Conjuring the Concept of Rome: Alterity and Synecdoche in Peruzzi's Design for La Calandria
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Sixteenth Century Journal
XLV/1 (2014)
ISSN 0361-0160
Conjuring the Concept of Rome: Alterity and
Synecdoche in Peruzzi’s Design for La Calandria
Javier Berzal de Dios
The Ohio State University
This essay sets forth a nuanced interpretation of Baldassare Peruzzi’s stage
design for La Calandria (1514) that addresses the spatial disassociations found
in the drawing in relation to active modes of visual engagement. Eschewing
traditional and overarching generalizations about scenography in the sixteenth
century, like the pictorial manifestation of Aristotle’s theory of unity through
single-point perspective, it shows that Peruzzi presents a multifarious and het-
erogeneous space, not a defined place in which the action is contained. Using
as a fulcrum the flattened, disproportional and paradoxical arrangement of the
ruins of Rome, the space in the drawing can be understood to present Rome
as a monumental concept. Peruzzi’s drawing thus articulates an interplay of
relations that, maximizing the artificial by conjuring an anomalous space,
displaces the phenomenological expectations of the viewers in order to create
a fantastic albeit impossible space that is, ultimately, truer to Rome than any
mimetic instantiation of the city.
“…they are both in Rome today, and you will see both of them appear here. Do
not imagine, though, that they were suddenly transported here from Rome by
necromancy. The city you see here is Rome, which used to be so ample, so spa-
cious, so large that, triumphing, it could contain many cities, and towns and
rivers. Now it has become so small that, as you can see, it can easily fit into your
own town.”1
Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, “La Calandria”
Among the few surviving early modern theatrical visual records, Baldassare
Peruzzi’s view of Rome for La Calandria (fig. 1) has been singled out as signifying
a pivotal moment in the history of art, scenography, and theatrical architecture.
1“…amendua sono oggi in Roma ed amendua or qui comparir li vedrete. Né crediate però che,
per negromanzia, sí presto da Roma venghino qui; per ciò che la terra che vedete qui è Roma. La
quale giá esser soleva sí ampia, sí spaziosa, sí grande che, trionfando, molte cittá e paesi e fiumi lar-
gamente in se stessa riceveva; ed ora è sí piccola diventata che, come vedete, agiatamente cape nella
cittá vostra” (author’s translation). Argumento in Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, “La Calandria,” in
Commedia del Cinquecento, ed. Ireneo Sanesi (Roma: Laterza, 1912), 9. See also La Calandria, ed.
Paolo Fossati (Torino: Guilio Einaudi, 1967), 22. For an English translation of the play see Renais-
sance Comedy: The Italian Masters Volume II, ed. Donald Beecher (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2009), 21–100.
Sections of this paper were presented as “Perspective in the Public Sphere,”
Renaissance Society of America Conference (Montreal, 2011) and “At the Mar-
gins of Perspective: Italian Scenography and the Problem of Space,” Sixteenth
Century Society Conference (Cincinnati, 2012).
2526 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
Building upon developments present in Pellegrino da Udine’s 1508 design for La
Cassaria and Girolamo Genga’s 1513 scenography, also for La Calandria, Peruzzi
(1481–1536) is seen as decisively producing a unified stage in which a painted
backdrop in perspective was integrated with three-dimensional theatrical set
design and with the space of the stage itself.2 As a result, Peruzzi emerges as a
figure of transition between early attempts to use pictorial developments, such as
linear perspective, and latter instantiations of theatrical art by Sebastiano Serlio
and Giorgio Vasari.3 This historical trajectory culminates with the architecture
of the Teatro Olimpico and with the set designs of Bernardo Buontalenti.4 Along
with the work of those artists, Peruzzi’s scenography is consistently interpreted
as emphasizing a sense of visual and spatial unity that, aided by linear perspec-
tive, denotes the humanistic absorption of Aristotle.5 Specifically, it is seen as
embodying the Greek philosopher’s emphasis on unity of action, which mid- and
late sixteenth-century commentators like Ludovico Castelvetro conjoined with
the unity of time and the unity of space, crafting the famous doctrine of the
Three Unities.6 Rather than further pervasive diachronic contextualizations,
2Thomas A. Pallen, Vasari and Theatre (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 21–22, 26. Also Allardyce Nicoll, The Development of the Theatre (New York:
Harcourt, 1966), 72–73.
3George R. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre: Form and Convention in the Renaissance (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1944), 177. See also Kenneth Macgowan and William Melnitz, The
Living Stage (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1955), 79–80; William Tydeman, The Theatre in the
Middle Ages: Western European Stage Conditions, c. 800–1576 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978). For Vasari see Pallen, Vasari and Theatre. See also Alison Fleming, “Presenting the
Spectators as the Show: The Piazza degli Uffizi as Theater and Stage,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38
(2006): 701–20; Christopher Cairns, “Theatre as Festival: The Staging of Arentino’s Talanta (1542)
and the Influence of Vasari,” in Italian Renaissance Festivals and the European Influence, ed. J. R.
Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992),
105–17.
4 Licisco Magagnato, “The Genesis of the Teatro Olimpico,” Journal of the Warburg and Cour-
tauld Institutes 14 (1951): 209–20. See also, Andreas Beyer, Andrea Palladio: Triumpharchitektur
für eine humanistische Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987); Giangiorgio Zorzi, “Le
prospettive del Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza nei disegni degli ‘Uffizi’ di Firenze e nei documenti
dell’Ambrosiana’ di Milano,” Arte Lombarda 10 (1965): 70–97. Thomas Oosting, “The Teatro Olim-
pico Design Sources,” Educational Theatre Journal 22, no. 3 (1970): 256– 67. For Buontalenti see
James Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996).
5“The unified spatial setting of Early Renaissance painting became an important ingredient in
the evolution of the new humanist theater, at once inspiring and satisfying the demand for dramatic
unity.” David Rosand, “Theater and Structure in the Art of Paolo Veronese,” The Art Bulletin 55,
no. 2 (1973): 217–39, esp. 220. See also Peter Womack, “The Comical Scene: Perspective and Civil-
ity on the Renaissance Stage,” Representations 101, no. 1 (2008): 32–56; Lily Campbell’s Scenes and
Machines on the English Stage during the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1923); Arnaldo Momo, La crisi del modello teatrale del rinascimento (Venice: Marsilio, 1981), 11.
