Sebastiano Serlio's architectural principles in Britain, 1600-1750

Abstract

This thesis examines the reception of the woodcut-illustrated architectural treatises and architectural mathematics of the Bolognese architect-painter Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554) in Britain from the ‘Scientific Revolution’ into the early Enlightenment from around 1600 to 1750. In part, many modern-day strategies of architectural design trace back to Serlio’s treatises, published from 1537 onwards, which first combined architectural prints and text to create a comprehensive theory for architectural design. Despite the acknowledgements of Serlio’s widespread influence on theory and the built practice, his architectural treatises remain little-understood in respect to their mathematical impact on architectural theory and practice. My thesis argues that the robust response to Serlio’s architectural mathematics via proportional systems shaped the advent of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment thinking in Britain.

Serlio’s mathematical syntax proved popular in Britain as the English translations of Serlio by Thomas Jenner (†1673) and Robert Pricke (†1698) show. While academia generally acknowledges Serlio’s significant influence in Britain, no extant study has investigated the extensive impact of Serlian mathematics on British architectural conception, writing and theory. By performing a quantitative and historical analysis of Serlio’s influence on British architectural conception and thinking in the seventeenth mid-eighteenth centuries, my study offers new insights on the evolving roles of Serlian and Palladian architectural mathematics in Britain. British scholarship propagated the term ‘Palladianism,’ and has long placed Palladio (1508-1580) at the centre of the rigorous mathematics in the region’s architectural culture by making use of design’s visual persuasion through print. I reveal that British early modern architects vigorously engaged with Serlio’s writing by collating his forms and theories with other architectural models and allows altering the Palladian debate that has mesmerised scholarship for long. I pursue understanding Serlio’s theories in practice by probing columnar ratios, decorum and typologies in Britain.

My thesis augments our understanding of the interplay between early modern architecture and mathematical culture by using 3D scanning and computer-aided-design (CAD) which measures and evaluates the mathematical compositions of early modern architectural prints and buildings. By using digital remote sensing, I draw and measure the influence of Serlian mathematical conventions traceable in the buildings and treatises of the architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652), the gentleman-architect Sir William Bruce (1630-1710), the aristocrat Lord Burlington (1694-1753) and the landscape designer and writer Batty Langley (1696-1751). I perform a comparative analysis between the mathematical insights of the building scans and conventions of architectural mathematics derived from British architectural treatises and archival material. This allows me to assess how and why Serlio’s theory shaped British architectural writing and building.

My analysis reveals that Serlio altered British architectural writing and design and rivalled Palladio’s authority from the Elizabethan to the early Georgian periods in which architects modified Serlian theory to satisfy contemporary needs. Serlio’s quintessentially visual and proto-scientific treatise, categorised aesthetic and mathematical principles which complied the sensorial and scientific early modern mind. New inductive empiricism refined Aristotelian logic which resulted in a culture of subjective rather than absolute reason. These aesthetic evolutions affected architecture by looking back to versatile antique examples, and, dismembered the dominance of the architectural canon in architectural theory.

Ambiguously, Serlio as one of the founders of the architectural canon, also helped tilt the authority of the canon from its pedestal as Serlio’s versatile syntax allowed permutation of the orders, which suited Enlightenment ideas unlike most columnar books. Serlio’s theory proved particularly susceptible to scientific thinking since Serlio prescribed undogmatic aesthetic and mathematical categories which allowed architects to alter architectural principles to create various and intemperate architectural designs.