Renaissance Studies Vol. 25 No. 2 DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2010.00675.

‘La zecca vecchia’: myth, archeology and

architectural design in the high Renaissance concept
of rustication

Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Rustication, or intentionally unhewn quadrangular masonry, whether

executed in live stone or imitated in cement, is an architectural motif of
classical origins that was used variously and systematically in Italy from the
thirteenth century, and that features in some of the most conspicuous Renais-
sance buildings. However, there was no classical or modern theoretical dis-
cussion of it until Sebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di’architettura (1537) and
this treatise presents researchers of Renaissance rustication with a peculiar
difficulty. Serlio’s publication divides the history of the use of this feature into
two unequal parts. The semantics of rustication after Serlio is easy enough to
trace, because in most of the cases it clearly has its source in his treatise.
Rustication in Renaissance Italy before Serlio is more complicated, because,
contrary to expectations, his concepts prove not to be really applicable there.
Most contemporary researchers who inquire into the actual form, meaning
and patronage of rusticated structures, whether private palaces or civic build-
ings, approach early modern rustication as an all’antica architectural style
whose intention was to express the Roman identity of a commune or the
princely status of the owner.1 Serlio’s discourse on rustication seems to

The first version of this paper was given as a lecture at the College Art Association Annual Conference in 2005.
I want to thank Luba Freedman for reading the article before publication and for her deep and useful
comments on it, and Frédérique Lemerle for presenting me with her publications on the French translation of
Diego de Sagredo’s architectural treatise.
1
The history of the question deserves a separate study; here only some important contributions are listed.
Howard Burns, ‘Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique: Some Problems’, in Classical Influences on European
Culture, conference proceedings, ed. Robert Ralph Bolgar, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 1:
273–4; Staale Sinding Larsen, ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Florentine and Roman Visual Context for Fifteenth-Century
Palaces’, Acta ad Archeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 6 (1975), 163–212, esp. 190–92; Andreas Tönnes-
man, ‘ “Palatium Nervae.” Ein antikes Vorbild für Florentiner Rustikafassaden’, Romisches Jahrbuh für Kunstge-
schichte 21 (1984), 61–70; Margaret Daly Davis, ‘ “Opus isodomum” at the Palazzo della Cancelleria: Vitruvian
Studies and Archeological and Antiquarian Interests at the Court of Raffaele Riario’, in Silvia Danesi Squarzina
(ed.), Roma, centro ideale della cultura dell’antico nei secoli VX e XVI. Da Martino V al Sacco di Roma 1417–1527 (Milan:
Electa, 1989), 442–57; Brenda Preyer, ‘L’architettura del palazzo Mediceo’, in Il Palazzo Medici Riccardi di Firenze
(Florence: Giunti, 1990), 62; Marvin Trachtenberg, ‘Scénographie urbaine et identité civique: réflexion sur la
Florence du Trecento’, Revue de l’art 99 (1993), 16; Amedeo Belluzzi, The Palazzo Tè in Mantua (Modena: Panini,
1998), 1: 89–90; Georgia Clarke, Roman House – Renaissance Palaces (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003),

© 2010 The Author

Journal compilation © 2010 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 249
obscure rather than to explain this meaning. Other ideas are usually
emphasized by scholars when Serlio’s approach to rustication is discussed.
Thus Ernst Gombrich highlighted Serlio’s discussion of Giulio Romano,
where he states that rustication used in conjunction with regular orders shows
a pleasant comparison between ‘the work of nature’ and ‘the work of human
skill’.2 James S. Ackerman showed that in Serlio’s theory of the orders, rusti-
cation is a secondary ornamental feature pertaining specifically to the Tuscan,
the first and most robust of the five regular orders of architecture he estab-
lished.3 However, the projections of these ideas onto the previous history of
rustication, in particular, the application of the ‘naturalist’ interpretation of
rustic work, based on Giulio Romano, to pre-Serlian architecture, has not
reached satisfying results.4
I propose that Serlio deliberately shifted the emphasis from the traditional
meaning of rustication to new approaches, which later became especially
popular due to his influence. However, I shall also show that we have lost part
of his meaning and that his discourse still contains elements of a traditional
understanding of rustication as bearing an association with venerable Roman
models and history. To achieve this I would like to take a different approach
towards the text. Instead of using it to clarify architectural practice, I suggest
that the text be read in light and in the context of architectural developments
of his time. Using Sansovino’s adoption of rustication on the Piazzetta, I will
show that the architect closest to Serlio at the time of writing the treatise, and
in the opinion of many influenced by Serlio, was referring to a renowned
Roman model not very differently from the way the architects of rusticated
civic buildings before him had followed. What makes Sansovino’s case espe-

187–94; Rikke Lyngsø Christensen, ‘Live Stones : On the Phenomenon of Rustication and Its Relations to the
all’antica Practice in Italian Architecture of the 16th century’, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, 31(2005),
77–104.
2
Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Books I–V of ‘Tutte l’ opere d’architettura et prospettiva’ by Sebastiano Serlio,
translated from the Italian with an Introduction and Commentary by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 1: 270. All subsequent references are to this edition of Serlio’s
book. Gombrich first advanced this idea in 1933 in his dissertation on Giulio Romano. For the latest revised
version of his interpretation see his ‘Architecture and Rhetoric in Giulio Romano’s Palazzo del Tè’, in idem, New
Light on Old Masters: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance IV (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986), 161–70. Gombrich’s
approach was developed by Manfredo Tafuri among others: ‘Il mito naturalistico nell’ architettura del’500’,
L’Arte 1 (1968), 6–36. See also Marcello Fagiolo (ed), Natura e artificio: l’ordine rustico, le fontane, gli automi nella
cultura del Manierismo europeo (Rome: Officina, 1979).
3
James S. Ackerman, ‘The Tuscan/Rustic Order: A Study in the Metaphorical Language of Architecture’,
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42 (1983), 15–34.
4
It either brings scholars to an anachronistic view of rustication as a precociously mannerist feature, or
prompts them to search for its intellectual background in the contemporary philosophy of nature. For a
‘mannerist’ interpretation of Bramante’s rustication, see Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante Architetto (Bari: Laterza.
1969), 958–9, 1045. For approaches to rusticated architecture preceding Giulio and Serlio in light of the
philosophy of nature, see Gianluca Belli, ‘Forma e naturalità nel bugnato fiorentino del Quattrocento’,
Quaderni del palazzo Tè, n.s. 4 (1996), 8–38; Charles Burroughs, The Italian Renaissance Palace Façade: Structures of
Authority, Surfaces of Sense (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 144–50. Whatever ideas of nature can be found
in contemporary philosophy, it has not been proved that the idea of imitating nature motivated an architect’s
choice of rustic decoration before Giulio.
250 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 1 Jacopo Sansovino, the Mint, Venice, begun 1536 (Alinari: with the permission of Ministero per i Beni
e le Attività Culturali)

cially relevant for the discussion of Serlio’s meaning is that the very same
structure that Sansovino used as a model, the most ancient part of the Basilica
of SS Cosmas and Damian on the Roman Forum, dominates Serlio’s discourse
on rustication in the Regole. He discusses this building twice in his text as a
monument of great antiquity and of technical perfection, and refers to it in
five illustrations. The historical, political and cultural connotations of this
model, which led to Sansovino’s interest in it, find a strong echo in Serlio’s
text. This is not surprising since, as I will show, these two projects, the building
and the treatise, were simultaneously developed and mutually interrelated
enterprises that had their common roots in the culture of the High Renais-
sance. The attempt to discover these roots and their lost meaning is the
purpose of my paper.