6Lodovico Castelvetro’s interpretation of Aristotle was published under the title Poetica
d’Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposita. For an English translation (abridged) see Lodovico Castelvetro,
On the Art of Poetry (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1984). For early
modern commentaries on Aristotle see Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in theBerzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 27
in which textual information is seen as dominating visual practices, this study
builds on Jacob Burckhardt’s neglected prioritization of aesthetics over illusion-
ism. When Peruzzi’s design is examined as a relatively autonomous work of art,
it is possible to analyze the questions that emerge from its articulation of space.7
This is not to say that issues of image-text relation have no place in this study, but
that the pictorial will be its focus and raison d’être. In addressing the overlooked
anomalous elements that infuse Peruzzi’s drawing for La Calandria, the anoma-
lies are not artistic or circumstantial shortcomings, but evidence reinforcing a
pragmatic aesthetic interest in the relationship between spectators and stage.8 By
confronting the spatial disassociations and the continuous interest in an active
mode of visual engagement, Peruzzi’s design—and by extension the world of
sixteenth-century Italian theatrical art—is one of heterogeneity, plurality, and
experimentation. A design that cannot be reduced to a notion of spatial coher-
ence where the stage presented an illusionistic and unified location. In Peruzzi’s
case, his drawing articulates the juxtaposition of a legible perspective space
and an impossible flattened and condensed Rome that appears unbound from
restrictive mathematical, perceptual, and cognitive expectations. Peruzzi pres-
ents a marvelous artistic apparition in which the spectators encounter Rome as
a monumental, overflowing concept. Congested and teeming with monuments,
Peruzzi’s artificial presentation displaces the viewer’s phenomenological expec-
tations in order to conjure an overwhelming presence of the city that is truer to
Rome than any factual, single view of the city can be.
Peruzzi’s drawing, which probably shows a faithful depiction of what ulti-
mately appeared on the stage, is housed in the Galleria degli Uffizi, being com-
monly regarded as having been made for La Calandria.9 This commedia erudita
Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 1:366–563. For Castelvetro’s devi-
ation from Aristotle see Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998). Halliwell writes, “. . . the all too familiar doctrine of the Three Unities . . . a pointed reminder
of how little the treatise was actually read, as opposed to being simply appealed to, even in the most
self-consciously neo-classical circles,” 287.
7 Burckhardt argues that the aim of scene-designers was in no instance “illusion in our pres-
ent sense but an appearance of festive splendor.” Jacob Burckhardt, The Architecture of the Italian
Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 272. Cf. Peter Womack, “The Comical
Scene,” 36. As Damisch has put it, “What we are concerned with here is to see architecture in terms
of thought, not theory or practice, but actual thought, raw thought. This is what we can start look-
ing at. What short of thought do we see in the architectural work?” “Discussion 2” in Anymore, ed.
Cynthia Davidson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 89.
8Scenography is concerned with audience reception and engagement, creating an experience
that is sensory, intellectual, rational, and emotional. Joslin McKinney and Philip Butterworth, The
Cambridge Introduction to Scenography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 4. In this
sense, “Theatre takes place whenever there is a meeting point between actors and a potential audi-
ence.” Pamela Howard, What Is Scenography? (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 1.
9It was proposed that Uffizi 291A was Vasari’s. However, Klaus Neiiendam has convincingly
argued against that attribution. See “‘Il portico’ and ‘la bottega’ on the Early Italian Perspective Stage:
A Comparative Study in Theatre Iconography,” in The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance,28 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
Figure 1. Baldassare Peruzzi, La Calandria
(learned comedy) was written by Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, pro-
duced by Leo X in honor of Isabella d’Este, and staged by Duke Francesco Maria
Rovere.10 Peruzzi’s drawing is the most finalized and complete of a very small
Design 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 29– 40, esp. 38– 40. Cf. Bernd Evers, ed. Architekturmodelle der
Renaissance, Die Harmonie des Bauens von Alberti bis Michelangelo (München: Prestel, 1995), 51.
On the question of whether Peruzzi’s design presents what was ultimatedly built, I agree with Nicoll,
The Development of the Theatre, 72.
10“In my opinion these [sketches] either date from after 1514 or else cannot be linked to Bibbie-
na’s text.” Elena Povoledo, “Origins and Aspects of Italian Scenography,” in Music and Theatre from
Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 324. For the participation
of Duke Francesco Maria Rovere in the staging see Alois Maria Nagler, A Sourcebook in Theatrical
History (New York: Dover, 1952), 72. For the learned comedy as a genre see Marvin T. Herrick, Ital-
ian Comedy in the Renaissance (Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1966), 60–165.
See also Richard Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios: The Performance of Comedy in Renaissance Italy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. chap. 2. For an overview of Leo X’s interest in
performance see Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Music and Festivities at the Court of Leo X,” Early Music
History 11 (1992): 1–37.Berzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 29
number of surviving examples of Peruzzi’s theatrical works.11 Despite their lim-
ited number, the historical significance of these drawings is by no means small.
Peruzzi’s scenographic designs signal a crucial step in the developments origi-
nated by artists like Genga, who had designed the stage for the inaugural 1513
production of La Calandria in the city of Urbino under the direction of Baldesar
Castiglione, and whose stage design also included a view of a city in perspec-
tive.12 Additionally, Peruzzi’s designs may have been part of a compilation of
drawings of Rome that were intended to illustrate a never-published commentary
on Vitruvius. These drawings certainly fertilized the scenographic tradition: it
has been frequently argued that Serlio may have retained them after Peruzzi’s
death, later using them as models for his influential tragic and comic scenes.13
Within the larger sixteenth-century cultural context, the scenographic works of
Serlio and Peruzzi have been seen as directly informing highly regarded works of
art, and thus form part of the early modern interest in theatricality.14
Vasari expresses an unequivocal admiration for Peruzzi’s theatrical skill,
highlighting that his designs were a turning point in Italian scenography.15 In
11Paola Poggi, “Architectonica perspectiva: La prospettiva solida de Le Bacchidi e la voluta
ionica di Baldassarre Peruzzi,” in Baldassarre Peruzzi 1481–1536, ed. Christoph L. Frommel et al.
