Becoming Introspective

The transitioning courtyard pattern from an exterior public domain into an interior self-conscious realm

November 2014

Introduction

The function and order within architecture is almost inevitably the result of the socio-political beliefs of a particular time and place in history. Specific elements within the architecture of a particular building and indeed supposedly private spaces such as houses in a contemporary sense are inevitably subject to the interpretation of factors beyond simple mechanics by the architect. Indeed it was prominent architectural philosopher Marc-Antoine Laugier who in 1753 declared that “it would be a great mistake to believe that in architecture only mechanics are involved.”[i] As a result, spaces such as an internalised courtyard coupled alongside its adjoining rooms may appear simple and even identical in its articulation in plans and sections between different eras but possess wholly different functions for its users and reflect the alternative interpretations of what constitutes a ‘home’.  Such is the case between the Ancient Roman courtyard residence the House of the Faun in Pompeii and the Renaissance urban villa, the Palazzo Iseppo Porto di Vicenza by Andrea Palladio. Within the House of the Faun, the courtyard constitutes a public domain for its occupants and visitors alike but within the Palazzo Iseppo Porto, the house represents the beginning of a process of internalisation, a place for self-reflection and a developing process of independence and societal introspection which this essay now aims to examine. Through an investigation of some of the architectural and social writings of the eras which have undoubtedly influenced the design of these courtyard homes, it may be seen that their construction, though falling within the broad category of the courtyard pattern, are in fact clear representations of the slowly changing metaphysical condition of its inhabitants.

Defining the Roman Domus

Pursuing an investigation of the house as being more than merely a mundane shelter, but a realm for collective higher pursuits begins with the work of the Roman philosopher Cicero. In his dialogues with pupils, entitled On the Good Life, Cicero argued that:

“The good things of the body and the good things which are external and accidental, are kept nailed right down on the ground and only allowed to be classified as good at all because they are ‘preferable’, whereas the third type of good, the morally good, is of a higher status altogether.”[ii]

The primary aim of life, identified as the pursuit of an enlightened status of moral goodness belonged to the pursuit of something higher, beyond material wealth and comfort and the feelings of ‘being at home’ were associated with this view. Simultaneously, Cicero also recognised that material wealth was required in expressing a Roman’s social status and this was equally important within this pursuit of moral goodness. He notes that “A man of rank, a princeps, does need housing to fit his social standing, dignitas. It may even play an active part in enhancing his standing.” [iii] There is therefore in fact a link between what might be considered Earthly good and its place in ornamenting or creating the home as a place of social significance and elevated thought.

The notion of working toward the moral good by serving and interacting with the public is in fact embedded within the very definition of the Roman house or the domus. The domus, in Roman terms, embodied both the physical building and its corresponding social life, represented by the extended family and it has been identified that “when a Roman spoke of the pleasures of his domus, it is often impossible to discover whether he meant his physical house or his family and servants in it over whom he exercised potestas or dominium.” [iv] This social construct of the domus is further reinforced by the fact that a group of visitors to a typical domus was generally characterised as ‘sexus, actas, ordo omis,’ (of every sex, age and rank), the definition of character and importance in Roman society belonged solely to a person’s rank.[v] For a Roman in the public services who would receive many visitors from all sections of society (such as politicians, doctors and lawyers), the expression of rank and their duty to serve was considered a necessity and most straightforwardly done through the design and ornamentation of their domus. The prominent Roman architect Vitruvius declared that people who “are obliged to serve the state, [require] lofty and regal vestibules, grand atria and colonnaded courtyards should be built…to match their social standing…”[vi] This alignment between social rank and the physical construct and articulation of the house indicates that the domus served not only to exemplify a person’s status, but was because the domus was perceived not as a private domain but an extension of the public realm.

This necessary participation in the public life of a city as part of the pursuit for moral goodness was so engrained within the Roman psyche of being at home that Cicero declared: “If you have any skill [as an architect] you must build my house in such a way that whatever I do shall be seen by all.”[vii] Roman social life, although “distinguished between private and public life…each [possessed] a moral tone in which the former, however comfortable and dignified, was deemed unworthy of a citizen.”[viii] The Greek origins of the contemporary word, idiot, idios was similarly used to mean ‘private’ or ‘privacy’, [ix] reinforcing yet again the notion that the Roman domus was not a private house as one might envisage in the contemporary sense, but a physical and social realm where public discussions and conversation might be engaged. Wallace-Hadrill summarises how “a public figure went home not so much in order to shield himself from the public gaze, as to present himself to it in the best light”[x] to show that participation in the public life of a city was not merely fundamental to the physical construction of the domus, but possessed a role in the social construct of the home and the family, which by extension was inseparable from and in constant flux with the wider Roman world.