***
Sansovino’s Zecca, or Mint, begun in 1536 on the Piazzetta in Venice (Fig. 1),5
became the starting point for the rebuilding of the urban centre of the city as
a part of renovatio urbis. In the course of construction Sansovino made the
Zecca’s presence on the site more and more prominent. In 1539 he incorpo-
rated the shops between the building and the lagoon into the building and

5
This is the date of approval of Sansovino’s model for the building by the Council of Ten. See Vincenzo
Lazari, Scrittura di Jacopo Sansovino e parti del Consiglio de’ Dieci reguardanti la rifabbrica della Zecca di Venezia (Venice,
1851), 8–9.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 251
thus brought its variously rusticated façade to the fore, making it fully visible
from the water, and in 1554–56 he added the rustic portal facing the Palazzo
Ducale.6 Later on, the emphasis on rustic style thus achieved was doubled by
building of the Prigioni (the prisons, begun in 1589) on the other side of the
Palazzo.7 Seen from the lagoon (which was the main route for visitors to
Venice), the rusticated Zecca and Prigioni became an important element of
the official façade of the Venetian Republic.
Sansovino’s work on the Zecca has already been reconstructed in detail.8
The question that interests me is why the Piazzetta’s renovatio was conceived
from the start in terms of a stylistic opposition between the rustic ruggedness
of the Mint and the smooth elegance of the Libreria and Loggetta. The
explanation given by John Onians avoids dealing with this dualism, noting
that all the new buildings conceived by Sansovino are ‘strikingly different’,
and that this difference was to demonstrate the concept of architecture as a
system of regular orders. In this, according to Onians and to the Sansovino
scholars who follow him, the architect was influenced by Serlio, who published
the Regole in Venice at the same time that Sansovino was working on the
renovation of the Piazzetta area.9 In particular, according to Serlio’s newly
elaborated rules of decorum, the first order in his series of five, the Tuscan, to
which, as he stated, rustication was a regular ornament, was appropriate to
functional and military structures including treasuries.10 The Zecca that served
as mint and state deposit presents the combination of rustication on the
ground floor with a rusticated Doric order in the first floor. The parallelism
between the design of the Zecca and Serlio’s Regole is thus virtually palpable.
If the idea of hierarchical relations between Serlio’s theory and Sansovino’s
practice were the natural or the only possible conclusion of this observation,
no further explanation to the Zecca’s style would be required. I think,
however, that most scholars’ a priori assumption that Serlio’s set of rules was
the dominant factor in Sansovino’s choice for rustication is influenced by the
role given to architectural treatises in later epochs. To deprive Sansovino of
his artistic independence, as this theory does, the transfer of ideas from Serlio
to him must be firmly supported. This is not the case here, however. While

6
On the 1539 changes, see Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), 41. See also idem, ‘Alla ricerca del Sansovino architetto’,
in Guido Beltramini et al. (eds.), Studi in onore di Renato Cevese (Vicenza: Centro Internazionale di Studi di
Architettura Andrea Palladio, 2000), 320. On the portal, see Eugene J. Johnson, ‘Portal of Empire and Wealth:
Jacopo Sansovino’s Entrance to the Venetian Mint’, The Art Bulletin 86 (2004), 430–58.
7
Antonio da Ponte and Zamaria de’ Piombi collaborated on this building. See Umberto Franzoi, The Prisons
of the Venetian Republic (Venice: Stamperia di Venezia, 1966), 43–5, docs. 38, 39, 40.
8
Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, 38–46; Manuela Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino (Milano: Electa, 2000), 182–91;
Johnson, ‘Portal of Empire’.
9
John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Princ-
eton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 287–94. Cf. Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, 189; Howard, ‘Alla ricerca’,
318.
10
Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, 1: 254.
252 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
accepting Onians’ brilliant analysis of the Piazzetta, the question of Sansovi-
no’s indebtedness to Serlio must be reformulated in the light of the new data.
Onians bases his conclusions on sixteenth-century reactions to Sansovino’s
work, such as Aretino’s letter to him (1537), and the descriptions of Venice by
Sansovino’s son, Francesco (1556, 1581). Both of them, Onians stresses, knew
the architect well and must have been transcribing his ideas when they
remarked on the varied use of orders on the Piazzetta in terms very close to
Serlio’s. However, Aretino’s letter cannot prove Sansovino’s dependence on
Serlio and has to be discarded as a source for Sansovino’s theory because of
Aretino’s evident connection to Serlio himself. Aretino was involved in the
production of Serlio’s book, as Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa has shown, being Serlio’s
literary advisor and possibly the manuscript’s editor.11 The very reason Aretino
wrote to Sansovino while preparing his letters for publication may have been
to show to the public that Serlio’s theory was helpful in the analysis of
architecture, and to promote it. As for Francesco Sansovino’s discourses on
the Piazzetta, they are evidently a variation on Aretino’s approach in his letter.
But the greatest obstacle to the assumption that the rustication of the Zecca
is the result of Sansovino’s implementation of Serlio’s theory is the fact that
Sansovino planned the Zecca in 1535 and that the model of the building was
approved by the Council of Ten already in March 1536, that is, more than a
year before Serlio’s book was published. Onians avoids this problem by sur-
mising that Serlio’s book circulated in manuscript before printing and Sanso-
vino could have read it.12 Yet whether Serlio’s treatise was written well before
publication and to what extent and in what parts his theory was formulated
before 1535 poses another problem. Hubertus Günther suggests that the
treatise was written in the period directly preceding the publication, thus
contradicting the theory that it was thought out years earlier. Recent findings
confirm that Serlio prepared the book within a year, that is, when Sansovino’s
building was already planned.13

11
Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, ‘Le Traité d’architecture de Sebastiano Serlio, l’oeuvre d’une vie’, in Sylvie Deswarte-
Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie (Lyon: Mémoire active, 2004), 1: 45–6.
12
Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 290. Other scholars take for granted that this model gave only a rough idea of
the future building and did not concern the artistic solution: Manfredo Tafuri, Jacopo Sansovino e l’architettura
del’500 a Venezia (Padua: Marsilio, 1972), 72; Howard, ‘Alla ricerca’, 320. In my view, the final paragraph of the
text written by Sansovino to the Council of Ten contains the indication that the building’s decoration was
thought out by the architect. Such a memorandum was not however, the proper place for a detailed discussion
of artistic questions. See Lazzari, Scrittura di Jacopo Sansovino, 15.
13
Deborah Howard suggested that already in 1528 the ideas of Serlio’s treatise were fairly complete, as
indicated by the engravings of that year and by Serlio’s request for copyright privileges, see her ‘Sebastiano
Serlio’s Venetian Copyrights’, The Burlington Magazine 115 (1973), 515 and ‘Prolégomènes. Les neuf gravures
des ordres d’architecture à Venise en 1528’, in Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon, 1: 74. Günther has interpreted the same
engravings differently: Hubertus Günther’, Serlio e gli ordini architettonici’, in Christof Thoenes (ed.), Sebas-
tiano Serlio (Milan: Electa, 1989), 163. Earlier he highlighted Philandrier’s remark on Serlio’s ‘precipitous’
preparation of his work: Hubertus Günther, ‘Studien zum Venezianischen Aufenthalt des Sebastiano Serlio’,
Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 32 (1981), 43, note 27. Moreover, he has established the influence of
Sagredo’s first French edition on the general layout and particular details of the Regole generali: Günther, ‘Gli
ordini architettonici: rinascità o invenzione? Parte seconda’, in Marcello Fagiolo (ed.), Roma e l’antico nell’arte e
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 253
It is thus plausible that Sansovino conceived of rustication as a motif appro-
priate for the treasury design independently from Serlio. In fact, the very
conjecture that Sansovino had previous knowledge of Serlio’s theory is redun-
dant, because he was not really in need of his theoretical guidance. Sansovino’s
case was different from that of those students, amateurs of architecture and
foreigners avid for information on classical Rome, whom Serlio did indeed
influence in Venice through his then unpublished collection of drawings, as
proved by recent research.14 Sansovino himself had worked as an architect in
Rome, where he first came already in 1506 as a protégé of Giuliano da Sangallo,
where he formed his architectural ideas and was involved in important com-
missions. The discrimination between different orders of architecture and the
business of defining them was the subject of a vivid exchange among architects
in the milieu to which he belonged in Rome.15 It is not surprising, then, that
anticipations of Serlio’s concepts should be found in the work of both Sanso-
vino and Michele Sanmicheli, architects, who shared a formative Roman
background, because they were all part of a larger tradition.16
Concerning the specific choice of rustication, I propose that substantial
thought led to it, aside from the rigorous use of orders. Sansovino conceived
the Zecca as a treasury all’antica, and rustication was the stylistic feature of the
building that he thought was the classical model appropriate for such an
enterprise. The coincidence of this choice with the rules formulated by Serlio
later, and the crucial role the same classical structure plays in both projects,
raises the possibility of a process of cooperation and mutual fertilization
between the two men, during which both the design of the buildings on the
Piazzetta and the concepts of Serlio’s Regole grew simultaneously.17 In these
circumstances, an in-depth analysis of the Zecca and an investigation of the
choice of the classical model for its design becomes the best possible foil for
what Serlio wrote on rustication in the treatise.
As the basis for such an examination one must refer first to the political
meaning of the Piazza San Marco, of which the Piazzetta was a part. This
official and ceremonial space in the city was shaped already in the Middle

