The New York Times
February 7, 1995
The Arts, pp. C1, C13.
Critic's Notebook
Cathedral Models as Stunning as the Real Thing
[Photos] At National Gallery, models of Renaissance
churches: Michelangelo's cutaway of South Apse in St.
Peter's and, right, model for drum and dome.
By Paul Goldberger
Washington -- The title is as bland as a textbook, but
there is a haunting magic to "Italian Renaissance
Architecture" at the National Gallery of Art, a power that
few exhibitions of architecture have ever been able to
achieve. The exhibition consists of 14 wooden architectural
models of Italian cathedrals that have survived from the
Renaissance, as well as more than 70 related paintings,
drawings and prints. The models are, quite simply, some of
the most remarkable pieces of art I have ever seen -- and
you do not have to be interested in architecture to be
bewitched by them.
The allure of these objects goes beyond the astonishing
craftsmanship that they represent, though that is a part of
it, and beyond the historical insight they offer into the
design of Renaissance cathedrals, though that is
considerable. What makes this an extraordinary esthetic
experience is the way in which this exhibition transcends
-- no, smashes -- the distinction between architectural
exhibitions and architecture itself.
We are accustomed to thinking of architectural exhibitions
as vicarious. They are representations, not the real thing,
models and drawings that are substitutes for real
architectural experience. Since almost all models are cute
-- that is one of the laws of the universe -- and since so
little real architecture could ever be called cute, that
alone gives most museum exhibitions that are based on
models an air of precious make-believe.
But then you see these models, these massive, magnificent
things that are no more cute than a Boeing 747. The biggest
of these beasts is 15 feet hi8h and 24 feet long, and they
occupy the classical halls of the West Building of the
National Gallery of Art with the same commanding presence
as the dinosaurs that occupy the halls of the Museum of
Natural History: like the dinosaur fossils these huge
models seem to emit an aura of certainty that they are
sufficient unto themselves, that unlike paintings and
sculpture they hardly need the walls and the floor and the
roof that surround them, except perhaps to keep out the
rain.
These are models, and yet they are almost buildings. They
are far too big to have anything in common with any model
you have ever seen before, but they are not quite big
enough to be real, either. Bigger than any toy, they are
still but a tiny fraction of the size of the buildings they
represent. Thus comes part of their magic: they are
balanced tantalizingly, precariously, mystically in between
the scales we know. Ambiguity here becomes sweet, enticing.
These things are but representations, yet they have an
architectural reality in themselves.
I have never, in a career of looking at representations of
architecture, felt awe before a model. It is usually the
private property of the real thing, of true architectural
experience. Yet awe is what one feels here before the
12-foot-high model of the Cathedral of Pavia, intricately
designed and stunningly detailed, a triumph of
craftsmanship in the way the details of Bramante,
Cristoforo Rocchi and Giovan Pietro Fugazza are executed;
before the astonishing model of St. Peter's dome by
Michelangelo; and before the largest object in the show,
the recently restored model of St. Peter's built between
1539 and 1546 to show the design for it by Antonio da
Sangallo.
The Sangallo model, which is made of a thousand pieces of
fir, lime, elm and apricot wood weighing a total of six
tons, is big enough to enter, though we are not permitted
to do so, and it plays the card of ambiguity to the hilt.
At this size you can begin to imagine what the real
architectural space feels like; no longer is your mind
forced to make a leap from the scale of toys to the scale
of real architecture, for real architecture is right there
before you.
Not that the Sangallo design was so great. Sangallo was
Salieri to Michelangelo's Mozart, and his version of St.
Peter's was busy, fussy and dull. We can only be grateful
that most of his design was never built: the model is
surely more interesting than his building ever would have
been.
These models were design tools for their makers, a means of
persuading patrons to approve designs and of showing
workmen what to do. For us they are still more: they are
tools of information, helping us to understand the
differences between Michelangelo and Sangallo, or between
four different architects' proposals for the facade of the
cathedral in Florence, they are also magnificent works of
sculpture, art in their own right.