(Venice: Marsilio, 2005), 443–55. See also Thomas Ault, “Peruzzi and the Perspective Stage,” Theatre
Design & Technology 43 (2007): 33–50.
12For Genga’s design see Pallen, Vasari and Theatre, 20–23 and 93–99. See also Antonio Pinelli
and Orietta Rossi, Genga Architetto (Rome: Bulzoni, 1971), 107–17; Jack D’Amico, “Drama and the
Court in ‘La Calandria,’” Theatre Journal 43 (1991): 93–106; Donald Beecher, “Introduction to The
Calandria,” in Renaissance Comedy, 23; Franco Ruffini, Commedia e festa nel Rinascimento: La
“Calandria” alla corte di Urbino (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986); Giovanni Attolini, Teatro e spattacolo
nel Rinascimento (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1988), 113. For Castiglione’s interest in performance see
Wayne Rebhorn, Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978).
13Povoledo, “Origins and Aspects of Italian Scenography,” 324–26. See also Pallen, Vasari on
Theatre, 26; David Brubaker, Court and Commedia: The Italian Renaissance Stage (New York: Rich-
ard Rosen Press, 1975), 41. Neiiendam traces Serlio’s influences to Bramante. See “‘Il portico’ and ‘la
bottega’ on the early Italian perspective stage,” 29– 40.
14 E.g. Kurt Badt, “Raphael’s ‘Incendio del Borgo,’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Insti-
tutes 22, no. 1/2 (1959): 35–59; Rosand, “Theater and Structure in the Art of Paolo Veronese”; Eunice
Howe, “Architecture in Vasari’s ‘Massacre of the Huguenots,’” Journal of the Warburg and Cour-
tauld Institutes 39 (1976): 258– 61; Cecil Gould, “Sebastiano Serlio and Venetian Painting,” Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25, no. 1/2 (1962): 56– 64; George L. Gorse, “A Classical
Stage for the Old Nobility: The Strada Nuova and Sixteenth-Century Genoa,” The Art Bulletin 79
(1997): 301–27; Alison Fleming, “Presenting the Spectators as the Show,” in Theatricality in Early
Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Caroline van Eck and Stijn Bussels (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
2011); Eugene J. Johnson, “Jacopo Sansovino, Giacomo Torelli, and the Theatricality of the Piazzetta
in Venice,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59 (2000): 436–53.
15“Baldassarre fece al tempo di Leone X due scene che furono maravigliose, et apersono la
via a coloro che ne hanno poi fatto a’ tempi nostri,” Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ piu eccellenti pittori,
scultori e architettori: Nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanne Bettarini and Paolo Barocchi
(Florence: Accademia del Crusca, 1994), 4:323. Kernodle adds, “Vasari gives credit for the develop-
ment of perspective scenery to Baldassare Peruzzi…. Vasari’s enthusiasm attests the tremendous30 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
his Lives, Vasari explicitly refers to two plays for which Peruzzi produced the
stage designs. One of them is La Calandria, which was probably performed in the
late months of 1514 and perhaps repeated in January 1515.16 The other play is not
named, and its identity has become the subject of scholarly speculation.17 Impor-
tantly, Vasari praises both the text of La Calandria for its use of the vernacular
and Peruzzi’s stages for having laid the foundations for contemporary sets. The
latter is something especially remarkable, in the Tuscan writer’s opinion, given
that comedies, and consequently scenery for comedies, had fallen into disuse,
replaced by festivals and mystery plays.
Such triumphal rhetoric regarding scenography has traditionally been taken
up in order to see Peruzzi as heralding a new age of scenographic unity and illu-
sionism.18 The drawing has been characterized as a tour de force in which the
advances of Renaissance painting are finally used in theatrical performances.19
Leaving behind medieval practices, where geographically disparate locations
were simultaneously visible on stage, Peruzzi’s groundbreaking stage is under-
stood to reify the values of Renaissance set design.20 Thus, his scenographic
work is seen as manifesting the importance of verisimilitude, the scientific use of
linear perspective, and the pervasive interest in revitalizing Vitruvius’ theatrical
architecture.21
excitement which artists and laymen alike felt over this new courtly toy—perspective scenery—and
the new effects of illusion.” From Art to Theatre, 177.
16See Ricci, “The Art of Scenography,” The Art Bulletin 10, no. 3 (1928): 231–57. See also Neiien-
dam, “‘Il portico’ and ‘la bottega’ on the early Italian perspective stage,” 40. Burckhardt argues the
play was produced by Leo X in 1515 for the promotion of his brother, Giuliano de’ Medici, to General
of the Church. See The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (London: Secker and Warburg, 1985),
271. Pallen and Lotz agree that the play was produced by Leo X, but argue that the reason was to cel-
ebrate the conferral of Roman citizenship to both his grandson Lorenzo and to his brother Giuliano.
Lotz also writes that Peruzzi took a leading part in the construction of “the wooden ‘theatre’ on
the Capitol in Rome which Leo X erected in 1513 on the occasion of the admission of his nephews
Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici to the Roman patriciate.” Wolfgang Lotz, Architecture in Italy
1500–1600 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 46. Pallen posits that the theatre
was built by Rosselli. See Vasari on Theatre, 36.
17See Pallen, Vasari on Theatre, 24. See also Povoledo, “Origins and Aspects of Italian Scenog-
raphy,” 324; Attolini, Teatro e spettacolo nel Rinascimento, 114–5.
18Richard Andrews, “The Renaissance stage,” in A History of Italian Theatre, ed. Joseph Farrell
and Paolo Puppa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 31–38.
19“It is surprising that apparently no perspective scenery was built until the first decade of the
sixteenth century.” Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, 176.
20Nicoll, The Development of the Theatre, 73. See also Tydeman, The Theatre in the Middle Ages,
238; Pallen, Vasari and Theatre, 26; Alessandro Biagi, “La prospettiva, la scenografia, lo spettacolo,”
in Baldassarre Peruzzi, Architetto: 20 luglio–20 agosto Ancaiano-Sovicille, commemorazione V cen-
tenario della nascita (Siena: Periccioli, 1981), 30.