nella cultura del Cinquecento (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1985), 275. This undated treatise was
published in 1536, as Frédérique Lemerle has recently proved, see ‘La version Française des Medidas del
Romano’, in Diego de Sagredo, Medidas del Romano, ed. Fernando Marìas and Felipe Pereda (Toledo: Antonio
Pareja, 2000), 93. This can be accepted as the terminus post quem for Serlio’s work on the Regole.
14
On the circulation of Serlio’s drawings, see Marco Rosci, Il trattato di architettura di Sebastiano Serlio (Milan:
I.T.E.C., 1966), 14–15; Günther, ‘Studien zum Venezianischen Aufenthalt’, and Maria Teresa Sambin de
Norcen, ‘Studio dell’antico e insegnamento d’architettura nella Venezia del primo Cinquecento’, Saggi e
memorie di storia dell’arte 21 (1997/1998), 9–32.
15
Günther ‘Serlio e gli ordini architettonici’.
16
Cf. Paul Davies and David Hemsoll, ‘Sanmicheli’s Architecture and Literary Theory’, in Georgia Clarke
and Paul Crossley (eds.), Architecture and Language: Constructing Identity in European Architecture (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 114.
17
Sabine Frommel suggested the same possibility concerning the similarity between the façade of the
Libreria and Serlio’s design of the Doric façade included in the Regole: Sebastiano Serlio Architect (Milan: Electa
Architecture, 2003), 67. See also Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, 453–4.
254 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
Ages, modelled on an Imperial forum to give expression to Venice’s pre-
tensions to political dominance.18 Sansovino’s contribution carried on the
association of the city centre with an ancient Roman forum, using new stylistic
means and concepts borrowed from Vitruvius, Pliny and their Renaissance
interpreters.19 In particular, in deciding to fashion the new Zecca, previously
a simple functional structure, as a magnificent building all’antica, and to
integrate it into the ensemble of the Piazzetta, he was evidently following
Vitruvius’ injunction: ‘the treasury, the jail and the senate house should be
adjoined to the forum.’20 This is precisely what one now sees when approach-
ing Venice from the lagoon, an effect that must have been calculated, espe-
cially since neither mint nor prison were ever visible as an integral part of this
view prior to the renovation.21 I would even go so far as to suggest that from
the start Sansovino conceived of a prison façade as an independent building
and as a counterweight to the Zecca.22
The conspicuous position of the treasury and the prison in the new
ensemble thus clearly refers to a ‘forum of the (Venetian) Republic’.
However, in contrast to the original concept of Piazza San Marco as the heir
of the imperial fora, now an analogy was forged with an earlier concept of the
forum and with the historical Roman Forum. This renewed identity is sup-
ported by Daniele Barbaro’s commentary on Vitruvius. In response to the
latter’s prescriptions to include a treasury, a prison and a senate house,
Barbaro describes these buildings as they existed on the Roman Forum – the
Aerarium (treasury), the Carcer Tullianum (prison) and the Curia (senate
house). Then he draws the parallel with the buildings on the Piazzetta in
Venice: the Zecca, the cells of the Palazzo Ducale and the Palazzo itself.23
Considering this historical analogy from an architectural point of view, it is
evident that the Roman Forum alone could indeed have provided the model

18
Juergen Schulz, ‘Urbanism in Medieval Venice’, in A. Molho, K. Raaflaub and J. Emlen (eds.), City-States
in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 438. On the myth of
Venice as a second Rome, see Barbara Marx, ‘Venedig – Altera Roma: Transformationen eines Mythos’, in
Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 60 (1980), 324–73.
19
See Thomas Hirthe, ‘Il ‘Foro all’antica’ di Venezia. La trasformazione di Piazza San Marco nel Cinque-
cento’, Centro tedesco di studi veneziani. Quaderni 35 (1986); Sarah Blake McHam, ‘The Role of Pliny’s Natural
History in the Sixteenth-Century Redecoration of the Piazza San Marco, Venice’, in Luba Freedman and
Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich (eds.), Wege zum Mythos (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2001), 89–105.
20
Vitruvius, De architectura, 5. 2.
21
The former mint was hidden by a row of shops facing the Molo, while the convicts were held in the cells
of the Doges’ palace.
22
From the 1520s awareness grew that convicts were held under appalling conditions, both in the cells in the
Palazzo Ducale and in the rooms used as cells in the building purchased by the Republic near where the Prigioni
were later built. See Giovanni Scarabello, Carcerati e carcere a Venezia nell’età moderna (Rome: Istituto
dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1979), 64; Franzoi, The Prisons, 29. Thus Sansovino would certainly have been aware
of the pressing need for a new prison already at the time the Zecca was planned. Antonio da Ponte, the architect
of the façade of the Prigioni, collaborated with Sansovino in the 1560s, carrying out his plans for the building
of the Incurabili and installing the giants. This connection may explain the conceptual continuity between the
two buildings whose construction is divided by decades.
23
I Dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio tradotti e commentati da Daniele Barbaro (Venice: Franceschi &
Chrieger, 1567), 220–22.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 255
for the stylistic variety and even contrast seen in the Piazzetta, because, unlike
imperial fora ensembles, the structures of the Roman Forum were built over
centuries, in separate initiatives and in different historical periods. Painters of
the first half of the sixteenth century who visualized the forum commonly
depicted buildings using a variety of orders, including the rustic. Rustic struc-
tures contrast with other buildings by their sturdiness, despite their occasion-
ally ruined state.24 This conveys the opposition between the meaning of
‘smooth’ and ‘rustic’ in historical terms: rustication indicates greater antiq-
uity. The question is now whether the Carcer and the Aerarium on the Roman
Forum, the classical models for the two rusticated buildings on the Piazzetta,
were similar in style, suggesting rustication in some manner, and whether they
were held as distinct from other buildings by their greater antiquity.
Both questions can be answered positively by reconstructing the idea of
these buildings that an erudite Renaissance viewer would possess. Fifteenth-
and early sixteenth-century scholars had no doubt as to the very ancient
origins of these institutions and of the buildings themselves, in the early
Republic or even before. The Carcer Tullianum, according to a well-known
passage from Livy, was built by the king Ancus Martius, and most of Renais-
sance scholars identified it with the Mamertinum, the prison still extant at the
foot of the Capitol.25 This building is constructed of blocks of square stone,
whose surface is roughly hewn (although not protruding as an intentionally
rusticated surface would do). It dates to the third century BC, being indeed
one of the most ancient on the Forum (Fig. 2).26 Classical writers described
the Tullianum as a grave, somber, terrifying structure, citing vaults and arches
of stone, the mere sight of which was enough to deter Romans from commit-
ting crimes. The awe-inspiring impression that the Tullianum conveyed thus
played a civic role in antiquity, and this effect of its appearance was well known
in the Renaissance.27
To identify the Aerarium, the prototype of Sansovino’s Zecca, was a more
complicated task for Renaissance scholars. The Aerarium was another name