But in all of these identities the models are sensuous
objects. They are as full of delicious illusion as a good
special-effects movie. We know they are all of wood, and
yet the yellow-painted travertine and the gray-painted
stucco look so real that we cry out to touch them. It is no
accident that the National Gallery has seen fit to post
signs saying "Do Not Touch the Works of Art"; everything
about these models seems to invite our touch. (The signs
are momentarily startling, since no matter how stunning you
find the models, there is still a little part of you that
has to be reminded that they are works of art.)
Yet another reason to welcome this exhibition is the way in
which it creates a whole new opportunity to praise the West
Building of the National Gallery of Art, surely the
greatest museum building of the first half of the 20th
century, and perhaps beyond. John Russell Pope's remarkable
classical temple was completed in 1941, and the building
has waited half a century for an exhibition that engaged
its architecture in quite so nuanced a way. The models may
seem to stand aloof from their setting, but Pope's
masterwork does not allow them to get away with that; the
magnificent, austere, serene marble walls and columns and
pilasters and pediments all seem designed to contain these
delicate, explosively powerful objects with a combination
of sympathy and strength.
The major works are installed in the west hall and west
garden court of the gallery, just off the main rotunda, and
they have been placed to take perfect advantage of Pope's
formal axes. We see models from a distance, pulling us in,
then we see them in another way, close up. The model of
Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's has been given pride of
place at the very center of the garden court, while the
most intimate models, the series involving the dome and
various facade designs for the cathedral in Florence, have
been placed in smaller side galleries.
The exhibition was organized by Henry A. Millon, dean of
the gallery's Center for Advanced Study In the Visual Arts,
whose understanding of John Russell Pope is clearly equal
to his understanding of the architects of the Renaissance
whom Pope was inspired by. It is a smaller version of an
exhibition presented last year at the Palazzo Grassi in
Venice and brought to Washington very much at the last
minute by Mr. Millon and the gallery's director Rusty
Powell. While the paring down is unfortunate, the presence
of these objects within the National Gallery is so glorious
that it seems churlish to complain that there aren't more
of them.
The exhibition will remain on view at the National Gallery
through March 19.
END
February 7, 1995
The Arts, pp. C1, C13.
Critic's Notebook
Cathedral Models as Stunning as the Real Thing
[Photos] At National Gallery, models of Renaissance
churches: Michelangelo's cutaway of South Apse in St.
Peter's and, right, model for drum and dome.
By Paul Goldberger
Washington -- The title is as bland as a textbook, but
there is a haunting magic to "Italian Renaissance
Architecture" at the National Gallery of Art, a power that
few exhibitions of architecture have ever been able to
achieve. The exhibition consists of 14 wooden architectural
models of Italian cathedrals that have survived from the
Renaissance, as well as more than 70 related paintings,
drawings and prints. The models are, quite simply, some of
the most remarkable pieces of art I have ever seen -- and
you do not have to be interested in architecture to be
bewitched by them.
The allure of these objects goes beyond the astonishing
craftsmanship that they represent, though that is a part of
it, and beyond the historical insight they offer into the
design of Renaissance cathedrals, though that is
considerable. What makes this an extraordinary esthetic
experience is the way in which this exhibition transcends
-- no, smashes -- the distinction between architectural
exhibitions and architecture itself.
We are accustomed to thinking of architectural exhibitions
as vicarious. They are representations, not the real thing,
models and drawings that are substitutes for real
architectural experience. Since almost all models are cute
-- that is one of the laws of the universe -- and since so
little real architecture could ever be called cute, that
alone gives most museum exhibitions that are based on
models an air of precious make-believe.
But then you see these models, these massive, magnificent
things that are no more cute than a Boeing 747. The biggest
of these beasts is 15 feet hi8h and 24 feet long, and they
occupy the classical halls of the West Building of the
National Gallery of Art with the same commanding presence
as the dinosaurs that occupy the halls of the Museum of
Natural History: like the dinosaur fossils these huge
models seem to emit an aura of certainty that they are
sufficient unto themselves, that unlike paintings and
sculpture they hardly need the walls and the floor and the
roof that surround them, except perhaps to keep out the
rain.
