Fragments of Order. Constructing Renaissance Architecture in the Low Countries

We aim to revisit the introduction of antiquity-based architecture into the Low Countries of the early sixteenth century by focusing on the architectural fragment (base, capital, column shaft, and entablature), its various avatars (in three-dimensional form, in drawing and in print), and its uses. Assembling antique architectural fragments was a widely accepted design strategy in the early Renaissance, but the new theory of the Five column Orders subjected such free assemblages to strict rules of composition and proportioning from the 1520s onwards, condemning many of the older works in the antique manner as "monstruous" or misshapen. Nevertheless, interest in the fragment is an important strand in the texture of early Netherlandish architectural thinking. Shared by painters, engravers, draughtsmen and other designers of architecture as well as by patrons and collectors, it connects the early sixteenth-century Netherlandish arts with early "archaeology" or antiquarianism across the borders. Prints and drawings coming from Italy inspired "antique" compositions and were in their turn copied into Netherlandish model books and prints, successfully spread by the burgeoning print market. Many of the latter are still unpublished, and have never been connected with contemporary Netherlandish painting, nor with the contemporary culture of collecting. This project will bring these unknown aspects to light, thus changing the accepted view of early modern Netherlandish architecture.