21Richard Andrews argues that the Renaissance stage depicted an autonomous fictional terri-
tory that mirrored the world inhabited by the audience and “was both ‘rational’ and ‘verisimilar.’”
See “The Renaissance stage,” 35. See also Bodo Richter, “Recent Studies in Renaissance Scenography,”
Renaissance News 19, no. 4 (1966): 344–58, especially 347; Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance:
The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 23. For Vitruvius’sBerzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 31
The scholarly emphasis on Peruzzi’s creation of a verisimilar stage is not
ungrounded: a glimpse of Peruzzi’s design shows evidence of a well-constructed
perspectival stage, with the receding lines of the floor leading our eyes to a cen-
tralized vanishing point in the way famously proposed by Leon Battista Alberti
in his treatise On Painting; however, a nuanced analysis of this drawing shows a
series of spatial complications. Before we address these complications, it is worth
observing the ways in which Peruzzi has created a credible space.22 A quick glance
at the design reveals the representation of three types of elements: the blank space
that signifies the sky, a series of buildings, and the floor. Upon closer inspection,
it is possible to easily subdivide the latter into two distinct sections: the front
section, where we encounter the receding lines of the checkerboard pavement,
and a back section in which no such squares exist. These two floor areas appear
as divided by a double line on the ground, which separates the front and the
back. Despite its monochromatic nature and unfinished lines, we understand the
drawing as presenting us with a space that we can easily navigate. Though it is
assumed that, by the sixteenth century, artists of the caliber of Peruzzi would
have had no problem visually articulating a deep three-dimensional space, it is
worth considering here how effortlessly the drawing provides us with a tangible
space in which we can orient ourselves. That is, it is worth considering how read-
ily we accept an encounter with an illusionistic, highly organized space.
The putative illusionism of the drawing is critical to any interpretation inas-
much as the drawing presents neither a fully architectural nor fully pictorial
space: it describes architecture pictorially, yet we know that it is not meant to
represent a purely pictorial space, since only parts of it were destined to remain
flat. The question is whether the drawing definitively differentiates the elements
that are potentially three-dimensional (or at least integrated with the space of the
actors) from what was likely to remain flat (e.g. the painted backdrop). It is likely
that Peruzzi signified this transition with the very double line on the ground that
separates the two spaces—that the checkerboard section of the pavement would
indicate the three-dimensional space of the stage, whereas the area beyond it
influence see Povoledo, “Origins and Aspects of Italian Scenography,” 324–26. See also Di Maria,
The Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance: Cultural Realities and Theatrical Innovation (Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press, 2002), 134–36; Manfredo Tafuri, “Il luogo teatrale dall’umanesimo a
oggio,” in Teatri e scenografie (Milan: Touring Club Italiano, 1976), 28.
22Hubert Damisch interprets the drawing as belonging to the genre of architectural vedute.
See The Origin of Perspective (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995), 203– 6. Damisch’s notion of “view”
is linked to Brunelleschi’s experiments, to architectural renderings, and to built architecture.
Damisch’s brief mentioning of contradiction and condensation remains linked to built architecture;
indeed, despite his awareness of nonfinite, not closed, and nonsystematic systems, Damisch follows
Kernodle in this differentiation of medieval and sixteenth-century stages, where the latter “become
interested in integrating all the different elements of a single spectacle within a unified framework.”
A Theory of /Cloud/ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 155.32 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
would have remained two-dimensional as a backdrop.23 This hypothesis suggests
that Peruzzi would have presented us not with an infinite potentiality, but with a
distinct encounter of two different entities: the space that can be experienced and
occupied by the living bodies of the actors, and the space that ought to remain
pictorial. This idea is buttressed by the drawing itself: Peruzzi’s articulation of
the first two houses on both left and right is noticeably more volumetric, homog-
enous and proportional than the monuments behind them.
The back section does not show an integrated and compelling space, but
an ersatz and paradoxical amalgam of buildings and monuments. The perplex-
ing situation of the monuments appears, upon initial inspection, less peculiar
than perhaps it should. Peruzzi’s artistic qualities here do not merely delineate
his mathematic skill, but also importantly his capacity to divert the gaze of the
viewer, who intuitively apprehends a successful depiction of depth. However, the
contrast between the two spaces is more subversive than it may seem, and it goes
beyond Peruzzi’s creation of an imaginary vantage point. In addition to the lack
of a factual topographic arrangement, the monuments are flattened, and they
appear impossibly stacked and piled up on one another. To these illusionistic
irregularities, we need to add problems of scale, as the buildings’ sizes have been
modified without reference to a fixed perspective ratio, and thus they lack the
appearance of continuous proportionality.24 This is especially noticeable in the
depiction of the Coliseum and the Castel Sant’Angelo: both buildings, clearly
prominent in the drawing, have been flattened and shrunk. In fact, it is not so
much the Coliseum that is perceived, but a carved-out section of the monument
that protrudes into the space of the third house, hovering over its roof. Likewise,
on the right, the dome of the Pantheon awkwardly appears between the Castel
Sant’Angelo and the second house, occupying an impossible space.
Peruzzi’s design for La Calandria is, therefore, not a mimetic presentation of
a specific location. On the contrary, it brings forth an impossible and imaginary
point of view from which a wide array of famous Roman architecture becomes
visible: in addition to the above-mentioned monuments, we encounter the Tower
of the Milizie, the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the obelisk
from Piazza del Popolo, Trajan’s Column, the Palazzo Senatorio, the bell tower
of San Lorenzo in Miranda, and an arch inspired by that of the Argentari in the
Forum Boarium.25 Amalgamated and flattened, the monuments literally exist
on the margins of mathematical reason, which in the drawing operates a visual
23Christopher Cairns, “Theatre as Festival,” 108. See also Pallen, Vasari and Theatre, 26;
Nicoll, The Development of the Theatre, 73.
24For an analysis of the issue of scale in sixteenth-century art see Creighton Gilbert, “A New
sight in 1500: The Colossal,” in Theatrical Spectacle and Spectacular Theatre, ed. Susan Scott, vol. 2
of “All the World’s a Stage…”: Art and Pageantry in the Renaissance and Baroque, ed. Barbara Wisch
and Susan Scott Munshower (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1990), 396– 415.