24
A rustic structure is present in the ensemble of the Forum in Beccafumi’s painting The Story of Papirius
(1519–21, National Gallery, London) as well as in his fresco The Reconciliation of Marcus Emilius Lepidus and
Fulvius Flaccus, in the Sala del Consistorro in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (1529–35). The backgrounds of
Raphael’s The Fire in the Borgo (1514–17) and of Peruzzi’s Presentation of the Virgin to the Temple (1524–5) both of
which in the opinion of scholars are influenced by the Roman Forum, include conspicuous rustic structures. In
The Story of Papirius, as well as in Raphael’s St Paul Preaching in Athens (1517), also inspired by the idea of the
Forum, the rustic structures are ruined, and even more so in Raimondi’s engraving of Raphael’s painting.
25
Livy, 1. 33. See Francesco Albertini, Opusculum de mirabilibus novae et veteris Urbis Romae (Rome: Iacobus
Mazochius, 1510), Bk. 2, n. p.; Andreas Fulvius, Antiquaria Urbis (Rome: Mazochi, 1513), fol. 57; idem, Antiqui-
tates Urbis (s.l., s.a. [Rome, 1527]), Bk. 4, fol. 83v.
26
On the building of the Carcer Tullianum (Mamertinum), see Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae, ed. Eva
Margareta Steinby (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1993–2000), 1: 236–239; Giuseppe Lugli, La tecnica edilizia romana
(Rome: Bardi 1958), 302.
27
Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline, 55; Calpurnius Flaccus, Declamations, 4; Livy, 1. 33. These terrifying
descriptions are used in full in the fourteenth-century Polistoria by Giovanni Cavallini (Ioannes Caballinus,
Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum, ed. Marc Loreys. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1995, 147–8); in the
sixteenth century it was Andrea Fulvio who quoted them: Fulvius, Antiquitates, Bk. 4, fol. 83v-84r).
256 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 2 Carcer Tullianum (Mamertinum), the interior, Rome, third century BC (photo: author)

for the Temple of Saturn, the first temple built on the Forum, where the
Romans placed their treasure still in early republican times.28 Consequentially,
no fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century scholar identified the temple of Saturn
in its actual remains as originating in the time of the emperor Diocletian.29
Flavio Biondo, who exalted the Aerarium’s civic functions in the Roman
Republic, stressing that it was a guarantee (nervus) of Roman freedom, erro-
neously found that it was on the Tarpeia.30 In this case his erudition led him
astray while the tradition, as expressed by the earliest version of the Mirabilia,
located the Aerarium correctly on the Forum.31 Another, mainly oral tradition
that refers to the correct place of the Aerarium is reflected in early fifteenth-
century sources. From them we know that the popular name of the area on the
Forum ‘to the side of the church of St Hadrian’ was la zecca vecchia or cecca
antiqua. Anonimo Magliabecchiano, author of the early fifteenth-century Trac-
tatus de rebus antiquis et situ urbis Romae, quotes this name in Italian in his Latin
text, with the comment dicitur and the authors of the official fifteenth-century
documents use this expression in the same way.32 The meaning of this

28
Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 10; Varro, On the Latin Language, 5. 183; Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1. 8. 3. For the
Temple of Saturn on the Forum, see Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae, 4: 234–7.
29
It is referred to it as aedes Concordiae: Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città
di Roma (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1946), 4: 235. A remark by Suetonius, that the temple of Saturn was
rebuilt in 42 AD, went unnoticed (Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 29. 4–5).
30
Blondi Flavii, Romae instauratae libri III (Verona: B. De Boninis, 1481), lib. 2, lxxxii, fol. 24r.
31
Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe Zucchetti, Codice topografico, 2: 55.
32
‘Sub Capitolio, a latere Sancti (H)adriani, fuit templum Asili, vel exilium primum factum in Urbe per
Romulum, ubi nunc dicitur est la Zecca vecchia.’ Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico, 4: 139. In 1431 a
builder, Filippo di Giovanni di Pisa, received a license to take ‘quaecumque marmora de muris antiquis
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 257
tradition is complex. On the one hand, during the Renaissance the expression
la zecca vecchia was applied to all former locations of the papal mint. This has
led modern scholars to suggest that this term in fifteenth-century sources
indicates the place of the first mint of Martin V, which, according to Nicolò
Signorilli, was near the arch of Septimius Severus.33 On the other hand, it is
plausible that the very choice of location for the mint after Avignon, precisely
on the Forum, was not coincidental but referred to the Aerarium’s presumed
presence there, as mentioned in the Mirabilia. The ancient Aerarium and the
modern mint could have been conflated into one concept that gave its name
to the entire area.
The first specific indication of the Aerarium’s location in this part of the
Forum is again in the Tractatus de rebus antiquis by Anonimo Magliabecchiano.
He states that the aeraium was situated in what became the Basilica of SS
Cosmas and Damian – a massive ancient structure built under Vespasian and
transformed into a church in the sixth century.34 In another important
fifteenth-century source on the topography of Roman monuments, Giovanni
Rucellai’s ‘Descrizione delle bellezze e antichità di Roma’, la zecha anticha di
Roma che dimostra essere stata bella muraglia is included in the list of ancient
Roman edifices, implying that Rucellai identified the tradition of la cecca
vecchia or antiqua with the Aerarium.35 Moreover, for him it was not an area, but
a specific architectural structure, while his description of it as bella muraglia fits
the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian. Over the centuries this classical edifice
built, like the Carcer Tullianum, of massive square blocks and rusticated in
large part, aroused curiosity precisely because of its stonework (Figs. 3 and 4).
It impressed Renaissance viewers by its awesome appearance in the very same
way as the Carcer impressed classical writers. ‘Horribil molto grosso dun gran
masso’, wrote the author of the Antiquarie prospettiche romane.36 Whether it was
the ‘horrid’ square stone technique that misled him and other erudite viewers
to believe that this Flavian structure was the republican treasury will be dis-

existentibus in loco ubi fuit Secca antiqua’. Quoted after R. Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di Roma e notizie intorno le
collezioni romane di antichità (Rome: Quasar, 1989), 1: 57.
33
Pietro Romano, Roma nelle sue strade e nelle sue piazze (Rome: Palombi, 1947–49), 473.
34
‘. . . iuxta templum Faustinae et divi Antonini quod Sanctus Laurentius in Miramento vocatur, est adhuc
ecclesia Sancti Cosmae et Damiani, quae fuit aerarium imperatoris.’ Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico,
4: 144. This structure is what remains of the Templum (Forum) Pacis built in 71 AD. See James C. Anderson,
The Historical Topography of the Imperial Fora (Brussels: Latomus, 1984), 110–11. The rotunda facing the Forum
is a later addition from the fourth century AD. For an archeological review of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and
Damian, see Philip Barrows Whitehead, ‘The Church of SS Cosmas and Damiano in Rome’, in American Journal
of Archeology 31 (1927), 1–18; and F. Castagnoli and L. Cozza, ‘L’angolo meridionale del foro della Pace’,
Bolletino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma 75 (1953–55), 121–42.
35
Giovanni Rucellai e il suo zibaldone, Vol. 1: ‘Il Zibaldone quaresimale’, ed. Alessandro Perosa (London:
Warburg Institute, 1960), 76.
36
‘Et ecci vn templo chiamatol herario/ doue tenea romani lor thesoro/ altro che de Alexandro/ serxe o
dario/ assai de questi piu un roma ne fuora/ ma questo cie chal popul fu piu grato/ sempre dargento pieno
e di fino oro/ Et ecci vn templo a medici sacrato/ horribil molto grosso dun gran masso/ che cosmo e damiano
elle chiamato.’ Antiquarie prospettiche romane, fol. 3v. Whether the author sees the erario and the basilica as one
and the same building is not absolutely clear, but in my view their joint description is not coincidental.
258 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 3 The south wall of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian (formerly the south-western corner of
Vespasian’s Forum Pacis, 71 AD), Rome (photo: Alexei Lidov)

Fig. 4 The stonework inside the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian (formerly the south-western corner of
Vespasian’s Forum Pacis, 71 AD), Rome (photo: author)
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 259

Fig. 5 Bramante, Palazzo Caprini, Rome, print by Antonio Lafreri, from Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae,
1559–1602 (photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome)

cussed later. The main point is that Sansovino’s Zecca, employing rustication
and standing on the rustic arches with pentagonal voussoirs, both distinctive
features of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian, evidently refers to the
Aerarium that this building was presumed traditionally to be.
Sansovino’s following of the tradition that located the Aerarium in the
basilica shows his independence from Serlio who abstained from accepting
this identification in full. When referring to this structure in the Regole, he
indicates only its location ‘in Roma a Santo Cosmo, et Damiano’, and its great
antiquity, but not its function.37 This difference of opinion has its roots in the
Roman milieu itself. Among architects in Bramante’s circle and in that of the
Sangallo family, the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian was firmly identified as
the Roman treasury. One conspicuous example of this is folio 16r of the
Codex Coner on which the plan of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian is
identified with the inscription erarium romanum.38 Most learned antiquarians
during the same period, on the other hand, were inclined to identify the
structure otherwise, disregarding the popular tradition of la zecca antica.39

