The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding architectural history of the "good life"
Review: Rarely, perhaps once in a generation, does an enterprising scholar step forth with a truly novel research idea and the capacity to see it through. Du Prey¹s Villas of Pliny is just this: an utterly fascinating, deliciously composed, and copiously illustrated treatment of a neglected theme in architectural history. Although it is the author¹s object to document the perennial allure for post-medieval architects of Pliny the Younger¹s literary picture of villa life in ancient Rome, the book¹s overall theme could be equally understood as the enduring architectural potency of one man¹s idea of ³the good life.² Du Prey succeeds triumphantly both in the close compass of the historian¹s exercise and in broader quality-of-life issues. The book opens with a leisurely literary examination of Pliny¹s Como letters and proceeds to articulate the four ³cardinal points² of a villa described in the epistles to Gallus (bk. 2, ep. 17) and Apollinaris (bk. 5, ep. 6). Judiciously, Du Prey furnishes translations of these missives as appendices; the translation upon which he relies is John Boyle¹s unsurpassed mid-eighteenth century text. After setting forth some of the basic themes that unite various projects across the centuries, the author proceeds through a historical sequence of reconstruction exercises and built designs each determined by a conscious reflection upon Pliny¹s descriptions of his Laurentine and Tuscan villas. From the Medici¹s documented interest through various ³ruins and restitutions² and ³emulations,² Du Prey offers the reader an engaging tour through one of the most imaginatively fertile corridors of architectural history. Although some of this material will be familiar to reader¹s of James S. Ackerman¹s recent study , Du Prey¹s fidelity to the literary exigencies of his topic keeps him from wandering back to familiar stylistic comparisons with survey material. In fact, it is Du Prey¹s tenacity in seeking out new imagery that keeps one eagerly turning the pages to digest the projects of Francesco Lazzari, William Newton, Stanislas Potocki, Friedrich August Krubsacius, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Louis-Pierre Haudebourt, Jules-Frédéric Bouchet, and Hubert Stier. Not only has Du Prey expanded our understanding of historically well-established figures like Palladio and Félibien, he has also tilled the fields of relatively obscure talents to great advantage. The author dedicates the majority of one closing chapter to detailed discussions of several designs for a 1982 exhibition and colloquium in Paris; this amounts to a sustained essay in architectural criticism, and many readers will agree that, compared to his historical labors, this section constitutes the least successful portion of the book. Nevertheless, one hopes this study will generate an increased awareness of the significance of the Pliny theme and that other treatments ‹ such as Constantin Lipsius¹s 1889 project in the archive of Dresden¹s Academy of Fine Arts ‹ will find their way into future editions. The opportunity to survey such a rich thematic vein as Pliny¹s legacy invites one to make new connections and associations. One such thought isThe Villas of Pliny should be regarded as a signal contribution to a growing awareness that, in terms of the History of Ideas, the overall continuity of much of nineteenth century art and architectural theory with what has been called the ³Renaissance­Baroque system² is more in evidence than ever before. In other words, while generations of scholars have tended to locate the formal sources of ³modernity² in the late-eighteenth century , the strands linking nineteenth-century ideas about art and creativity to much earlier periods are increasingly difficult to deny. Although such a perspective tends to attenuate the rupture of the ³High Modernism² of the 1920s, the conceptual lineaments of historicism are perhaps better served. Regardless of the book¹s manifold historiographic value, its significance as a stirring, unforgettable read is impossible to deny. [This review originally appeared in The New Criterion.]