{"id":2014,"date":"2017-06-30T09:21:26","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T13:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/?p=2014"},"modified":"2017-06-30T09:21:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T13:21:27","slug":"joseph-connors-the-art-of-architectural-sketching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/?p=2014","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Connors: The Art of Architectural Sketching"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F330764651&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;visual=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;color=ff5500\"><\/iframe>\n<p>In this episode of <em>Houghton75<\/em> we speak with Joseph Connors, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, about the historical practice of architectural sketching and how he incorporates it into his classes. We start the conversation with the sketchbooks from the late 17th century of a young Baroque architect, Gilles-Marie Oppenord, not much older than Professor Connors\u2019 students.<\/p>\n<p>This is our final faculty interview episode. Watch for more episodes soon, including a peek into the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardreview.org\/\">Harvard Review<\/a>, the major American literary journal published by Houghton, and a salon series that celebrates their 50th issue.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Music<\/strong><br \/>\nLa Luna<br \/>\n<em>Sprezzatura: 17th century Italian Virtuosos Music<\/em><br \/>\n(Dorian #93200)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Podcast Transcript and Music Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>[Title sequence background music: Fireworks, Igor Stravinsky, performed by the <a href=\"https:\/\/hro.squarespace.com\/\">Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Alex Csiszar: Houghton is just this amazing place.<br \/>\nDeidre Lynch: It\u2019s fascinating.<br \/>\nStephen Greenblatt: It\u2019s yours for the asking, and that is incredible!<br \/>\nStephanie Sandler: Plus it\u2019s cool.<\/p>\n<p>James Capobianco (JC): Welcome to Houghton75. I\u2019m James Capobianco.<\/p>\n<p>Hannah Ferello (HF): And I\u2019m Hannah Ferello.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: Houghton Library opened its doors at Harvard in 1942. Throughout 2017, we\u2019re celebrating the library\u2019s world-class collections, and support of research and teaching over the last 75 years.<\/p>\n<p>HF: This podcast is only one of the ways to participate in our year-long program of events that promises a unique glimpse of some of Houghton\u2019s most treasured holdings and the way they inspire scholars and students. Visit houghton75.org for more information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Canzon prima a 3, by Bartolom\u00e9 de Selma y Salaverde. Performed by La Luna. Track 1 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy.<\/em> Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: Sketching is an important practice in many disciplines, and a relaxing hobby for many of its practitioners. Much like today, Baroque artists and architects kept their drawings in sketchbooks. Some of these sketchbooks eventually made their way to Houghton Library, where they have been studied and examined by scholars for clues about life in a different place and time.<\/p>\n<p>HF: We spoke with Joseph Connors, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture here at Harvard, about the historical practice of architectural sketching and how he incorporates it into his classes. We started with the sketchbooks of a young Baroque architect, not much older than Professor Connors\u2019 students.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Joseph Connors (JoCo): So this is an amazing thing, and it\u2019s the phenomenon of a young Frenchman, Gilles-Marie Oppenord, who as a 20-year-old goes to Rome for 7 years of intense study of architecture old and new. He\u2019s not a member, an official pensionnaire of the Villa Medici, but the director of the French Academy, a man called La Teulli\u00e8re, took him in and let him eat with the Fellows, and encouraged him to go out and draw everything. Now, he is in Rome at the end of the Baroque period when the great masters have lived their lives. Bernini is dead for about a decade by the time he gets to Rome, Borromini has died quite a bit before, Pietro da Cortona, and so on. All the great masters of the Roman Baroque are in the previous generation. But he\u2019s seeing the buildings when they\u2019re still as they were built, more or less, before the many changes and adaptions and demolitions that have changed the face of Rome so much. But he had sketchbooks in which he kept his record of detail, and everybody who saw these sketchbooks was amazed. The French words they used: g\u00e9nie, f\u00e9condit\u00e9, riche. Beyond expectation, the quick hand, everyone was amazed by the drawings. And so, aside from the ability of the drawings, it\u2019s like a photographic campaign of these buildings of great people when they were still fresh.<\/p>\n<p>When he went back to Paris, La Teulli\u00e8re had no idea how he was going to get all the drawings back. There were so many of them. Many were very big as well. Late in life, after his death even, when his architecture was going a bit out of fashion, or very out of fashion, still his drawings were sought after. People paid the price in gold, really, to get these drawings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Sonata sopra la Monica, by Biagio Marini. Performed by La Luna. Track 8 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy.<\/em> Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: The drawings in this sketchbook are detailed and clean. It\u2019s frankly hard to imagine a young architect sitting outside and quickly sketching these great buildings in such detail!<\/p>\n<p>HF: Closer inspection reveals that these drawings were likely completed in stages, only the first of which took place on location.