Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi (Barozio) da

VIGNOLA, GIACOMO BAROZZI (BAROZIO) da. - Architect, b. at Vignola (Modena) on 1 Oct. 1507, d. at Rome on 7 July 1573.

He completed his youthful studies of painting and perspective at Bologna; but already around 1534 he was continuing his intense and fruitful preparation at Rome, studying and measuring the monuments of classical antiquity, also at the initiative of the Accademia Vitruviana, of which he was named secretary around 1540. He also received the task of reproducing ancient statues in plaster for the embellishment of the park of Fontainebleau, and from 1541 to 1543 he attended, in France, to the casting in bronze of those copies. Having returned to Italy, he settled at Bologna, carrying out assignments in hydraulic engineering, executing a project in thoroughly Gothic taste for the completion of the facade of S. Petronio, and designing the portico of the Banchi and the tabernacle of the high altar in S. Petronio. In 1546 V. is at Rome, under the patronage of the houses of Farnese and Del Monte. In the great Farnese Palace, designed by Antonio da Sangallo, he leaves a noble classical imprint on the rear facade and in various interior decorations, while in other activities of this period (the crowning with a frieze of grotesque masks and the loggia on the first floor of the Palazzo Mattei-Paganica, of the Palazzo Firenze, some houses on Via Capodiferro and the front of a small palace near Piazza Navona, with a lower Doric loggiato and a piano nobile with Ionic pilasters and splendid stucco reliefs) a mannerist orientation manifests itself, founded on chiaroscuro rhythms in an expressive function.

V.'s building virtue acquires greater substance, however, after 1550 with the members and the decorative-scenographic arrangements of the Villa of Pope Julius III (Del Monte). Not so much in the facade of the main building as in the grandiose exedra with porticoes toward the inner garden and in the nymphaeum, adorned with slender caryatids and curving balustrades, the artist reveals his capacity to dominate spaces and volumes, framing within the building structures the free expansion of plant forms and of the ambient light. At the same time, V. was taking part (though not precisely determinable) in the construction of the nearby Casina of Pope Julius III on the Via Flaminia (now the seat of the Italian Embassy to the Vatican) and was designing, in those surroundings, the graceful and sober little temple of S. Andrea, inspired by the Pantheon and where the joining of a cubic volume and a superimposed ellipsoidal cylinder represents the first example of the pseudo-central scheme, widely adopted, later, during the 17th century. There also form part of the Vignolan activity expended under the pontificate of Julius III the two porticoes with three arches erected at the top of the stairways flanking the Piazza del Campidoglio. In the subsequent period, marked by works executed for the Farnese, there belong to V. the front of the church of S. Maria dell'Orio and the superb Villa of Caprarola, whose pentagonal planimetric scheme had already been fixed for military purposes by Antonio da Sangallo and Baldassare Peruzzi.

Between 1559 and 1564 he raised the building, constructed the stupendous circular courtyard with two orders, conferred a solemn sweep on the spiral staircase, with paired

Doric columns, anticipating developments of Borromini and Bernini, adorned vaults and loggias with stuccoes and balustrades of magnanimous decor and rendered even more grandiose and luminous the effects of the open-air scenography, experimented with in the Villa of Pope Julius III, with the ramps, the casino and the architecturally disciplined garden. Other most felicitous proofs of this art, in daring collaboration with nature, were, shortly thereafter, the Villa Lante, formerly Gambara, at Bagnaia, made very cheerful by a great basin and by the fountains with animating sculptures, and the eurhythmic arrangement of the so-called Farnese Gardens, on the Palatine, now for the most part disarranged. In the last period of his laborious career, there belonged to V. the boast of fixing the exemplary model of the churches of the Counter-Reformation with the project of the Roman temple of the Gesù, begun in 1568. The exterior part of the building, including the facade (only a drawing for it, not executed, is had from V.) is due to the continuator Giacomo della Porta. But, in the interior, the Emilian master wonderfully developed the informing concept desired by St. Ignatius of Loyola, in the single and very broad vaulted nave with the series of chapels at the sides, where the light is minimal, and in the dome that dominates from above, irradiating the space, with admirable power.

Still within the ecclesiastical sphere, the last works of V. are the small dome, already conceived by Michelangelo, that surmounts the Gregorian chapel of the basilica of S. Peter (of this he was named chief master in 1571, after having assisted Buonarroti from 1552 to 1554) and the church of S. Anna dei Palafrenieri (with the collaboration of his son Giacinto) with an elliptical plan. Other signs of his activity in Rome are the two portals of the Palazzo della Cancelleria and of the church of SS. Lorenzo and Damaso and the fine extraneous balconied front in the Palazzo dei Convertendi on Via della Conciliazione. There also belong to V. the magnificent courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese at Piacenza; the Palazzo comunale, the Porta Faulle, the fountain of the Rocca and others, at Viterbo; the Castellina of Norcia; the massive portico of the Villa Mondragone, at Frascati; the portico near S. Biagio at Montepulciano; a small palace, with a loggiato on the piano nobile, at Rieti, and small churches, chapels and fountains at Capranica, Bomarzo, Ronciglione, Bagnaia, not to mention the uncertain buildings, or in collaboration, such as the church of S. Maria degli Angeli near Assisi.

Particular consideration also merits, moreover, the theoretical work of V. entrusted to the Regola delle cinque ordini d'architettura, published in 1562, and to Le due regole della prospettiva pratica, published posthumously by Ignazio Danti in 1583. With these last, the author defines the function and the scope of the so-called "distance points," integrating the concepts of the great perspectivists of the Renaissance; with the Regola delle cinque ordini he summarizes the copious studies on Vitruvius carried out before him, simplifying to the utmost the measurements and stylistic modules and offering even to the freest fancies a sure grammatical or metrical foundation, a solid presupposition of taste and experience. The fortune immediately encountered by this work was perpetuated for centuries with innumerable editions and translations into every language, and the text, having become classic in the schools of architecture and engineering, served even to diminish the fame of V. as a builder, causing him to pass for the prototype of academic pedantry. But, as Adolfo Venturi well observed, the Modenese architect is not always a slavish zealot of Vitruvius: "he consults him, follows him, but departs from him when the studies of the monuments, the taste of his time, the effects of light, air, and environment require it." And in the greatest part of his creative production, certainly not homogeneous, V. takes his place among the freest and yet most reflective builders of his age of transition. - See t.v. CXLVI.

Alberto Neppi