37
Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, 1: 264 and 276.
38
See also Antonio da Sangallo’s drawing identifying the structure as la zecha anticha (which is discussed
below at length) and Giovan Battista da Sangallo’s marginalia in his copy of Vitruvius, where an idea of the
Aerarium is illustrated with the plan of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian: Incun. Cors. 50. F.1, fol. 54r: Pier
Nicola Pagliara, ‘Studi e pratica vitruviana di Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane’, in Jean Guillaume (ed.), Les
Traités d’architecture de la Renaissance. Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 1 au 11 juillet 1981 (Paris: Picard, 1988),
183. Vasari, describing the structure as an outstanding example of Roman stonework and rustication, refers to
the building as ‘l’Erario da San Cosmo e Damiano’: Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori,
ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Sansoni, 1906), 1: 122.
39
Along with the Aerarium in the fifteenth century this building was identified as templum Romuli: Poggio
Bracciolini, ‘De varietate fortunae’, in Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico, 4: 234; cf. Blondi Flavii Romae
instauratae, Bk. 2, lxvi, fol. 18v; Fulvius, Antiquitates Urbis, Bk. 5, fol. 84v. Later, in the course of the sixteenth
260 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
Whatever their opinion, the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian began influ-
encing architectural practice first in connection with its presumed function as
Aerarium. Bramante, possibly the author of the Antiquarie prospettiche romane,40
introduced it into the repertoire of classical architectural models by copying
the ‘horrid mass’ of its rusticated quoin arches in the design of the ground
floor of Palazzo Caprini, making them even more massive than in the original
(Fig. 5). It is his patron’s occupation that allows us to believe that his design
was conceived in light of the ancient structure’s identification as the treasury
of the Romans: Aurelio Caprini, the owner of the palace, was an accountant at
the papal court, that is, a person directly related to the papal treasury.41
Moreover, the use of the same architectural means, evoking the zecha anticha,
or erario to indicate the eminent position of one involved in papal finance,
already had a conspicuous precedent in Rome, in the façade of the palace of
the supervisor of the papal Zecca under Paul II, known as Pietro della Zecca.
This is one of the few examples of painted façade decoration that has survived
in Rome since the late fifteenth century. Its upper level was painted with
illusionistic architecture consisting of the same Aerarium motif that Bramante
chose for the ground floor – rusticated blocks and arches with pentagonal
voussoirs (Fig. 6).42 Given this precedent, Bramante was, however, the first to
employ this motif in a monumental architectural structure. It is usually seen as
the archetype of a new scheme for a monumental private palace, but consid-
ering the reference to the Aerarium, it is also the beginning of the emergence
of the concept of the zecca (mint or treasury building) all’antica.
A much-discussed drawing by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1507/8,
UA 992, Fig. 7) indicates that it was indeed Bramante who influenced the

century, the building was identified variously as the temple of Romulus and Remus, of Castor and Pollux, of
Templum Sacrae Urbis, etc. Pirro Ligorio devoted a special investigation to the structure as an antiquarian, and
recorded the results of his surveys in a number of manuscripts, but his activities in any case postdate Sansovino’s
work on the Zecca. On Pirro Ligorio’s research, see Licia Luschi, ‘Gli antichi edifici della basilica dei SS.Cosma
e Damiano: osservazioni sui disegni ligoriani’, in Raffaella Farioli Campanati (ed.), Seminario internazionale di
studi sul tema: ricerche di archeologia e topografia (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole 1998), 429–52. On the various
identifications of the building, see Whitehead, ‘The Church of SS Cosmas and Damiano in Rome’ and Gabriella
Flaccomio, ‘Storia degli studi’, in Il ‘Tempio di Romolo’ al Foro Romano (Quaderni dell’Istituto di Storia
dell’Architettura), 7–16.
40
For the most recent discussion of the authorship of the poem, see Massimo Giontella and Riccardo Fubini,
‘Ancora sulle “Antiquarie prospettiche romane”: nuovi elementi per l’attribuzione a Bramante’, Archivio storico
italiano 164 (2006), 513–18; Maurizio Calvesi, ‘Il Mito di Roma e le “Antiquarie Prospettiche” ’, Storia dell’arte
13/14(2006), 55–76.
41
Christoph Luitpold Frommel, who was the first to publish the information on the Caprini family, translates
Aurelio’s job description, ‘sedis apostolicae acolytus numerarius’ as ‘päpstliche Messner’, Der Römische Palastbau
der Hochrenaissance (Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1973), 2: 84. Burroughs surmised that Aurelio directed the papal mint
(The Italian Renaissance Palace Façade, 144–6), although he does not indicate sources different from those that
Frommel used.
42
See the entry on this façade in Maria Errico, Stella Sandra Finozzi and Irene Giglio, ‘Ricognizione e
schedatura delle facciate affrescate e graffite a Roma nei secoli XV e XVI’, Bolletino d’arte 33–34 (1985), 92–4.
Painted façade decoration in Rome often gestured towards the name of its owner: see Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Polidoro da Caravaggio. Opera completa (Naples: Electa, 2001), 122; cf. Burroughs, The Italian Renaissance
Palace Façade, 144–6.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 261

Fig. 6 The painting on the facade of the house of Pietro Paolo Franciscis (called della Zecca), Rome, late
fifteenth century. (photo: author)

Fig. 7 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. ‘la zecha anticha a santo cosimo e damiano’ (the north, destroyed
wall of the basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian in Rome), Florence, Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe. U 992 A
r. (with the permission of Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit à Culturali)

choice of the putative Aerarium as a model for the design of the first Renais-
sance mint all’antica. This sketch represents the northern wall of this structure
and is inscribed: la zecha anticha a san chosimo e damiano.43 According to

43
This wall was destroyed under Urban VIII, hampering the identification of the structure represented in the
drawing. On the changes made to the old building, see Emilia Talamo, ‘Dati di archivio relative a scavi e
restauri’, in Il ‘Tempio di Romolo’ al Foro Romano 26 (1980), 17–22. The drawing has been variously interpreted.
262 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
Günther, this drawing, from 1507–8, indicates precisely Antonio’s exposure to
Bramante’s drawing methods,44 and like other examples that Günther gives, it
may be a direct copy of a drawing by Bramante. This is especially plausible
since, according to Micaela Antonucci, the systematization of the papal
Zecca in a new building in Banchi led by Bramante could have begun in
this period.45 A study of the presumed Aerarium could have circulated in
Bramante’s circle in connection with this plan. When years later Antonio
designed the monumental façade of this building (1525, Fig. 8), he evidently
used his early study of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian for the design of
the ground floor while referring to its concave entrance in the configuration
of his plan.46
Both the Palazzo Caprini (bought by Raphael in 1517) and Antonio da
Sangallo’s façade of the Roman Zecca were unquestionably familiar to
Sansovino. The latter, in addition, was situated just across the piazza from the
building site of Sansovino’s Palazzo Gaddi, which was under construction at
the same time. The pseudoisodomic design of Antonio da Sangallo’s rustica-
tion is repeated in Sansovino’s design of the Zecca’s piers. The connection
between Bramante’s pioneering interest in the Basilica of SS Cosmas and
Damian as Aerarium and Sansovino’s Zecca can thus be clearly drawn.
However, two other projects carried out at the very same period and in the
very same area of Rome where the Zecca and the Palazzo Gaddi stood must be
cited here. While providing further precedents for Sansovino’s building, they
throw light on another aspect of its meaning as well as on Serlio’s concept of
rustication. They are Baldassare Peruzzi’s painting, Presentation of the Virgin at
the Temple (1524–5, Fig. 9) in the tribune of Santa Maria della Pace,47 and the
painted decoration of the façade of Palazzo Gaddi in via della Maschera d’Oro