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JoCo: Now many of theses sketches are very careful in the sense they\u2019re done with pencil, and then they\u2019re filled in with ink, and then over the ink goes a kind of gray wash. They look colorful at first, but actually it\u2019s all gray and then the brown ink. You can imagine he\u2019s there, not only with his pen but with his eye. Some are really quick, but I think many are done after he gets back to his room. He will sit down with a ruler and so on, and really do it right. So there must be other sketches that are really rough on the site that are then feeding into these. And then some of these, of course, are really quick as well. So he had all levels of quick, ink (never sloppy, but he can be quick), and then these really careful drawings which are based in pencil, rule lines, ink, and beautifully subtle gray wash.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Balletto primo, by Biagio Marini. Performed by La Luna. Track 13 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy.<\/em> Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: With all of the palaces, chapels, and fountains in and around Rome, it must have been a daunting task to select which landmarks to draw.<\/p>\n<p>HF: The choice wasn\u2019t entirely Oppenord\u2019s to make. He arrived with a specific set of instructions from his financiers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JoCo: Now the people who financed this was the French state, and they expected him to bring back the best of the moderns, you know, Michelangelo, Palladio, Bramante, and so on. And he did, but he was easily seduced by the less acceptable, more fanciful and imaginative architects of the Baroque, like Borromini or Cortona. And so towards the end of his stay in Rome he was sent up to Vicenza, where Palladio\u2019s villas are thick on the ground, and lots of little places on the way, for Palladian villas in the countryside, to study them. And yet when you open a book like this you see a couple of Palladio and lots of Baroque things. And my analogy is like those suspicious companies that keep two sets of books, he might have kept a set of Palladio to show his financiers and has this sort of thing because that\u2019s what really attracts him. But what he brings back to Paris, as I say, there are thousands of drawings and at least six of these sketchbooks and probably many more. He became rather close to a printmaker called Huquier and then to the famous artist Watteau. And if you see in the back of a Watteau f\u00eate champ\u00eatre, say a fountain with monsters on it and all very Bernini-like, Watteau never travelled to Rome. He\u2019s getting that through Oppenord.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Balletto primo, by Biagio Marini. Performed by La Luna. Track 13 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy.<\/em> Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200.<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>HF: Although sketching was part of the education of every architect, Oppenord\u2019s sketchbooks were different from the rest. His fascination with Baroque styles made him stand apart from the others, who primarily studied the more classical structures. But one thing was certain &#8211; everyone had to sketch. Michelangelo, included!<\/p>\n<p>JC: Even now, Professor Connors ensures that his students are not exempt from this tradition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JoCo: Well, everybody from the Renaissance on, you had to go to Rome and draw the Antique. And we have the phenomenon of sketchbooks, usually bound, by every Renaissance architect. The Renaissance word is taccuini, and they are all after the Antique, or maybe Bramante or some very classical architects. We have loose sheets by Michelangelo after the Antique, except when you really look at them they\u2019re after somebody else\u2019s sketchbook because Michelangelo didn\u2019t want to waste time. His architectural self-education was through somebody else\u2019s sketchbook. By the time we\u2019re in the 17th century, you\u2019re getting people who are interested not only in the Antique, but in what the previous generations have done, what Michelangelo had done. Eventually Palladio would become so important because of his books that people want to see the original Palladio, so they go to see the villas and palaces in Vicenza and it becomes a real standard, a sort of gold standard of how to be a modern classical architect.<\/p>\n<p>But Baroque architecture, which was always considered a little too fanciful and too imaginative, is not often the subject of such sketchbooks. But Oppenord knows what he wants. His taste is fixed at age 20, and he loves this stuff and he devours it. We have drawings in the darkest of crypts, [which] must have been done with him going down by torchlight. He had an eye that could look at a building and slice it right down the middle, and then give you a section of what it looked like, what rooms are where. Sketchbooks and eye go together. You draw and you see at the same time. The more you draw, the more you see. The training of the hand has a lot to do with the training of the eye, and the training of the eye has a lot to do with the training of the mind. Hand, mind, eye.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[musical interlude: Sonata sopra la Monica, by Biagio Marini. Performed by La Luna. Track 8 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy<\/em>. Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, what I like to do in my Landmarks of World Architecture course is to have students keep a sketchbook. I say, \u201cSketch the Corinthian order and details of the fa\u00e7ade of Widener.\u201d Every week they have a sketch assignment, and they\u2019re to fill up a page or maybe two of the sketchbooks. And they turn this in, and I put the best up on the website of the course as a kind of emulation. I hope emulation begins to have them say, \u201cWell, I could do that!\u201d What students realize is that it takes time. They all say, \u201cI don\u2019t have any drawing training.\u201d And I say, \u201cI don\u2019t care. Just go and look, and be willing to rip up pages out of your sketchbook because they were bad and start again.\u201d But at the end they\u2019re very proud. They\u2019ve seen this sketchbook build up, and by the end of the semester they have half of the sketchbook full. Now is it of this level? Well, not really, but I like to show them this and I like them to see what it could be like at its very best when people really knew how to draw. This is a 20 year-old, so it\u2019s not too different from their age, and yet someone who had it in his hand and eye.