25The Tower of the Milizie was believed to be Torre di Nerone. Neiiendam, “‘Il portico’ and ‘la
bottega’ on the early Italian perspective stage,” 40. See also Pallen, Vasari on Theatre, 26.Berzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 33
rachis: the perspective construction is presented as a central avenue, whereas the
monuments appear to the left and the right of the street, yet completely discon-
nected from it.
It is rather unlikely that Peruzzi failed to see that the space he had created
was strange and unrealistic, or that he was technically unable to correct it into
a coherent whole. It would be impossible to argue that Peruzzi lacked a sound
understanding of the rules of spatial depiction: not only was his knowledge of
perspective praised by early authors, but also his architecture and pictorial work,
like the Sala delle Prospettive in the Villa Farnesina, speaks to his capacities.26
Peruzzi’s competence forces the audience to view the less coherent aspects of
his stage design through a different prism, one in which the artist and architect
was not interested in the recreation of an antiquarian (and arguably narcissistic)
dream based on spatial surveillance, but a formulation that did not have to follow
the dictates of technical norms, in this case spatial and mathematical ones.27
The proposal that Peruzzi was not interested in spatial unity may seem at
odds with the pervasive body of scholarship on early modern Italian set design.28
Nevertheless, it is important to have in mind that multiple voices have raised
issues regarding the importance of pictorial mathematical unity based on per-
spective. In other period contexts, scholars like James Elkins have shown concerns
regarding the assumption that perspective was a pictorial means to the creation
of a unified picture plane, as it may have been a tool meant to depict individual
objects and not space as such.29 Moreover, there is a tradition in the scholarship,
exemplified by John White and Michael Baxandall, that argues pragmatic and
26“Il consumatissimo Baldassare Peruzzi Sanese fú ancor lui pittore, & nella prospettiva tanto
dotto, che . . . a niuno altro fu secondo.” Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospetiva
(Ridgewood: The Gregg Press, 1964), Libro primo (Venice: Melchiorre Sessa, 1551), 2:1r. See also
Jehane Kuhn, “‘La buona squola di Baldassarre’: Vignola’s Due Regole as a Source for Peruzzi’s Per-
spective Techniques,” in Baldassarre Peruzzi 1482–1536, ed. Christoph Frommel et al. (Venezia:
Marsilio, 2005), 411– 42; Martin Kemp, The Science of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1990), 70.
27On the relationship between antiquarianism and narcissism see Julia Kristeva, “Modern
Theater Does Not Take (a) Place,” in Mimesis, Masochism, and Mime, ed. Timothy Murray (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 277–81. For Peruzzi’s surveillance and archeologi-
cal knowledge see Phillip J. Jacks, “The Simulachrum of Fabio Calvo: A View of Roman Architecture
all’antica in 1527,” The Art Bulletin 72, no. 3 (1990): 453–81. See also Ann Huppert, “Baldassarre
Peruzzi as Archeologist in Terracina,” 213–23 and, Pierre Gros, “Baldassarre Peruzzi, architetto e
archeologo,” in Baldassarre Peruzzi 1482–1536, ed. Christoph Frommel et al. (Venezia: Marsilio,
2005), 443–55; Robert W. Gaston, “Merely Antiquarian: Pirro Ligorio and the Critical Tradition of
Antiquarian Scholarship,” in The Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, ed. Allen Griec et al.
(Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002), 355–73. Manfredo Tafuri writes that Peruzzi’s relationship with
the antique had an “achitectural understanding liberated from the servitude of norms.” See Inter-
preting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 129.
28E.g., “The purpose of perspective scenery—to create the illusion of an actual place—required
the complete unity of the stage setting.” Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, 174.
29James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994).
See also Elkins, “Renaissance Perspectives,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 2 (1992): 209–30.34 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
artistic realities took precedence over mathematical demonstrations.30 Indeed,
even arithmetic historians have argued that early modern mathematics need not
be seen as articulating principles detached from experiences, as fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century mathematics were reflections of everyday life still dependent
on the abacists’ tradition of reasoning by example.31 Hence, it seems rather prob-
able that mathematic correctness was not the priority of Renaissance artists, but
rather that linear perspective was one of many tools, all of which were at the
service of the artistic process. Therefore, potential understandings of theatri-
cal productions in which the intrinsic virtues of correct spatial constructions
are seen as conjuring a unified visual field, need to be contextualized within art
historiographic developments and the realities of the period itself. In cases of
accomplished artists like Peruzzi, the rationality of the artists’ choices demands
receptivity to the positive potential aspects of seemingly incoherent spaces, as
such spaces can elicit active cognitive engagement.32
Importantly, the fragmentation of pictorial space need not be seen as incom-
patible with the humanists’ interest in Aristotle’s dramatic unity, which stipu-
lated a main action without subplots.33 After all, the scene, as the semantic center
of a play, can operate as a conceptual unity through the embodied engagement
of viewers and actors in the visually designed space of the stage.34 Unity, in this
sense, would not be a static, monolithic apparatus, but a malleable set of rela-
tions that is articulated by the engagement between each viewer, the space of that
viewer, the performers, and the space of the performance. Besides, it is worth
considering the extent to which Aristotle’s Poetics would have been interpreted in
1514 as stipulating a unity of space, as the application of the doctrine of the Three
Unities would only become pervasive in the second half of the sixteenth century,
having its notorious early exponent in Castelvetro’s famous 1570 exegesis in Poe-
tica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposita. Although it is possible that Peruzzi either
directly or indirectly knew Aristotle’s treatise through Giorgio Valla’s 1498 Latin
translation, the 1508 Venetian printing of the Greek original, or even from one
of the many copies of the texts that existed in the fifteenth century, the Poetics
30Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth- Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1988), 127–28. See also John White, Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (London:
Faber and Faber, 1957), 194–201.
31Luis Radford, “On the Epistemological Limits of Language: Mathematical Knowledge and
Social Practice during the Renaissance,” Educational Studies in Mathematics 52, no. 2 (2003): 123–
50, esp. 135.
32“Multiple viewpoints greatly increase the organizational range and effectiveness of perspec-
tive.” White, Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, 197. See also Pavel Florensky, “Reverse Perspec-
tive,” in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art (London: Reaktion, 2002), 201–72.