The House of the Faun

While the visitor to the House of the Faun has already been drawn to its opulence and splendour of the peristyles, it is perhaps the floor mosaic, located between the two peristyles, known as the Alexander exedra which would have been the centre of attention. It has been established that this mosaic, depicting Alexander the Great’s victory at Issus against the Persians was in fact a replication of an earlier (and now lost) Greek painting, signalling once again that “this owner of the house, who is so besotted with Greek art…wants to have as much of it around him as he possibly can…”[xxvi] It can therefore be asserted that the power and influence associated with the mosaic, both in its subject matter and its composition, served to exemplify the House of the Faun as “a power house; it was where the network of social contracts was generated and activated which provided the underpinning for his [the patron’s] public activities outside the house.”[xxvii] What is becoming evident within the House of the Faun therefore is that the home is not a private domain as we have in our modern age come to expect and assume, but a public domain. The display of wealth represented by this tableau of “individual tesserae, these small stones, multi-coloured stones”[xxviii] presented an opulent but appropriately decorous setting for which inhabitants and visitors alike could cultivate understanding of culture and thus pursue what Cicero considered elevated moral goodness

What is overall evident is that the construct of the courtyard pattern as seen in the House of the Faun and indeed in the construction of domus throughout the Roman city of Pompeii illustrates a social organisation which would slowly be diminished by the rise of individual. Nevertheless, it represents how these houses were in themselves instrumental in establishing societal order and encouraged active debate and civic participation in a time when the house did not belong exclusively to an individual or its inhabitants but was an extension of the collective public domain of the city.

Revisiting Vitruvius in the Renaissance

Following the continued zenith of the Roman civilization and by its eventual demise and the transition of Europe into the Middle Ages, a great metaphysical change in the collective psyche also took place. The development of self-consciousness and a more developed separation between “Nature and the Ego [the inner self]” had emerged, resulting in an elevation of the individual over the collective whereby “man identifies himself no longer with the [collective whole of] creation but with the [individual] Creator.”[xxix] One of the factors this may be attributed to is also to the shift from a polytheist Roman world to the monotheist and essentially Judaeo-Christian society, which was now emerging as a society possessing sensibilities which were “patrician in their inspiration, urbane in their manners, urban in their spirit.”[xxx] Undeniably, by the time of the Renaissance, this sensibility was such that Yi-Fu Tuan, noted cultural geographer summarises that one of the major consequences of “Renaissance humanism was that it initiated a growing appreciation of the individual.”[xxxi]

While the world of Rome was an interconnected Empire, the city-states of the Italian Renaissance belonged to an insulated realm, despite the rise of individualism, there was still a sense of the collective, “It was a privilege to belong to the community of the city…Citizenship meant a real community.”[xxxii] At the same time, the construct of the family had become more insular and in some regards, more in line with our contemporary understanding of the family. The home was now seen as a place “…for the security, and for the freedom, of the bourgeois age, for its inner security, and for its inner freedom, for a kind of life that some of us have once known and that others among us can still imagine…”[xxxiii] Thus, while the understanding of the family and home were still related, a sense of security has now been introduced, requiring a new architectural expression to enclose the hectic domain of the urbanised city realm. Unlike the Romans, there was now a form of seclusion from the public world for protection, needed in the construct of the house.

The rise of the individual over the collective and certainly the beginnings of desiring seclusion may first been seen emerging in Renaissance painting. The development of perspective in painting highlighted the need for art to capture a specific moment or focus. This is because “linear perspective dictates how a scene should be depicted from a particular vantage point”[xxxiv] and this may be seen in paintings such as Raphael’s School of Athens, whose internalised perspective typifies Aristotle and Plato as the central figures around which all other philosophers are gathered. Not only does perspective serve to highlight the central characters, it serves to create an interior space, articulated by archways and a dome which represented “The growing practice of depicting rooms [corresponding] to a new emotional tendency henceforth directed toward the intimacy of private life…interior scenes become more common and more original, and they typify genre painting during the whole of its existence.”[xxxv] There was therefore a growing need for internalisation, where once such philosophers may have debated in open forums during the Greco-Roman era, Raphael has now chosen to enclose them within a structure.

