Authenticity in Art: The Scientific Detection of Forgery by Stuart J. Fleming (review)

Books 169 The traditional patrons of the arts in the West, and especially of architecture,that is, religiousorganizationsand the wealthy nobility,have given way to facelesscorporate clientsin searchof profits and to dull governmentbureaucrats. ‘A camel is a horse designedby acommittee’moan thecontemporaryarchitects,but Michelangelo would have no sympathy for them. He informed hisbuildingcommittee,a groupofcardinalsassembled toinspect hiswork:‘Iam not obliged to tell your lordshipswhat I intend to do for this work;your officeis to procuremoney;the designs for the buildingyou are to leave to my care’. Independenceof spirit and a meansto support it are no longeraspectsof the architect’s profession. But architects have come a long way since the architect of the magnificent mosque of Sultan Hasan in Cairo had his hand cut off by his sultan, lest he should ever design another and more beautiful mosque to rival it. The exalted status of architects, that of artists who are not to be interferedwith while at work,has eroded.Today this status is sustainedonlyby theirpower ofpersuasion,thusgivingtoclients and committeeseundeservedlysignificant roles in the creative process of architecture. Profit, political expediency and corporate image vie with traditionalcanonsof goodarchitecture.New buildingsand cities are the sad consequenceof the committee approach. Architects shouldread thisbook torekindletheir spirit.I alsorecommend it to those who are engaged in other apsects of the business of constructing buildings, in the hope that it will assist them in becoming consciousof good architecture. Pythagorean Palaces Magic and Architecture in the Italian Ren-. G. L. Hersey. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1976. 216 pp., illus. €18.00. Reviewed by N. N. PaMcios* Thisbook is furtherevidenceof the re-emergence of the Platonic approach and of the influenceof symbolicand of ‘metaphysical’ considerationsin architecture,which I also noted in my recent review of three other books in Leonardo 10, 82 (1977). Hersey dealsspecificallywith the application of Pythagoreanprinciples in Italian Renaissance palaces.The principleswere based on the concept of numbers as qualities-whether geometric, psychological , moral or even personal in nature. This view, he maintains, affected the proportions, dimensions and arrangement of a building. In the Introduction he outlines the ancient and Renaissance notionsof thecubeasthe sourceof allnumberand form.Thenin thefirstfourChaptershetracestheemergenceofcubicprinciples in Renaissance architectural ideas. The crucial conceptual frameworkon which these principlesdepended was the idea of two mutually pervading architecturesin a single building. The one is invisible, the architectweof space,and the other isvisible, the architectureof solids. Buildings, then, were not seen as mere physical objects, but were perceived within a mental envelope. The‘invisiblegeometry’ofarchitecturalspaceincludedhidden coordinatesor linee occulte and 3-dimensionalcorpo transparante or invisiblecubicjackets.Initiateswere supposed to be able to discern these in buildings, as these unseen networks were used by Renaissancearchitectsto structureand shapetheir buildings. In addition, there was the notion of the human figure as the procreatorof geometricalsurfacesand as a hidden inhabitant of walls and columns. The theoretical discussion of the previous Chapters is illustrated in Chapterfive by selected palacesbuilt between 1440 and 1550in Italy. HerseydiscernsPythagoreanprinciples,‘cubic architecture’ and ‘facade grids’ in some of the well known palaces, such as the Medici, Rucellae,Piccolominiand Strozzi. Theseareseenin a completelynew lightassoon asoneadoptsthe Platonicview that anyof thesebuildingsisonlya visible,material form, but a corrupt one, of a perfect mental model. This scholarlywork includes an interpretation of the ideas of 11 Renaissance writers, from Alberti to Scamozzi, on cubic analysis of architecture. The work will be of interest mainly to *Dept. of Town and Regional Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Ave., Johannesburg 2001, Sciuth Africa. architectural historians and those familiar with terms such as pseudodipteral,exostyle,eustyleand sesquialter,and those who can tell the differencebetween a stylobateand a stereobate.Art teachers and historians may be interested in the variations of Vitrivius’ famousman-in-the-square-and-circleby Leonardoda Vinci, Cesarinoand Scamozzi. The Failure of Modern Architecture. Brent C. Brolin. Studio Vista,London, 1976.128pp.,illus. €6.00.Reviewed by RobertF. EricLsoo** It is difficult to accept the premise of this book for the simple reason that many impressive, pleasing and useful examples of modem architecturecan easily be found throughout the world. Theauthor,who isan architect,hasexercisedhis individualright to statethat hedoesnot like the resultsof 19th-and 2Oth-century architecture, but his personal animus does not prove that a failurehastaken place. Part of hiscase againstmodernarchitects is that...