Michele Monaco says it represents a palace where the papal Zecca was situated in the mid-fifteenth century, next
to Palazzo Sforza-Cesarini, in front of which was a small church of SS Cosmas and Damian: La Zecca Vecchia in
Banchi, ora detta Palazzo del Banco di Santo Spirito (Rome: Officina Poligrafica Laziale, 1962), 42–5. Frommel reads
the inscription as an indication that the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian was the place of the first papal Zecca
on the Forum: Der Römische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance, 2: 35. Micaela Antonucci in ‘Le sedi della Zecca di
Roma dall’antichità ad oggi’, Rivista italiana di numismatica e scienze affini 104 (2003), 125, accepts Monaco’s
argument, but in her subsequent publication, ‘Un’opera di Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane tra architettura e
città: la facciata della Zecca in Banchi a Roma’, Römische historische Mitteilungen 46 (2004), 232–3, she supports
that the building depicted is the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian.
44
Hubertus Günther, ‘Introduction. The Drawings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger: History, Evolution,
Method, Function’, in Christoph L. Frommel and Nicholas Adams (eds.), The Architectural Drawings of Antonio
da Sangallo the Younger and His Circle (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1994), 1: 22. However, the inscription, a near quote
of Rucellai’s zibaldone, indicates the influence of his uncle, who quoted the same source in his Libro (Cod. Barb.
Lat. 4424), fol. 2r, representing the Forum Augustum.
45
Antonucci, ‘Le sedi della Zecca di Roma’, 130.
46
On the history of this building, see Antonucci, ‘Un’opera di Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane’: 201–44. The
influence of the entrance of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian was noted by Pagliara, ‘Studi e pratica
vitruviana’, 199.
47
On this painting, see Christoph Luitpold Frommel, ‘Baldassare Peruzzi als Maler und Zeichner’, Römisches
Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 11 (1967/1968: Beiheft), 125–9; Cynthia J. Stollhans, Baldassare Peruzzi and His
Patrons: Religious Paintings in Rome 1503–1527, PhD thesis (Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms Interna-
tional, 1989); Cristiano Tessari, Baldassare Peruzzi, Il progetto dell’antico (Milan: Electa, 1995), 57–8.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 263

Fig. 8 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Palazzo di Banco di Santo Spirito, Rome, (photo: author)

Fig. 9 Baldassare Peruzzi, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 1523–4, Rome, Santa Maria della Pace, Segardi
Chapel (photo: Alinari, with the permission of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali)
264 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 10 Unknown artist, sixteenth century. A copy of the façade decoration of Palazzo Gaddi (Cesi) in via della
Maschera d’Oro, Rome by Polidoro da Caravaggio and Maturino da Firenze (© Albertina, Vienna, Graphische
Sammlung, SD 213, inv. 15462)

Fig. 11 Porta Maggiore, Rome, built by Claudius (AD 41–54) (photo: author)

(another palace belonging to the family of Sansovino’s patrons) by Polidoro

da Caravaggio and Maturino da Firenze (1523–4, Fig. 10).48 Both the painting
and the façade decoration contained rusticated half-columns, a motif that
Sansovino used in the Zecca, even though it was not present in the Basilica of
SS Cosmas and Damian and in its modern derivates, such as Palazzo Caprini
and Sangallo’s Roman Zecca. The classical model for this motif was the arch
of the Claudian aqueduct, the so-called Porta Maggiore (Fig. 11).

48
On the façade see De Castris, Polidoro da Caravaggio, 498, cat. F19.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 265
Concerning Peruzzi’s Presentation, Manuela Morresi has already recognized
that the building on the left in the background is very similar to Sansovino’s
Zecca and must be a treasury.49 Peruzzi’s use of the Aerarium motif of rustic
voussoir arches for the ground floor of this building substantially confirms this
idea. His innovation was to combine the reference to the Aerarium with the
Porta Maggiore motif, whose use here is one of the first.50 He thus identified
Claudian rusticated half-columns and the quoin arches of SS Cosmas and
Damian as elements of a continuous stylistic scheme, whatever the origins and
functions of the buildings from which the elements were taken, and overlook-
ing the contrast in building materials employed in these classical structures. By
doing this Peruzzi provided a clear precedent for Serlio’s theoretical presen-
tation of rustication in his Regole.
The meaning of this style – in the perspective of Peruzzi and his contem-
poraries – is to be carefully reconstructed from their opinions about its
constituents. The viewers’ reactions to the structure of the Basilica SS Cosmas
and Damian are most revealing. While identifying it in diverse ways, all of
them had a mistaken concept of its age: there was unanimous agreement that
it was extremely ancient. This in particular made it a possible choice for the
Temple of Saturn. However, Poggio Bracciolini and Fulvio, both of whom
held the ‘templum Romuli’ theory, also defined it as vetustissimum.51 Serlio too
wrote that the remains a San Cosmo e Damiano were not merely ancient, but
antichissimi.52 These adjectives (unlike antico or vetusto) were then used to
define forms that seemed to Renaissance viewers truly archaic. Thus Cesare
Cesariano, commenting on types of masonry in the second book of Vitruvius,
applied these definitions to Etruscan tombs in Tarquinia and to polygonal
walls.53 Fulvio’s description of SS Cosmas and Damian shows that the idea of
the archaic antiquity of this structure was based on visual evidence: ‘It is an
extremely ancient (vetustissimum) temple judging from its construction and
arches.’54

49
Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, 190.
50
The Porta Maggiore motif was first used by Antonio da Sangallo in a drawing of the portal of the Villa
Madama (UA 1518), Christoph Luitpold Frommel, ‘Villa Madama’, in C. L. Frommel, S. Ray, M. Tafuri, Raffaello
architetto (Milan: Electa, 1984), 334. Architectural orders decorated with rustication became known somewhat
later as one of the favorite motifs of Giulio Romano, but it seems that in the mid-1520s it was an object of
common interest for the closely knit group of artists to which he belonged, that included Peruzzi and Polidoro.
Giulio used the motif for the first time in his own house in Rome, which was begun in 1524 – that is, more or
less simultaneously with their works: Frommel, ‘Le opere romane di Giulio’, in Giulio Romano (Milan: Electa,
1989), 126.
51
Poggio Bracciolini: ‘Romuli templus cuius pars muri vetustissima quadrate lapide nunc quoque mirandam
speciem sui praebet, hodie Cosmae et Damiano consacratum.’ Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico, 4: 234.
Fulvio: ‘. . . est enim templum vetustissimum, ut eius structura et fornices, ostendunt.’ Fulvius, Antiquitates urbis,
Bk. 5, fol. 84v.
52
Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, 1:264 and 276.
53
Cesare Cesariano, Vitruvio De Architettura. Libri II–IV: i materiali, i templi, gli ordini, ed. Alessandro Rovetta
(Milan: Vita e pensiero, 2002), 77, 81–2.
54
Fulvius, ibidem.
266 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
Moreover, this mistake in dating was not an isolated case, because other
rusticated Roman ruins often left the same impression on viewers, although
inscriptions, classical writers and other data could influence their opinions as
well. And still these ruins were often deemed to have originated in utmost
antiquity, sometimes even against the evidence contained in the inscriptions.
For Biondo, the heavily rusticated substructure of the Temple of Claudius was
the Curia Hostilia, the most ancient Roman curia built by Tullus Hostilius on
the Caelium, and this opinion was repeated in the sixteenth and even in the
eighteenth century, by Pirro Ligorio and Piranesi among others.55 Porta Mag-
giore was identified by Biondo as Porta Naevia of the ancient Servian wall.56
Giuliano da Sangallo repeated this in his Libro. Moreover, he presented the
viewer with an imaginary reconstruction of the wall of the Forum Augustum in
which he tried to forge its Etruscan identity by means of decorative motifs. On
the origins of the substructure of the Temple of Claudius, he did not express
an opinion, but it seemed to him an unfinished work.57
These problems with identification and appreciation of rusticated struc-
tures were for all evidence due to the fact that Renaissance artists and scholars
did not have such a definite idea of the development of quadrangular
masonry and of the origins of its accentuation with rustication as we do.
Modern scholars have reconstructed the evolution of Roman stonework and
distinguish between archaic quadrangular masonry, such as that of the Carcer
Tullianum, and the sporadic use of this technique in special cases in later
epochs, when brick and cement usually displaced stonework. They have estab-
lished, moreover, that the earliest examples of rustication, or the intentional
use of un-hewn blocks, as in the walls of the Forum Augustum and of SS
Cosmas and Damian, date to the Augustan era. Under Claudius, rustication
was already fanciful – rusticated structures were erected entirely of white
travertine and rustication was employed in conjunction with the regular
orders, covering the shafts of pilasters and half-columns.58 However, the idea
that the roughness of rusticated walls was a deliberate stylistic choice at the
developed stage of classical Roman antiquity was alien to Renaissance artists
and scholars. We can see this by analyzing Serlio’s attempt to introduce
historical order into masonry styles. His diagram of the evolution of stonework
is not based on real architectural history but shows the development from