In recognising that the Renaissance artists and architects were aware of the Roman tradition, the result of a humanist and individualist approach was that “novelty or originality…emerges from tradition, and in emerging from it, contradicts it…tradition is no longer a dogma, but an object of criticism.”[xxxvi] Within architectural discourse, the works of Vitruvius were ‘rediscovered’ and under the new rise of humanism, aspects of it were reinterpreted, rewritten and retranslated away from Cicero’s moral tradition. There was in fact much discussion and interpretation of the work of Vitruvius, with various writers criticising Vitruvius’ approach. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1570), goldsmith and mannerist sculptor under the Florentine reign of the Medici commented that “Vitruvius did not choose the most beautiful [designs], because he was neither a painter nor a sculptor.”[xxxvii] Still others such as Antionio da Sangallo the Younger (1483-1546) were frustrated by the lack of consistency in proportional values discovered during his scrutiny of Vitruvius’ text on proportions in columns and Sangallo commented that “‘Vitruvio e goffo’, ‘Vitruvius is clumsy’.”[xxxviii] As a result of this animosity toward some of Vitruvius’ principles particularly given the lack of physical or drawn examples of the works he discussed, other architectural writers simply began to modify Vitruvius to suit the needs and tastes of the Renaissance world. Flavio Biondo, in his translation of the Ten Books on Architecture describes and presents an atrium which “directly contradicted Vitruvius… [it was] a public space in front of the house where clients, supplicants, and others could wait before entering the house…it was a transitional space neither out in the public street nor within the private quarters of the domus.”[xxxix] Indeed when Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), under the supervision of prominent Venetian historian Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570) designed the drawings and woodcuts for another reading of Vitruvius’ text, he was actively encouraged to make changes which were “in clear opposition to Vitruvius’ recommendations”[xl]

Within the Palazzo’s peristyle, the double height Corinthian colonnade stands at 10.4 metres, only shorter than the Parthenon by two metres. Such grandeur was unheard of even in the extravagantly noble House of the Faun in Pompeii and in this instance, “Palladio’s cortile with its giant composite colonnade was of a grandeur hitherto unsurpassed…[it was a] revolution brought about because Palladio wanted to make the height of the columns of the peristyle correspond to its breadth…”[liii] The sense of public grandeur within this peristyle colonnade was therefore a Palladian invention, representing a refined sense of decorum which he saw as appropriate for a gentlemen to receive guests in. At the same time however, the enclosure of the atrium into a transition space and its independence from the peristyle meant that “Within and without are clearly defined…Inside the enclosure, undisturbed by distractions from the outside, human relations and feelings can rise to a high and even uncomfortable level of warmth.”[liv] This courtyard now offered refuge from the public domain and with its doors closed to the public, would become read as a private room rather than an open space. Despite the rising sense of requiring privacy however, the design of the Palazzo and indeed the sense of community engrained within Vicenza and the Venetian republic meant that places could be still partially seen as “The city is a big house, [and] the house is a small city.”[lv]

A second difference between the Palazzo Iseppo Porto and the House of the Faun lies in the articulation of rooms. While in Roman times, “…there were hardly any rooms that served for specific purposes, since the notion of privacy scarcely existed,”[lvi] the same cannot be said of the Palladian home, which introduced a second level and indeed rooms whose proportions were articulated both in plan and section. A primary upper level, known as the piano nobile gave a sense of specified purpose and constituted a proper, dignified space for gentlemen and visitors alike. Servant spaces on the other hand, became tucked away, separated from the main peristyle and shown to be minor spaces. It is evident that Palladio was “toying with the idea of recreating the ancient house for modern use from Vitruvius’ text”[lvii] and through separation between serviced primary spaces and subservient secondary spaces further established a spatial hierarchy within the household, providing different levels of autonomy. Considered an innovation in housing at the time, the formulation of spatial hierarchies have of course subsequently been considered inappropriate, described as a segregation in which “the [bourgeois] could no longer bear the  pressure of the multitude or the contact of the lower class…homes [were now] designed for privacy, in new districts kept free from all lower-class contamination.”[lviii] During the Renaissance however, this autonomy was considered a balance between the needs of the public and the individual and in fact Palladio “argued that the name [Basilica] can rightly be used for [these household] buildings…He [Palladio] regarded his own building as an adaptation of the antique basilica type for modern usage,”[lix] suggesting that the house for a gentlemen was therefore still viewed by Palladio as a public building which accorded it necessary ornamentation and grandeur.

