The Consequences of Dialogue and the Virgilian Nostalgia of Colin Rowe

Abstract

At the time Colin Rowe published the now-famous essay “The Mathematics of the Idea Villa” (1947) he was close to completing his M.A. in the History of Art as Rudolf Wittkower’s only student at the Warburg Institute in London. Rowe’s unpublished master’s thesis, titled “The Theoretical Drawings of Inigo Jones: Their Sources and Scope,” demonstrates how Rowe began to explore the method of comparative dialogical technique through the use of literary texts, images, and diagrams in the construction of the history of architecture as myth. While it has been widely acknowledged that Rowe is an important source on the work of Jones, Rowe’s development and application of the technique of dialogical construction – often relying less on true factual evidence than on imagination – has rarely been examined. This Rowe-ian myth will be viewed as an act of dialogical construction: a theoretical positioning of the role of history within the discipline of architecture.

Keywords:

• Colin Rowe
• comparative method
• diagram
• visual
• history

Notes

¹ Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Idea Villa,” Architectural Review (March 1947); repr. in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 3.

² Ibid., 2, 3.

³ Rudolf Wittkower, “Pseudo-Palladian Elements in English Neo-Classical Architecture,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943): 154.

⁴ Monica Centanni, “For an Iconology of the Interval. Tradition of the Ancient and Retrospective View in Aby Warburg and Colin Rowe,” trans. David Gordon, in L’Architettura come testo e la figura di Colin Rowe, ed. Mauro Marzo (Venice: Marsilio, 2010), 226.

⁵ Colin Rowe, The Architecture of Good Intentions (London: Wiley, 1994), 48.

⁶ Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower, British Art and the Mediterranean (London: Oxford University Press, 1948).

⁷ Gertrude Bing, “Article Outline by Gertrude Bing for CEMA Bulletin,” attached to a letter from Fritz Saxl to Philippe James, March 2, 1942 (Warburg Institute Archive, General Correspondence, Exhibitions).

⁸ Saxl and Wittkower, British Art.

⁹ Wittkower, “Pseudo-Palladian Elements,” 164.

¹⁰ Ibid., 158.

¹¹ Gertrude Bing, “Fritz Saxl: A Biographical Memoir,” in Fritz Saxl (1890–1948): A Volume of Memorial Essays from His Friends in England (London: Thomas Nelson, 1957), 31.

¹² Definition of “theory,” in Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/theory (accessed October 1, 2015), s.v.

¹³ Colin Rowe, “Prefatory Note,” in “The Theoretical Drawings of Inigo Jones: Their Sources and Scope.” Unpublished thesis, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1948.

¹⁴ Rowe, referring to Palladio’s Palazzo Thiene, parts of which derive from Giulio Romano, quotes Jones: “and most of Palladio his works are moi suelta than they are in designe”; ibid., 35.

¹⁵ Ibid., 34.

¹⁶ Ibid.