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Sonata sopra la Monica, by Biagio Marini. Performed by La Luna. Track 8 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy<\/em>. Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: Sketching has been integral to the study of architecture for hundreds of years. But today it isn\u2019t the only means of capturing architectural details for later study. For Professor Connors, photography also fulfills his observational needs, and provides an easy method of bringing distant buildings back to his students.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JoCo: Well, when I traveled in Italy I used to do a lot of drawing. Now I\u2019m building up a photographic corpus of slides for these big courses I\u2019m doing. It\u2019s a little hard to do both, so the last trip or two has been more photographs than drawing. Put it this way, within the world of art history painting historians have always had to depend on getting photographs from someone. You couldn\u2019t take photographs in museums until recently anyway, and even now the light is terrible. It\u2019ll make your photographs of paintings all look like they\u2019ve been drenched in tea. So painting historians have always been dependent on getting a photograph from a museum or from some source. Architectural historians on the other hand have had the long tradition of always carrying a camera with us. We do all the time, and we take our own photographs. We\u2019re outdoors and we can see something, or we\u2019re in a church or in a chapel \u2013 we just do it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Canzon seconda a tre (due canti, e basso), by Girolamo Frescobaldi. Performed by La Luna. Track 3 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy<\/em>. Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>HF: Architecture not only teaches us about the aesthetics of different places and times. By studying architecture, scholars can also catch a glimpse into the daily life of the people who lived in these buildings. Traces of the personal tastes of the artists and the patrons still remain for the observant scholar.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JoCo: Palaces let you into the whole business of what noble families are doing. The ritual of everyday life, how they pray, how they move, how they respect the patriarch &#8211; all of that is built into the architecture. People now study this a lot, and it\u2019s made an old field become extremely vivid and lively. But then, in the end, if you\u2019re a real artist like Michelangelo or Borromini, you\u2019re shaping what you do. There\u2019s a kind of dialogue, even a wrestling match, between the architect and the patron where he says, \u201cIf you really want to symbolize this, this would be better.\u201d That kind of dialogue is very interesting to see. Historians, of course, look at art and architecture a lot, but often don\u2019t get into this wrestling of the artistic personality and it\u2019s more a recounting of narrative &#8211; all very valuable.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Canzon prima a 3, by Bartolom\u00e9 de Selma y Salaverde. Performed by La Luna. Track 1 on their CD <em>Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music of 17th-Century Italy<\/em>. Dorian Recordings, catalog number <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonoluminus.com\/p-277-sprezzatura.aspx\">DOR-93200<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>HF: We\u2019d like to thank Professor Joseph Connors for coming in and sharing his knowledge of Oppenord and the importance of sketching with us. I\u2019m personally feeling inspired to go buy a sketchbook and start training my mind, hand, and eye!<\/p>\n<p>JC: The music selections you\u2019ve heard throughout the podcast were examples of virtuoso music from 17th-century Italy, music that Oppenord may have heard while exploring Rome. The pieces were performed by the chamber ensemble, La Luna. Our thanks to them for the recording.<\/p>\n<p>HF: To see Oppenord\u2019s sketchbook and other interesting faculty selections from Houghton collections, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/houghton75.org\">houghton75.org<\/a> and view our online exhibition HIST75H: A Masterclass on Houghton Library. This particular sketchbook is also fully digitized and can be <a href=\"https:\/\/iiif.lib.harvard.edu\/manifests\/view\/drs:51579009$1i\">viewed online<\/a> at any time through our online catalog.<\/p>\n<p>JC: This is our final episode of Houghton75 focusing on faculty selections from Houghton collections. It\u2019s been our great pleasure to be with you for this series. But be sure to tune in soon, as Houghton75 continues with a peek into the Harvard Review, the major American literary journal published by Houghton, and a salon series that celebrates their 50th issue.<\/p>\n<p>HF: As always, thank you for listening. We hope you will visit us soon in the library or join us again here on the air!<\/p>\n<p><strong>[music continues to end]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F330764651&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;visual=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;color=ff5500\"><\/iframe>\n<p>In this episode of Houghton75 we speak with Joseph Connors, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, about the historical practice of architectural sketching and how he incorporates it into his classes. We start the conversation with the sketchbooks from the late 17th century of a young Baroque architect, Gilles-Marie Oppenord, not much older than Professor Connors\u2019 students.<\/p>\n<p>This is our final faculty interview episode. Watch for more episodes soon, including a peek into the Harvard Review, the major American literary journal published by Houghton, and a salon series that celebrates their 50th issue.<\/p>\n<p>Music<br \/>\nLa Luna<br \/>\nSprezzatura: 17th century Italian Virtuosos Music<br \/>\n(Dorian #93200)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7SlKy-wu","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2014"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}