The separation which the Palazzo Iseppo Porto achieved, despite its public articulation in façade and within the peristyle represents the changing consciousness of the Renaissance. Whilst trying to emulate the enlightenment of the Greeks and Romans, the humanists possessed an entirely different consciousness because “aspirations were different. The bourgeois kind of ‘urbanisation’ was a later phase in the evolution of human consciousness; it marked the beginning of the ‘internalisation’ of the human condition.”[lx] What was beginning to happen as well was that the new society to which Palladio’s architecture belonged to had commenced the “divorce between home and place of work: status is generated at work not home, so that the home becomes endowed with a ‘privacy’ alien to the Roman.”[lxi] The social obligations of its inhabitants were no longer occurring within the palazzo and as a result, the courtyard was slowly and metaphysically being transformed from an outside space into an insulated realm, an outdoor room from which the individual could contemplate the self and reflect upon the world. By according the individual a space to contemplate, the individual became both the subject and object of contemplation, an essential aspect in the rise of self-consciousness as a means of perusing virtue and moral goodness.

Conclusion

When one reflects on what is considered Rome, one is reminded of the early golden age of civilisation in Europe, enlightened by philosophers and made moral by its citizens who actively participated in the public forums. The house or domus became the extension of this public realm, continually engaging its inhabitants with other people, in the search for virtue and moral goodness. By the time of the Renaissance and with the advent of the humanist tradition, it is of course the Romanic and timeless poet William Wordsworth who reflects for us the dawn of a new age:

“Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee
And was the guardian of the west…
Venice, the eldest child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free.”[lxii]

In many ways these lines embodied the transitioning world, ushering individual thought and liberty, the world in which Palladio operated within. His works in the Veneto region represented the beginning of a new age in housing in which individuals were no longer subject to the constancy of being part of the public realm, as was required by the Romans. Instead the home, became a familial place, a place of warmth and introspection. What has been clearly shown and identified in this investigation of housing between the Roman and Renaissance eras is that the domus or the palazzo, despite retaining similar ornaments and spatial elements have come to be places signifying the social agendas of the era. Despite their various similarities and differences, these houses ultimately offer the singular goal of providing a space by which people can achieve an enlightened and virtuous life, be it through social discourse or individual introspection.