55
Blondi Flavii, Romae instauratae, Bk. 2, lxxvii. Cf. Fulvius, Antiquitates urbis, fol. 81r; Pirro Ligorio, MS.
Canon. It. 138, fol. 85v; G. B. Piranesi, Veduta della Curia Ostilia, 1757 (in the second state of the print the title
was changed).
56
Blondi Flavii, Romae instauratae, Bk. 1, x.
57
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Barb. Lat. 4424, fols. 5r., 2r, 3v. On his view of the Porta Maggiore, cf.
Christian Huelsen, Il libro di Giuliano da Sangallo: codice Vaticano Barberiniano Latino 4424 (Leipzig: Harrassowitz,
1910), 1: 10. On the Etruscan motifs in Giuliano da Sangallo’s reconstruction of the Forum Augustum see
Franco Borsi, Bramante (Milan: Electa, 1989), 322.
58
On Roman rustication, see Lugli, La tecnica, 208–10, 331; Peter Liljenstolpe, ‘Rustication and Decor in
Roman Architecture: Their Reflection in the Architecture of the 16th Century with Special Attention to Their
Use in the Classical Orders’, Opuscula Romana 25–26 (2000–2001), 45–72.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 267

Fig. 12 Sebastiano Serlio, diagram of the different kinds of rustic work. From Tutte l’opere d’ Architettura, e
prospettiva (Venice, 1619), first published in the Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1537). (©Jewish National
and University Library, Jerusalem)

roughly hewn surfaces of stone blocks to more delicate, elaborated and finally,
to geometrically complex modes (Fig. 12). This is a good illustration of a
general principle: for Renaissance architects trained in the Vitruvian tradition
of refinement and precision of form, the more rugged the surface, the more
ancient the structure; alternatively, it could be viewed as unfinished.
If, as it seems, rough rustication in High Renaissance Rome was mistakenly
seen as a style of utmost antiquity, we can conclude that its use in contempo-
rary structures must have carried the meaning of intentional archaism. This
approach can be traced from Bramante, and indeed scholars have come to
note the ‘primordial’ character of his rustication.59 This definition fits well
with Bramante’s intention. It is true, as we have seen, that the association with
the function of the Aerarium played an important role in Bramante’s choice
of it for the Palazzo Caprini. Moreover, the same is true of the Palazzo dei
Tribunali (Fig. 13), which included prisons and which was concerned with

59
Cristoph Luitpold Frommel, ‘Roma: Bramante e Raffaello’, in Arnaldo Bruschi (ed.), Storia dell’architettura
italiana. Il Primo Cinquecento (Milan: Electa, 2002), 92.
268 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 13 Donato Bramante, the basement of the Palazzo dei Tribunali, Rome (photo: author)

jurisdiction, so that its rustication must have referred to the building of the
Carcer, and perhaps even more so to its terrifying descriptions by ancient
writers.60 The Belvedere gate (Fig. 14), however, suggests an additional
reading, indicating that the reference to the ‘primordial’ past was what the
architect indeed intended when interpreting these models with such a
vigorous expression, for, as Vasari wrote, Bramante’s original plan called for it
to be crowned with a pseudo-hieroglyphic inscription inspired by that in
Viterbo.61
The contextualization of rustication by Etruscan motifs, as done by Giuliano
da Sangallo, or by simulated Egyptian hieroglyphs, allows us to make a further
connection, that at the beginning of the sixteenth century this supposedly
‘archaic’ architectural feature was deemed suitable to bear the association
with one of the most important concerns of Renaissance thought – the inquiry
into Rome’s origins, its early history and destiny. The vision of Rome and of
the Etruscan lands as the cradle of civilization was formulated by Annio da
Viterbo, whom Gombrich quoted as a possible source for Bramante’s idea of
hieroglyphic script.62 Annio and his compatriot Egidio da Viterbo, the most
outstanding preacher of Julius II’s pontificate, together created a new mythol-
ogy around the Golden Age of ancient Italy that, according to them, was
inhabited by pious Etruscans who, in one version fled to Italy from Egypt and

60
On the functions of the Palazzo, see Susanne B. Butters and Pier Nicola Pagliara, ‘The Palazzo dei
Tribunali and Via Giulia in Rome’, Zodiac 14 (1995), 15–29.
61
Vasari, Le Vite, 4: 158.
62
Ernst Gombrich, ‘Hypnerotomachiana’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951), 120.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 269

Fig. 14 Domano Bramante, the gate of the Belvedere court (photo: author)

whose ruler was the biblical Noah, known to them as the god Janus.63
Bramante’s connection to the Roman branch of the Caprini family, belonging
to the elite of Viterbo and connected, in turn, to Annio, may have made him
especially susceptible to these ideas. One of the older members of the Caprini
family, Michelarchangelo da Constantino, even assisted Annio da Viterbo in
his research.64
In order to understand the strong appeal of Annio’s and Egidio da Viterbo’s
incorrect historical views in these and later times we must remember, in
particular, that they were not the inventors of many of the ideas they advanced
but that they built upon deeply ingrained traditions. Their precedents
included Virgil, whose fourth eclogue prophesied the Golden Age’s imminent
return; Macrobius’ Saturnalia, where the Golden Age in ancient Italy is
described as a state of natural justice and equality; the fathers of the Church,
who first synchronized the euhemeristic interpretation of the early history of

63
On the historical writings of Annio da Viterbo, see Christopher R. Ligota, ‘Annius of Viterbo and Historical
Method’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987), 44–56; Walter Stephens, ‘When Pope Noah
Ruled the Etruscans: Annius of Viterbo and His Forged “Antiquities” ’, MLN, 119 (2004), 201–23. On Egidio da
Viterbo’s appropriation of Golden Age rhetoric, see John W. O’Malley, ‘Fulfillment of the Golden Age under
Julius II: Text of a Discourse of Giles da Viterbo’, Traditio 25 (1969), 265–338.
64
On Michalarchangelo Caprini’s assistance, see Annio’s Commentaria super opera diversorum auctorum de
antiquitatibus loquentium (Rome: Eucharius Silber, 1498), e 4v, g 6v, h 6v.
270 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
Europe with the biblical narrative; as well as medieval chronicles that devel-
oped this approach. In the perspective of the Renaissance Rome, Macrobius’
description of the Golden Age was especially rich in connotations. This, he
explained, was the mythical epoch when Saturn, expelled by his son, came to
the Janiculum, where Janus already lived. Under their joint rule, people,
taught by Saturn, practiced agriculture and lived happily, because there was
no private property yet.65 This myth was given a Christian interpretation by
Lactantius, who developed the parallelism between the Saturnian Golden Age
and Christianity, which, according to him, would return believers to this ideal
condition.66 In this context, the rustic style of the presumed Aerarium had a
special significance. Macrobius wrote that the Romans placed their public
treasure in the temple of Saturn precisely because of its association with the
Saturnian Age, when private property was unknown, and crime and theft did
not exist. The ‘archaic’ style of this building thus was a natural architectural
symbol of the Golden Age with its happiness and moral perfection.
In both the classical and modern interpretations the Golden Age was the
central theme of the spoken, written and visual rhetoric of Julius II’s and Leo
X’s pontificates. While Julius II was the addressee of Egidio da Viterbo’s
sermons describing the epoch of Noah and the Etruscans as a prefiguration of
the new Golden Age coming with his pontificate, Leo X inclined to a more
classical version of the story of Rome’s origins. The ceremony of granting
Roman citizenship to the members of his family referred to the joint rule of
Janus and Saturn, to the Etruscans’ presence in Latium and to the history of
Rome after its foundation. Particular emphasis was made on King Numa,
Leo’s ideal prototype, whose rule was a recognized ‘second reign of Saturn’.67
The relationship of High Renaissance rustication to the vision of the
Golden Age and Rome’s mythical origins is made explicit again in a second
work that could have provided Sansovino with the idea of rusticated half-
columns – Polidoro and Maturino’s decoration of the façade of Palazzo Gaddi
in via della Maschera d’Oro. Its painted architecture consists of rustic ‘Porta
Maggiore motif’ repeated several times along the ground floor, with sphinxes
flanking the entrance and statues between the windows. As in the Belvedere
gate, the rustication is connected to an Egyptian element, and this time this
combination explicitly points to Annio da Viterbo. The central frieze of the
façade represents the Etruscans coming to Italy from Egypt as described by
Annio.68

