Enciclopedia Cattolica

SERLIO, SEBASTIANO

Volume XI · p. 249 · 1953

English translation · Testo originale italiano

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

SERLIO, SEBASTIANO. – Architect and architectural theorist, b. in Bologna on 5 Sept. 1475, d. in Lyon in 1554.

He is found between 1509 and 1514 in Pesaro as a painter of perspectives; then in Rome, where he studied stage design and determined what was to remain his spatial vision: perspectival and based on geometric relationships. From Rome S. went to Venice, where he was in 1532 and where he published, in 1537, Regole generali di architettura... sopra le cinque maniere degli edifici (IV I. of the

Article illustration
(photo Enc. Catt.) SERIPANDO, GIROLAMO — Bust dedicated in 1759 — Rome, church of S. Agostino.
Article illustration
(from S. S., Libro IV di Prospettiva, Venice 1569, p. 279) SERLIO, SEBASTIANO – Design for the façade of a Venetian house. Specimen in the National Library – Rome.
His treatise, of which Book III was subsequently published in 1540, Books I and II in 1545, and Book V in 1547; the book “on doors” in 1551—all the latter four in France, where S. had gone as early as 1541—and Book VII, posthumously, in 1575, at Frankfurt; Book VIII is lost, and a draft of it, together with Book VI, is found in the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

The foundation of Serlio’s culture is a confident dilettantism which, upon a broad basis of unprejudiced northern culture, embraces highly diverse experiences, with the aim of establishing a repertory of forms ready to adapt themselves easily to the most varied purposes of construction. In this attempt at synthesis, Vitruvius is by no means untouchable, nor, for that matter, is any of the components put forward: everything must instead be scrutinized with the aid of reason.

S.’s work exerted a considerable influence on the theory and practice of architecture in the second half of the sixteenth century, in Italy, especially in the Veneto, where his theory came to coincide with the aspirations of the cultivated Vicentine milieu, associated with the Accademia Olimpica and engaged, with humanistic aims, in architectural problems. S. had a very considerable influence on French architecture in the second half of the sixteenth century: he disseminated in a land momentarily oriented toward the innovations of the Renaissance, but fundamentally anti-classical and “Gothic,” constructive forms rendered decorative and external, belonging to a parade classicism—a true harness superimposed upon an irreducibly different structure.

As regards the practical realizations of S. the architect, more interesting than the works at Fontainebleau, Ancy-le-France, and Lyon, known from documentary evidence but so far unidentified, or than the Venetian Zen Palaces, remains, even if only indirectly, the Palazzo Testoni-Migliorini in Vicenza, where the faithful G. D. Scamozzi ingenuously repeated (c. 1550) the design conceived by S., but never executed by him, for a Venetian palace.

BIBL.: a complete monograph on the artist is lacking; special attention should be paid to: G. C. Argan, s. V. ENOCH. Ital., XXXI (1936), p. 443; id., S. S., in L'arte, 3 (1932), pp. 183–99; for particular problems: A. Foratti, S. S. ed il barocco, in Atti e Mem. della R. acc. di lett., scienze ed arti di Padova, 1929; J. Schlosser, Sull'antica storiografia ital. dell'arte, Palermo 1932, pp. 55–83; id., La letter. artist., Firenze 1935, pp. 352–56 and 364–365 (of particular interest for the chronology of the so-called serliano works); F. Barbieri, V. SCAMOZZI, VINCENZO, Vicenza 1952, pp. 28–33 and 41–50 (for relations with the Vicentine milieu). Franco Barbieri
Cite this article

“SERLIO, SEBASTIANO.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XI (1953), p. 249. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/serlio-sebastiano.