33“One” in this sense means “whole” or “complete.” See Rüdiger Bittner, “One Action,” in
Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992), 97–110.
34 Arnold Aronson, “Postmodern Design,” Theatre Journal 43 (Mar. 1991): 1–13. Also, Di
Maria, The Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance, 141.Berzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 35
as a whole, beyond specific doctrines, was not generally well known until the
middle of the sixteenth century.35 In any case, it seems anachronistic to ascribe
to Peruzzi a definite interpretation of Aristotle’s text, specially regarding unity
of place.
Let us, then, bracket out the notion of spatial unity as either an epistemo-
logical social indicator based on perspective or an a priori theatrical dogma,
and engage with space, as Leon Battista Alberti proposes in the opening para-
graphs of On Painting, from the point of view of the artists, and not that of math-
ematicians.36 A mathematical prism, after all, can create a hierarchy that takes
aesthetic value away from art in order to provide a rationale based on a math-
ematical notion of logic in which optical legibility means logico-mathematical
intelligibility.37 Hence, we must accept the possibility that, not only does Peru-
zzi’s perspective accept distortions to its geometric order, but that these distor-
tions can assist the function of the stage design.38 The present inquiry, therefore,
needs to question the pragmatics of the drawing qua scenographic drawing, since
set design has its own intrinsic processes, goals, and functions.39
Theatrical spaces are expressive.40 They articulate a visual utterance that
addresses the cognitive and sensory capacities of the audience.41 Since the stage
opens itself to the spectators, the designer of the stage needs to anticipate the
35Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 349. Also, Halliwell,
Aristotle’s Poetics, 292. See also Daniel Javitch, “The Assimilation of Aristotle’s Poetics in Sixteenth-
Century Italy,” in The Renaissance, ed. Glyn P. Norton, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of Literary
Criticism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 53– 65.
36“Ma in ogni nostro favellare molto priego si consideri me non come matematico ma come
pittore scrivere di queste cose.” Leon Battista Alberti, “De pictura,” in Opere volgari, Vol. 3, ed. Cecil
Grayson (Bari: G. Laterza e Figli, 1973).
37 Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 298. Cf. William Irvins,
On the Rationalization of Sight (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), 13.
38For how perspective can exist without creating a unitary space see Elkins, The Poetics of
Perspective. The problematic issue of function is worth raising given certain Kantian pervasive
prejudices: designers like Serlio are criticized for being pragmatic, though such criticisms fail to
understand a most essential aspect of what a theatrical design is. See Kemp, The Science of Art, 66.
See also Nicoll, The Development of the Theater, 75; Sabine Frommel, Sebastiano Serlio Architect
(Milan: Electra, 2003), 9; John Gassner and Ralph G. Allen, Theatre and Drama in the Making (New
York: Applause Theatre Books, 1992), 237–38; Rudolph Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the
Age of Humanism (London: Norton, 1962), 18.
39Cf. Damisch’s and Krautheimer’s argument that architecture and scenography are tanta-
mount concepts. See: Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, 203; Richard Krautheimer, “The Tragic
and Comic Scenes of the Renaissance: The Baltimore and Urbino Panels,” in Studies in Early Chris-
tian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 345–59, esp. 346.
40 Olivia Dawson, “Speaking Theatres: The ‘Olimpico’ Theatres of Vicenza and Sabbioneta and
Camillo’s Theatre of Memory,” in The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance, Design, ed. Christo-
pher Cairns (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1991), 2:85–92.
41Di Maria, The Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance, 129. In this sense, Gay McAuley describes
theatrical events as “dynamic process of communication in which the spectators are virtually impli-
cated.” Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (Ann Arbor: The University of Michi-
gan Press, 1999), 7.36 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
engagement of the spectators while conceptualizing the space. Issues of recep-
tion emerge in the drafting process, and the audience is, in a sense, present in the
concetto, the conceptual and foundational idea of the design. This is not to say
that the spectator was not important in visual arts in general in the Renaissance,
and especially in the tradition of linear perspective, but that theatrical perfor-
mances are even clearer exponents of this interest.42 Hence, if theatrical spaces
say something, we need to inquire as to what they communicate—to which per-
haps the most uncontestable answer is that the stage communicates a setting, and
more concretely, the spatial location in which the fictive action takes place. La
Calandria takes place in Rome, and it is logical to assume that Peruzzi’s design
presents Rome to the viewers. Yet the drawing presents Rome, and not a view of
Rome or a location in Rome. We understand the set design as Rome, but in order
to see it as Rome we need to think of Rome in a way that does not correlate to the
reality of the city. To think of Rome as a whole, Peruzzi has created a physical
impossibility.
In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud engaged in a mental exer-
cise. Freud, addressing the issue of mental preservation, imagines Rome, not as
a space of human habitation, but as a psychical entity “in which nothing that
has once come into existence will have passed away.”43 In this imaginary Rome,
ancient monuments and later buildings could coexist in one space, and the
observer could call up one view or another by shifting his glance or his position.
Freud calls this Rome an unimaginable fantasy, and concludes, “If we want to
represent historical sequence in spatial terms we can only do it by juxtaposition
in space.”44 It is unlikely that Freud knew Peruzzi’s design; what is more likely is
that Freud and Peruzzi shared a concern regarding the nature of spatiality and
the human condition, and that we are here encountering a notion inherent in the
consciousness of European culture, namely the synthesis of a diachronic and a
synchronic Rome. The product of this synthetic project, Freud notes, would be
42For issues of viewership see John Shearman, Only Connect . . . Art and the Spectator in Italian
Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). The active role of viewership is palpable
before the Renaissance in Erasmus Witelo’s 1278 work De Perspectiva. Witelo argues that the viewer
engages in dialogue with the object, and that this interaction requires reason, imagination, and
knowledge. See Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1986), 69. Witelo’s treatise on optics informed Renaissance works like Lorenzo
Ghiberti’s Commentario terzo. See Graziela F. Vescovini, “Contributo per la storia della fortuna
di Alhazen in Italia: II volgarizzamento del MS. Vat. 4595 e il Commentario terzo del Ghiberti,”
Rinascimento 5 (1965). See also G. Federici Vescovini, “Il problema delle fonti ottiche medievali
del Commentario terzo di Lorenzo Ghiberti,” in Lorenzo Ghiberti nel su tempo (Firenze: Istituto
nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1980), 349–87; Judith Veronica Field, Piero della Francesca: A
Mathematician’s Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 131–32; David C. Lind-
berg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Klepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 152.
43Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York and London: W. W. Norton,
1961), 17.
44Freud, Civilization, 17.Berzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 37
absurd.45 Indeed, we may agree: Peruzzi’s design is visually absurd, his juxtapo-
sition being created by sacrificing a space as it is experienced. Yet absurd here
need not be understood as ridiculous or inane, but in its etymological sense, from
the Latin absurdus, meaning “out of tune” since the non-perspectival sections of
Peruzzi’s space are dissonant and spatially divergent, in turn calling into ques-
tion the harmony of the stage as a whole.
Peruzzi’s Rome is not so much a depiction of Rome as a depiction of “a cer-
tain idea that comes to mind” about Rome, to extrapolate a phrase by his friend
and colleague Raphael.46 This movement away from the tangible Rome into a
conceptualization of the city raises the question of Peruzzi’s philosophical ideas,
some of which he might have shared with Raphael. Neo-Platonism, which was
an interest within Peruzzi’s circle, is here significant as it befits the aesthetics of
the drawing better than the chronologically problematic notion of Aristotelian
spatial unity. It is worth noting too the transitional status of Aristotle’s authority
at the time, which would move, later in the century, from that of a medieval scho-
lastic philosopher, whose authority could be questioned, to the mid-sixteenth-
century championing of his Poetics.47 Moreover, certain central concerns for
Aristotle, like the importance of order and size as essential factors of beauty, are
clearly at odds with Peruzzi’s design, hindering the possibility of an Aristotelian
interpretation of the drawing.48 Writing on the topic of Peruzzi’s knowledge of
Neo-Platonism, Manfredo Tafuri has argued that, though the artist may not have
been fully aware of the theoretical implications of the philosophical system, he
nevertheless absorbed a profound assumption of this philosophy, namely that
“the absolute does not rest within itself but is an active force that proceeds by
duplication.”49 Peruzzi’s design may be then interpreted not so much in terms of
urban ideality and unity of place, as it has been argued.50 Rather, it would present
a visual articulation of the technical and sublime conditions of possibility inher-
ent in the act of doubling. The Rome in the design is not a perfect idea of Rome or
a dream of Rome “abstracted from the hazards of time.”51 Instead, it articulates
time, both in its synchronic aesthetic, and in the presentation of Roman ruins.
Rome is thus neither complete nor idealized: it is an aestheticized double visual
encounter that operates sensorially with and for the spectators. In this encounter,
identity is immediately relinquished, and the act of presentation becomes also an
act of vanishing, as Rome is brought forward but instantly subverted. The act of
45Freud, Civilization, 17.
46“Di certa Iddea che mi viene nella mente.” John Sherman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources,
2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1:735, doc. 1522/16.
47 Weinberg, History of Literary Criticism, 350.
48Aristotle, Poetics, trans. George Whalley (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen’s Univer-
sity Press, 1997), 79.
49Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance, 129.
50Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca: Cor-
nell University Press, 1993), 23. See also Attolini, Teatro e spettacolo nel Rinascimento, 115.
51Hubert Damisch, Skyline (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 17.38 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
presentation is an act of distancing, and the Rome in the design exists in between
the real city and the space of the theatrical performance: it brings us beyond the
latter, but it never becomes a simulacrum of the former. This, in turn, calls atten-
tion to the act of viewing itself, and hinders the adoption of a spatial mode in
which the space of the stage exists beyond the space of the spectators, as “depth
perception is perception of the perceiver’s relation to the place that she or he is
in.”52 This does not mean that a failed illusion actually disrupts the space of the
viewers but, rather, that the successful presentation of an ersatz space calls atten-
tion to the theatrical nature of the viewer’s place. In this sense, the presentation
of Rome calls for an aesthetic mode of engagement in which spatial identity is
not indispensable.
Hence, in its act of replication, the drawing distorts its mimetic value and
stipulates its own artificiality; at the same time, the artifice is encountered as arti-
fice, and not as a deceiving device, since it retracts any potential deception. One
can imagine how much this subversion would have been palpable in the actual
performance through the juxtaposition of three-dimensional elements with the
flat painted backdrop—how much the flatness of the painted architecture would
have called into question the existence of volumetric elements. Peruzzi’s design
presents what is and what cannot be, therefore expressing the necessity of an
alternative viewpoint, in this case aesthetic.53 In this presentation, the particular
potentially mimetic reality of the different elements and monuments comes to be
negated in order to present Rome as a concept, destabilizing the immanent attes-
tation of perceptual experiences. In this process, the drawing takes away the pos-
sibility of topological orientation: the visual communication of Rome emerges
from an active disruption of the audience’s phenomenological experiences of the
city. Thus, the emphasis on linearity and perspective as a mode of orientation
comes to be juxtaposed to the impossibility of such orientation. Not only is Rome
presented as a work of artifice instead of a simulacrum, the possibility of orienta-
tion also becomes artificial, as orientation is possible only through the artificial-
ity of linear perspective instead of through the basic engagement with a lived city
space, in which arrangements, distance, and scale are crucial.54
A modern author has argued that stage setting “tends to define and contex-
tualize the dramatic action, reinforcing it visually and conferring upon it specific
meaning.”55 Yet it seems that the stage design in Peruzzi’s work does more than
contextualize and reinforce. Its visual approach is not one purely in the service of
52David Morris, The Sense of Space (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 28.
53For a philosophical analysis of alterity see Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). For alterity in relationship to space see Jacques Der-
rida, “Khora,” in On the Name (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 89–130.
54For an early modern analysis of the shortcoming and problems of linear perspective see
Leonardo, On Painting, ed. Martin Kemp (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989),
58– 68.