65
Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1. 8. 5.
66
Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, 5–7.
67
Philip Jacks, The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 177. On the ceremony and the celebrations see also Fabrizio
Cruciani, Il teatro del Campidoglio e le feste romane del 1513 (Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1968).
68
For the explanation of the subject of this frieze, see Flaminia Genari Santori, ‘La decorazione del palazzo
Farnese di Gradoli’, Storia dell’arte 83 (1995), 82–110.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 271
The recurrent connection between architectural rustication and the myth
of the origin of the population in Italy suggests that the sporadic use of
rustication as a motif in palace and villa decoration in Julian and Leonine
Rome was not merely a formal device, but had a clear meaning for contem-
porary society. Rustication of the ground storey, rustic arches, entrance doors
and corner strips as frequent motifs of façade decoration gave the private
dwelling a touch of great antiquity and consequently of nobility of family – the
Alberini, the Baldassini and the Stati boasted their ancient Roman roots, while
the Medici, the Farnese and the Caprini began their genealogy from the
Etruscans.69 This meaning is supported and paralleled by the dominance of
subjects taken from early Roman history, mostly republican, on the painted
facades.70
We can now draw several conclusions. Rustication was the prominent
feature of the structure of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian that was
identified with the ancient Roman treasury by an old tradition. This was the
natural choice for the model of the Venetian Zecca standing on the Piazzetta
as on a new republican Forum. That this tradition was a sort of legend, not
universally accepted as truth in Sansovino’s time, was not all that important,
because the rustication of the basilica was expressive of more than just func-
tion. Stylistically and semantically, rustication was connected to the idea of the
beginning of Roman history, when classical refinement was still lacking but
justice and piety reigned. This period began in the Golden Age of Saturn,
Noah and the Etruscans, and included the early Roman republic, whose
awesome Carcer prevented the Romans from crime and whose nervus was the
Aerarium. Accordingly, the rustic style had an important ideological function
on the Piazzetta: it was to add a stern republican note to the ensemble of
sumptuous buildings, suggesting the idea of a sound state based on moral
virtue, which Venice pretended to be.
We can suppose that these meanings were clear at the time both for Vene-
tians and for visitors to Venice. In particular, Annio da Viterbo’s historical
concepts, far from losing their force in Sansovino’s time, remained immensely
influential even in the late sixteenth century in Italy and abroad.71 Inciden-
tally, it was Sansovino’s son Francesco who translated Annio’s Latin tract into
Italian and published it in 1583 with his own commentaries.72

69
See Frommel, Der Römische Palastbau for detailed family background of the owners of the palaces.
70
An analysis of the topics represented in the private sphere shows that most of the subjects refer to early
Roman history, up to the late republic, while the imperial period is practically excluded. De Castris, Polidoro da
Caravaggio, 126 and note 50.
71
On Annio da Viterbo’s reputation in Europe, see Stephens, ‘When Pope Noah Ruled the Etruscans’,
204–05.
72
Le Antichità di Beroso Caldeo et d’altri scrittori, cosi Hebrei, come Greci, & Latini, che trattano delle stesse materie.
Tradotte, dichiarate, & con diuerse utili / necessarie annotationi, illustrate, da M. Francesco Sansovino (Venice: Altobello
Salicato, 1583). To be sure, Egidio da Viterbo and his writings were also well known in Venice. He was the guest
of the Republic in 1519, see Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, 74. For his possible influence on the intellectuals in
Venice, see François Secret, ‘Les cheminements de la Kabbale á la Renaissance: Le théâtre du Monde de Giulio
272 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 15 Sebastiano Serlio, stonework ‘a santo Cosmo e Damiano’ in Rome, from Tutte l’opere d’ Architettura, e
prospettiva (Venice, 1619), first published in the Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1537). (©Jewish National
and University Library, Jerusalem)

At the same time as the rusticated Zecca was being built, Serlio was adding
a similar nuance by introducing the rustic mode into architectural theory. He
suggested the concept and the term ornamento rustico and illustrated it with a
series of schemes of quadrangular masonry with quoin arches, largely based
on the study of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian (Figs. 15–16),73 as well
as with a number of suggestions for their combination with the orders, even-
tually rusticated (Fig. 17, cf. Fig. 7). He defined this architectural feature as
appropriate to the Tuscan order, one inherited by the Romans from the
Etruscans and bearing their name – and as we can see now, he could do so on
historical grounds, since both these elements touched upon the Etruscan past.
How and why he came to baptize this stylistic mode with the word rustico,
which became so successful an addition to the vocabulary of architectural

Camillo Delminio et son influence’, Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, 14 (1959), 422; Antonio Foscari and
Manfredo Tafuri, Armonia e conflitti: la chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna nella Venezia del’500 (Turin: Einaudi,
1983), 15.
73
Serlio represented two types of arches ‘a san Cosmo e Damiano’ and three more schemes developed from
them: 129v, 130r, 130v.
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 273

Fig. 16 Sebastiano Serlio, stonework ‘a santo Cosmo e Damiano’ in Rome, from Tutte l’opere d’ Architettura, e
prospettiva (Venice, 1619), first published in the Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1537). (©Jewish National
and University Library, Jerusalem)

terms in all languages, and whether a literary advisor, such as Bembo or

Aretino stood behind it, deserves further inquiry.74 This word was previously
unknown in this sense in the architectural milieu, even in the Roman archi-
tectural school where a rusticated wall was called mur bozato, a term descriptive
of the mode of dressing the stone.75 If the word rustico (lat. rusticus) was used
before Serlio in architectural treatises it was in connection with edificii rustici,

74
Philological problems of Serlio’s terminology have been researched by Alberto Jelmini, Sebastiano Serlio: il
trattato d’architettura (Locarno: Tip. Stazione, 1986). On Serlio’s connections in the literary world, see Loredana
Olivato, ‘Per il Serlio a Venezia: Documenti nuovi e documenti rivisitati’, Arte Veneta 25 (1971), 286 and David
Clot, ‘Sebastiano Serlio et la literature’, Bulletin de l’Association des Historiens de l’Art Italien 10 (2005), 110–16.
Deswarte-Rosa showed that the dedication of the Regole to the Duke Ercole d’Este was written with Aretino’s
assistance: ‘Le Traité d’architecture de Sebastiano Serlio’, 46.
75
Giuliano da Sangallo on the wall of the Forum Augustum: Cod. Barb. Lat. 4424, fol. 2r. The classical
expression lapide quadrato was also used to describe rusticated structures, both classical and modern, in
fifteenth-century sources. See the detailed discussion of pre-Serlian terminology in Belli, ‘Forma e naturalità nel
bugnato fiorentino del Quattrocento’, and in Clarke, Roman House – Renaissance Palaces, 187–94.
274 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky

Fig. 17 Sebastiano Serlio, rustic design, from Tutte l’opere d’ Architettura, e prospettiva (Venice, 1619), first
published in the Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1537). (©Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem)

literally village buildings or villas.76 Serlio’s rustico evidently refers to a stylistic

mode without the physical relation to the countryside. It epitomizes the range
of significations otherwise implied in the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian.
It invokes the aesthetic roughness of the archaic epoch and the agricultural
and moral connotations of the Saturnian age. Of course, the idea of rural
simplicity as expressive of nostalgia for the high moral standard of the past
had a venerable tradition in classical literature. One possible source for this is
Cicero, who wrote that some orators used countrified pronunciation (rustica
vox) ‘with the object that if their speech is in this tone it may seem to preserve
a greater flavour of antiquity.’77
From this analysis it follows that the association of rustication with Roman
antiquity is definitely visible in Serlio’s treatise, as it is contained in the model
he used for his designs as well as in the very term ornamento rustico that he
invented when introducing this feature into the architectural canon, but that

76
As in Vitruvius, De architectura, 6. 5–6. Cf. Cesare Cesariano, Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione De architectura libri
decem, ci.
77
Cicero, De Oratore, 3. 42. English translation by H. Rakham. (Loeb Classical Library, London:
Heinemann, 1960)
 The high Renaissance concept of rustication 275
it was an archaic antiquity reminiscent of the Etruscan Golden Age. Rustica-
tion as conceived by Bramante and his school and codified by Serlio brings an
element of primitivism into High Renaissance architectural aesthetics, and
like most primitivist styles, conveys moral and spiritual content by receding
from the classical standard to an imagined an earlier, rougher and more
awkward style, of a time when people were good and still uncorrupt, an augur
of the advent of Christianity.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem