ambitions. A key to understanding the role of veiled meaning within Lodoli's architectural conversations lies in his Apologhi, fables compiled by

Memmo and other former students and friends of Lodoli after his death. In his introduction to this collection,

Memmo describes the Lodolian fables as "philosophical, picturesque, and poetic fantasies" and mentions the usefulness of images, "which, based on a well understood analogy, and directed with cunning toward a practical use, by that same route of pleasure, facilitate the intelligence and purify the heart." He goes on to explain that Lodoli's interest in:

this new method of philosophizing ... occurred purely by accident after having read . . . that Socrates before dying was quite pained by his not having used the Pythagorean style, that is, speaking through images or enigmas in the

manner of the Egyptians (this being a cunning way which would have hidden from the people the new and therefore dangerous truths which he would have spread). 35

The principle of the fables is laid out in the preamble, L'Apologo del Apologo. Here Apologo is a spirit subordinate to the deities, charged by the father of men and gods to bring good ways back to mankind after the

35. Memmo, Apologhi (see note 27), p. 5.



Williamson: The (Ilocktower Controversy 99

loss of that first innocence of the reign of Saturn. The spirit's task is to "cure the nauseating, corrupting plagues of those who were once healthy." His guide and companion is his beloved fellow spirit, Analogia. She is to "lend those implements with which Apologo must sometimes prick and to serve as a veil, so that, provoked to smile, those pierced will bear the remedy."36

Of the many fables in Memmo's text, one sheds a particular light on the question of truth. 11 foglio volante (The Flying Page) begins with a description of the loss over the centuries of almost all vestiges of Truth (Verita), which once reigned over the earth. While there were always those who ardently sought its traces, most mortals simply covered them up. With time, however, Jove noticed the efforts of the few and resolved to send down to earth a great page of parchment on which the

elements of a primitive truth were indelibly written. Everyone wanted to be the first to see the page. Scientists rushed to their observatories and pointed their viewing instruments toward it as it began to descend. But each observer's impression of the page differed in relation to the angle from which it was viewed. Some thought it a square, some a rhomboid, and so on. As it

came closer to the earth, letters on the page could be made out. First, one letter was visible, then another, but never the whole. Winds and exhalations from the earth buffeted the page up and down, and to this day it still

floats about, never entirely visible to any one person. Lodoli saw absolute truth as a thing not easily

accessible to mortals but as something to be sought nonetheless. The fable implies, as Memmo states elsewhere, that each person's estimation of the truth is shaped by his point of view and that insufficient observation and individual passions are the sources of discord.

Memmo's recounting of the Lodolian fable allows us to see the Clocktower Controversy in terms of differing conceptions about the building: as a structure responding to gravity, as a set of visual proportions, and as a site with cultural and historical associations. As we have seen, the boundaries between these criteria were not clearly defined in the arguments.

It is possible that Lodoli was indeed responsible for the note or that it was attached by someone influenced by his critical spirit and neither Lodoli nor Memmo felt it wise to admit this publicly.37 Clearly, the use of analogy to tell dangerous stories was sufficiently widespread in Venice that a mere column could take on greater significance than its purely tectonic role.

In eighteenth-century Venice, many engaged in "writing between the lines." Given the risks of stating controversial opinions, through the use of analogy one type of discourse could open to the skilled reader another level of meaning. Lodoli's apologue is the key to this operation. Just as Memmo described the fables as useful to the professions, so can it be inferred that Lodoli's discussions of architecture were also intended to be read as analogies. This analogical dimension ensured that the Clocktower columns could support the weight of centuries of political associations.

Appendix

The following is a transcription of a letter from Pietro Monaco to Giovanni Poleni. This letter is now in the collection of the Marciana National Library in Venice (Biblioteca Marciana di Venezia) under the heading Mss. It. IV 594 (5556): Carte Poleni. The transcription preserves the spelling, abbreviations, capitalization, and grammar of the original insofar as it is legible. Some parts of the original text are illegible, hence certain portions of the transcription are interpolations based on context.

All' lI.mo Sig. Sig. Pro. M . . . e Col.mo 11 Sig. Marchese Giovanni Poleni

Padova

lI.mo Sig. Sig. M ... e Pro. Col.mo Venezia 1 7 Aprile 1 757

Non vedendo la Sua Stim.ma Risposta, la supplico d'un benigno compatimento se mi avanzo a [farsil sapere il caso delle colone della Fabbrica dell'Orologio; il principio fu proposto dal Proto Camerata, e da un altro signore mn il nome non lo so mrn glielo sapro dire se la [comanda] il

quale si ... al presente del ecc.mo Pro.e Foscarini ambedue concordi, che detta Fabbrica in quei quattro fori essendo cosi quadrati, e Ii Pilastri vuoti di fortezza, ed

ornamento, il detto Sig.re Camerata ha fatto due Progetti uno [di porrel una Colona alla mezzania per ogni uno dei

36. A precedent for Lodoli's political/architectural fables is Leon Battista Alberti's Intercenalia (or Dinner Pieces), trans. David Marsh (Binghamton, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987). These short vignettes illustrate aspects of the human condition through the vocal disputes among building materials and architectural elements as well as other nonhuman characters.