55Di Maria, Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance, 132.Berzal/ Conjuring the Concept of Rome 39
the play, but one that deserves to be understood as autonomous to an important
degree, as the set design can do something that the text cannot do. The autonomy
and independent function of the set vis-à-vis the text would become later pal-
pable in the work of the influential writer and theorist Giovanni Battista Giraldi
(1504–73), commonly known by his sobriquet Cinthio. His Discorso intorno al
comporre delle comedia e delle tragedie, written in 1543 and published in 1554,
sheds some light into the importance of the stage design of his plays, and presents
an important analysis of the aims of scenography, as it reflects his own experi-
ences as a playwright and a producer.56 Cinthio postulates that the stage fulfills
a double function by presenting a definite indication of the place of action and
by captivating its audience.57 Though Cinthio’s text is of later date than Peruz-
zi’s drawing, it is relevant here because of Cinthio’s capacity to articulate crucial
ideas about scenography in the sixteenth century.
Before dwelling on the importance of captivating the audience, it is worth
addressing Cinthio’s notion regarding the visual presentation of a place of action.
Though Peruzzi’s design reveals little interest in the visual presentation of Rome
as a virtual geographical or topographical location, it does convey an idea of the
city. It is a definite indication, to use Cinthio’s concept; indeed, it is the most defi-
nite, since no other place in the world could encompass those monuments pre-
sented therein. In other words, Peruzzi’s definite indication of a place, built from
an amalgam of famous Roman monuments, does not need to conform to any
particularized point of view, as the indication of place it offers is more authori-
tative and unmistakable than any actual view of Rome could be. It is perhaps
for this reason that Peruzzi’s drawing seems concerned with a notion of monu-
mentality that can only be accomplished by distilling the real Rome down to its
greatest monuments. Peruzzi’s is a self-expressed monumentality—an artificial
hyper-monumentality obtained by the excess of monuments. Peruzzi’s Rome
does not describe monuments: it presents monumentality as a surplus; a surplus
associated with Rome above all other cities.
This artistic device can be understood by considering these early modern
Italian theatrical spaces in terms of synecdoche.58 Much like “flesh and blood”
stands for “body,” or “lock, stock, and barrel” for “gun,” well-known architectural
56Peter Bondanella, “Giraldi Giraldi Cinthio, Giambattista,” in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of
World Drama (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), 1:314–5. See also Mary Morrison, The Tragedies of
G.-B. Giraldi Cinthio (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 12; Peggy Osborn, “G. B. Giraldi
Cinthio’s Dramatic Theory and Stage Practice: A Creative Interaction,” in Scenery, Set and Staging
in the Italian Renaissance (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), 39–58.
57Giraldi Cinthio, “Discorso intorno al comporre delle comedie e delle tragedie,” in Scritti
critici, ed. Camillo Guerrieri Crocetti (Milan: Marzorati, 1973), 219. See also Osborn, “G. B. Giraldi
Cinthio’s Dramatic Theory,” 42– 43; Burckhardt, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance, 271.
58I am here using the word synecdoche due to its being a widespread notion. In more concrete
terms, a single thing that is referred to by a conventional phrase that enumerates several of its parts
is called merism. Since merism is not a widely known word and it is a type of synecdoche, it seems
beneficial to accept the latter even at the cost of sacrificing a more concrete term.40 Sixteenth Century Journal XLV/1 (2014)
elements and monuments of the city are used in Peruzzi’s stage designs to signify
the city itself. Compare Peruzzi’s design (fig. 1) with Baldassare Lanci’s (1510–71)
set for Giovan Battista Cini’s La Vedova, a play performed in Florence in 1569.59
Lanci’s design (fig. 2), despite presenting what Martin Kemp has called a “drastic
realignment of Florentine topography,” seems to produce a naturalistic point of
view, something that Peruzzi has avoided.60 Though Lanci’s design would have
looked much less naturalistic in the stage, it is clear that his strategy correlates to
quantitative methods such as surveying, aiming at a naturalistic presentation of
a place. In contrast, Peruzzi’s visual tactics uproot the constructions from their
geographical context, altered in size, flattened and repositioned. Indeed, these are
not buildings anymore, and this lack of everyday functionality emphasizes their
artificiality. Whereas the linear perspective presents a space to live and move in
(and we must remember Peruzzi’s scenographic fame is due to its integration of
acting and setting in the staged “piazza”), the monumental Rome appears as an
image of constriction where there is no chance to move, where there is no breath-
ing space.61
It is likely that Vasari learned much from Peruzzi’s strategy as, in a letter to
Ottaviano de’ Medici, he describes the scenography that he had conceived for
the production of Talanta, a comedy by Pietro Arentino performed in Venice
in 1542. This description mentions the presence of the following assortment of
buildings on stage: the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Trajan Column, the Torre
della Milizie, the Arch of Septimus Severus, the Templum Pacis, Santa Maria della
Pace, Santa Maria Nuova, the Temple of Fortuna, Palazzo Maggiore, the Seven
Hills, and the Pasquino.62 To create a mental image of what this stage would have
looked like is, no doubt, an arduous task. It is impossible to know what Vasa-
ri’s stage looked like, but given the description and Vasari’s praise for Peruzzi’s
inventive architectural capacities, the drawing does offer us a visual referent.63 It
seems that both Peruzzi and Vasari were interested in bringing forth to the view-
ers not a street in Rome, but its cultural density—the overwhelming presence of
59For the historical context of this performance see Francesca Fiorani, The Marvel of Maps
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 136 and 301n62.
60Kemp, The Science of Art, 176. The verisimilude in the point of view has led the design to be
described as presenting “una fedele riproduzione della Piazza della Signoria di Firenze.” See Naz-
zareno Luigi Todarello, Le arti della scena (Novi Ligure: Latorre, 2006), 353. Cairns argues for a
polarized distinction between Lanci’s “picture” and Peruzzi’s “poem.” See “Theatre as Festival,”
110. Carlson has argued that Lanci’s design follows “the Peruzzian-Serlian manner.” See Places of
Performance, 24.
61On the issue of room and roominess as vital see John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York:
Perigree, 1980), 209. See also David Morris, The Sense of Space (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2004), 1.
62For a comparison between the buildings in Peruzzi and Vasari see Cairns, “Theatre as Fes-
tival,” 115–16.
63For another case in which Vasari looked at Peruzzi’s see Howe, “Architecture in Vasari’s
‘Massacre of the Huguenots,’” 261.You can also read