These are models, and yet they are almost buildings. They
are far too big to have anything in common with any model
you have ever seen before, but they are not quite big
enough to be real, either. Bigger than any toy, they are
still but a tiny fraction of the size of the buildings they
represent. Thus comes part of their magic: they are
balanced tantalizingly, precariously, mystically in between
the scales we know. Ambiguity here becomes sweet, enticing.
These things are but representations, yet they have an
architectural reality in themselves.
I have never, in a career of looking at representations of
architecture, felt awe before a model. It is usually the
private property of the real thing, of true architectural
experience. Yet awe is what one feels here before the
12-foot-high model of the Cathedral of Pavia, intricately
designed and stunningly detailed, a triumph of
craftsmanship in the way the details of Bramante,
Cristoforo Rocchi and Giovan Pietro Fugazza are executed;
before the astonishing model of St. Peter's dome by
Michelangelo; and before the largest object in the show,
the recently restored model of St. Peter's built between
1539 and 1546 to show the design for it by Antonio da
Sangallo.
The Sangallo model, which is made of a thousand pieces of
fir, lime, elm and apricot wood weighing a total of six
tons, is big enough to enter, though we are not permitted
to do so, and it plays the card of ambiguity to the hilt.
At this size you can begin to imagine what the real
architectural space feels like; no longer is your mind
forced to make a leap from the scale of toys to the scale
of real architecture, for real architecture is right there
before you.
Not that the Sangallo design was so great. Sangallo was
Salieri to Michelangelo's Mozart, and his version of St.
Peter's was busy, fussy and dull. We can only be grateful
that most of his design was never built: the model is
surely more interesting than his building ever would have
been.
These models were design tools for their makers, a means of
persuading patrons to approve designs and of showing
workmen what to do. For us they are still more: they are
tools of information, helping us to understand the
differences between Michelangelo and Sangallo, or between
four different architects' proposals for the facade of the
cathedral in Florence, they are also magnificent works of
sculpture, art in their own right.
But in all of these identities the models are sensuous
objects. They are as full of delicious illusion as a good
special-effects movie. We know they are all of wood, and
yet the yellow-painted travertine and the gray-painted
stucco look so real that we cry out to touch them. It is no
accident that the National Gallery has seen fit to post
signs saying "Do Not Touch the Works of Art"; everything
about these models seems to invite our touch. (The signs
are momentarily startling, since no matter how stunning you
find the models, there is still a little part of you that
has to be reminded that they are works of art.)
Yet another reason to welcome this exhibition is the way in
which it creates a whole new opportunity to praise the West
Building of the National Gallery of Art, surely the
greatest museum building of the first half of the 20th
century, and perhaps beyond. John Russell Pope's remarkable
classical temple was completed in 1941, and the building
has waited half a century for an exhibition that engaged
its architecture in quite so nuanced a way. The models may
seem to stand aloof from their setting, but Pope's
masterwork does not allow them to get away with that; the
magnificent, austere, serene marble walls and columns and
pilasters and pediments all seem designed to contain these
delicate, explosively powerful objects with a combination
of sympathy and strength.
The major works are installed in the west hall and west
garden court of the gallery, just off the main rotunda, and
they have been placed to take perfect advantage of Pope's
formal axes. We see models from a distance, pulling us in,
then we see them in another way, close up. The model of
Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's has been given pride of
place at the very center of the garden court, while the
most intimate models, the series involving the dome and
various facade designs for the cathedral in Florence, have
been placed in smaller side galleries.
The exhibition was organized by Henry A. Millon, dean of
the gallery's Center for Advanced Study In the Visual Arts,
whose understanding of John Russell Pope is clearly equal
to his understanding of the architects of the Renaissance
whom Pope was inspired by. It is a smaller version of an
exhibition presented last year at the Palazzo Grassi in
Venice and brought to Washington very much at the last
minute by Mr. Millon and the gallery's director Rusty
Powell. While the paring down is unfortunate, the presence
of these objects within the National Gallery is so glorious
that it seems churlish to complain that there aren't more
of them.
The exhibition will remain on view at the National Gallery
through March 19.
END