37. Memmo hints that he knows the "foolish architect" responsible for the note and that he considered seeking a retraction but did not do so because of the man's senility.



1 00 RES 34 AUTUMN 1998

detti vacui mrn [comparendo] essa troppo secca opposto li due per ogni vacuo come a V.S. IlI.ma Ii ha spedito Sua Ecc.za Pro.e Foscarini, accioche ella decide vera bene dette Colone.

Fu scielta E. V. Ill.ma. a questa decisione essendo sicuri l'ecc.mi Procura.ti Foscarini, Pisani e deputati, Morosini,

Cassier e Marcello; I'Albricci sono qualche poco pregiudicato dalle [preglierel del suo Fattore, il quale e brogliato con il regalo di sessanta cechini da quel bottegajo che abita al po.te sotto li due [fori] di detto Orologio alla parte di S. Basso per non [perder] esso detta Bottega benche pero il detto Camerata disse che perdera le balconate in maniera per poner dette Colone con esso pregiudizio della detta sua Bottega, non assicurandosi si Ecc.mi Sr.ri di un cuor senciero di detti [Proti di Venezia ha detto universalmente l'Ecc.ze] non esser meglio dell'lll.mo Sig. Marchese Poleni a tal decisione; ma pero l'ecc.mi

[Pro.ri] sono quasi firmatissimi di disfarla, ansiche l'ultima Festa dello S. Pascua hanno fatto discorso di darli il soldo indietro di detta Bottega alli Padroni che l'ha comprata, e

della detta la notte far la guardia di Arsenalotti per la Piazza ed il giorno lasciar un magnifico [paradisio]: di' nuovo la supplico compatirmi se mi avanzo a tal ordine, ma essendo ancor io ricercato il mio debole, e [povero] parere si' da sua Ecc.za Pro.e [Marco] come pare da tutti Ii

Ministri in Procuratia di supra, altrovandomi ogni giorno al lavoro dell'Orologio, mi premerebbe che dette Colonne

venissero dalla sua Sapienza confirmate, e gli attesto con mio giuramento che quando furono presentate le due Colone di legno [per modello in proporsione], ed in opera come doveva essere, universalmente furono tutto il giorno applaudite salve da quelli delli sessanta cechini e facendosi [riverenza], come pure all' lI.mo Sig. Abbate di Lei figlio

quale con tutta stima mi raffermo.

D.V. S. lI.ma Suo Umil.mo Dev.mo Servidore

Pietro Monaco

An extract of the text, translated and paraphrased by Rebecca Wi l liamson, fol lows.

To the Most Illustrious ... Marquis Signor Marquis Giovanni Poleni Padua

Most Illustrious . . . Marquis Venice, 1 7 April 1 75 7

Not having seen your esteemed reply, I beg your kind indulgence if I come forward [to inform you] about the case

of the columns of the Clocktower building. The principle was proposed by Proto [Andrea] Camerata, and by another gentleman, whose name I don't know but can find out, . . . to the Most Excellent Procurator Foscarini, with both in

agreement that the said building in those four openings being so squared, and the piers without strength, and ornament ... Camerata has made two projects, one [to put a] column in the middle of each of the said openings. This [seemed], however, too dry compared with the two for every opening as His Excellency Procurator Foscarini sent to your Most Illustrious self in order that you could decide if said columns will do.

Your Most Illustrious Excellency was chosen for this decision because the Most Excellent Procurators Foscarini, Piani and Deputies Morosini, Cassier and Marcello are sure. Albricci is a bit prejudiced by the [solicitations of his patron], who is embroiled with the gift of sixty zecchini from that shopowner who lives at the doors under [the two openings of] said Clock on the side of San Basso so as not to [lose] said shop . . . The Proti of Venice have stated ... that no one is better than the Most Illustrious Sig. Marchese Poleni for such decisions ... Again I beg your indulgence if I come forward like this, but having been asked even myself

my [weak and poor] opinion both by his Excellency Procurator Marco and by, it seems, all the ministers in the Procuratia di Supra, I am anxious that you ... approve the columns. I give you my word that, when they were displayed, the two wooden columns [in the scale model]

were applauded all day by everyone except the two of the sixty zecchini.

[With respect] . . . I affirm that I am your Excellency's most humble and devoted servant,

Pietro Monaco



the clocktower controversy

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