Endnotes

[i] Marc Laugier, An Essay on Architecture (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc, 1977), 7.
[ii] Cicero, On the Good Life (London: Penguin Classics, 1971), 93.
[iii] Cicero in Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Social Structure of the Roman House," Papers of the British School at Rome 56 (November 1988): 45.
[iv] Richard P. Saller, "'Familia, Domus', and the Roman Conception of the Family," Phoenix 38, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 347.
[v] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 52.
[vi] Vitruvius, On Architecture (London: Penguin Classics, 2009), Book VI, Ch V.
[vii] Kate Cooper, "Closely Watched Households: Visibility, Exposure and Private Power in the Roman Domus," Past and Present, no. 197 (November 2007): 10.
[viii] Yi-Fu Tuan, Humanist Geography: An Individual's Search for Meaning (Staunton, Virginia: George F. Thompson Publishing, 2012), 118.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 46.
[xi] Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Social Spread of Roman Luxury: Sampling Pompeii and Herculaneum," Papers of the British School at Rome 58 (November 1990): 190.
[xii] Linda Pellecchia, "Architects Read Vitruvius: Renaissance Interpretations of the Atrium of the Ancient House," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 51, no. 4 (December 1992): 379.
[xiii] Vitruvius, On Architecture, Book VI, Ch. V.
[xiv] Cooper, "Closely Watched Households," 6.
[xv] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 45.
[xvi] Eugene Dwyer, "The Unified Plan of the House of the Faun," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60, no. 3 (September 2001): 332.
[xvii] Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Development of the Campanian House," in The World of Pompeii, ed. Pedar Foss and John J. Dobbins (New York: Routledge, 2009), 283.
[xviii] Cicero in Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 46.
[xix] Wallace-Hadrill, "Campanian House," 287.
[xx] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 68.
[xxi] Fanny Dolansky, "Celebrating the Saturnalia: Religious Ritual and Roman Domestic Life," in A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. Beryl Rawson (New York: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011), 493.
[xxii] Cicero, On the Good Life, 68.
[xxiii] Dolansky, "Celebrating the Saturnalia," 491.
[xxiv] Diana E.E. Kleiner, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Houses and Villas at Pompeii," in Open Yale Courses - HSAR-252: Roman Architecture (Yale University: 27 January 2009).
[xxv] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 64.
[xxvi] Kleiner, "Lifestyles of the Rich."
[xxvii] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 55.
[xxviii] Kleiner, "Lifestyles of the Rich."
[xxix] Giulio Carlo Argan and Nesca A. Robb, "The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth Century," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): 98.
[xxx] John Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior: Why the Most Maligned Characteristic of the Modern Age May yet to Be Seen as Its Most Precious Asset," The American Scholar 39, no. 4 (Autumn 1970): 621.
[xxxi] Tuan, Humanist Geography, 117.
[xxxii] Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior," 621.
[xxxiii] Ibid., 625.
[xxxiv] Igor Juricevic and John M Kennedy, "Looking at Perspective Pictures from Too Far, Too Close, and Just Right," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 135, no. 3 (2006): 448.
[xxxv] Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior," 623.
[xxxvi] Argan and Robb, "Architecture of Brunelleschi," 100.
[xxxvii] Louis Cellauro, "Daniele Barbaro and Vitruvius: The Architectural Theory of a Renaissance Humanist and Patron," Papers of the British School at Rome 72 (2004): 302.
[xxxviii] Ibid., 302-303.
[xxxix] Pellecchia, "Architects Read Vitruvius," 382.
[xl] Cellauro, "Daniele Barbaro and Vitruvius," 310.
[xli] Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture (New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1738/1965), Book I, Pref.
[xlii] Pellecchia, "Architects Read Vitruvius," 415.
[xliii] Georgina Clarke, "Vitruvian Paradigms," Papers of the British School at Rome 70 (2002): 345.
[xliv] Pellecchia, "Architects Read Vitruvius," 383.
[xlv] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 90.
[xlvi] Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior," 622.
[xlvii] Pellecchia, "Architects Read Vitruvius," 416.
[xlviii] Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965), 30
[xlix] Joseph Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1981), 116.
[l] Palladio, Four Books of Architecture, Book I, Pref.
[li] Ibid., Book II, Ch. V.
[lii] Pellecchia, "Architects Read Vitruvius," 413.
[liii] Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: St Martin's Press, 1988), 76.
[liv] Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 107.
[lv] Alberti in Joseph Rykwert, The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1998), 66.
[lvi] Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior," 624.
[lvii] Wittkower, Architectural Principles, 80.
[lviii] Phillippe Aries in Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior," 628.
[lix] Wittkower, Architectural Principles, 75.
[lx] Lukacs, "The Bourgeois Interior," 622.
[lxi] Wallace-Hadrill, "Social Structure," 56.
[lxii] William Wordsworth, "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic," The Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174808 (accessed 10 November 2014).

Image Credits

1. “The Complete Works of Lawrence Alma-Tadema,” Lawrence Alma-Tadema Organisation, http://www.alma-tadema.org/ (accessed 10 November 2014).

2. Ibid.

3. Diana E.E. Kleiner, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Houses and Villas at Pompeii,” in Open Yale Courses - HSAR-252: Roman Architecture (Yale University: 27 January 2009).

4. Ibid.

5. “Complete Works,” Lawrence Alma-Tadema Organisation.

6. Ibid.

7. “Raphael’s School of Athens.” Museos Vaticanos, http://mv.vatican.va/4_ES/pages/z-Patrons/MV_Patrons_04_01.html (accessed 15 April 2014).

8. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture (New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1738/1965), Book II, Ch. V.

9. Ibid., Book II, Ch. III.