August 9, 1977

$10.00 train ticket
$97.00 left
$13.00 hotel Mansfield, 12 W. 44th St. [the clerk was surprised we wanted to actually stay overnight.]
$84.00
$2.00 subway tokens
$82.00
$2.00 lunch in Manhattan
$80.00

R and I went to Richard Meier's office and asked about the Museum of Modern Art, Strozzi Villa in Florence. The building is not under construction, but they asked us to take some pictures of the model (and overheard Meier "even get them to bring the model back"). We'll meet Meier personally when we bring pictures back. The office secratery suggested a guidebook of Florence we should get.

There was an old lady feeding the birds in Central Park, south of the zoo. She had the birds eating out of her hands and resting on her shoulders. There was also a photographer taking her picture. He was probably an amateur.

The day ended in Soho and Greenwich Village. Caught part of a concert at Washingto Square. The World Trade Center Observation Deck was closed when we got there. We tried to find Jill K's place with no luck. We couldn't even find the address, although we think we found the building she was in. Went to the hotel and watched Fernwood Tonight for the first time.

who knew?

A rich and storied past surrounds the Mansfield Hotel, located on famed Club Row, one of the most prestigious and history laden blocks in New York City.

Prior to the Mansfield’s construction in 1903, an orphanage occupied the same real estate until 1867, followed by a three-story brick stable that was built to service the opulent mansions along Fifth Avenue owned by the era’s social “elite”, including notables such as the Vanderbilts, Goelets, Whitneys, Goulds and the Mills.

Then in 1890, one of the most celebrated Architects of the era, James Renwick, was retained to design the Mansfield Hotel. His masterful works include Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, The New York Public Library and St. Bartholomew’s Church, as well as many other historic buildings throughout the city.

Constructed in the popular Beaux Arts style, and influenced by neoclassical Roman and Greek architecture, the Mansfield was originally built as a hostelry for well-heeled bachelors and socialites. Notables such as painter John Butler Yeats, father of the poet William Butler Yeats, stayed to experience a thriving New York following his immigration from Ireland. During the 1950s, the Mansfield was home to Maz von Gurach, who was believed to be the inspiration for Jay Gatsby, from F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” During the 1970s, the Mansfield was pictured in the dictionary under seedy, and the very rare overnight guest heard room doors opening and closing at all hours.

noctilucent, you may not know it, but amateur photography was quite vogue in the 1970s.

August 10, 1977

...at Columbia University. I would have liked to split up except I had no watch. ...would have spent the day around Cooper-Hewitt and the Met (maybe also Cooper Union). ...apprehensive about the Rome trip in general and what the next three weeks will be like specifically.

Yesterday was such a nice day because it was nothing. It flowed by without time.

...remember to never wait for the other. Just stay ahead or behind; close enough not to get lost and far enough to occupy space.

What will the others be like?

[flight scheduled to leave JFK 10:45 pm]

Piranesi’s close familiarity with [Hadrian’s] Villa dates back at least to the 1750s, when there are accounts of sketching expeditions made in the company of Robert Adam, Clérisseau and Allan Ramsay.*
--John Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 41

*See John Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle in Edinburgh and Rome, London and New York, 1962, passim.

passim : here and there: used in bibliographic references to indicate that the writer has drawn upon material scattered throughout the source cited.

In fact, there is no direct evidence within Robert Adam and his Circle in Edinburgh and Rome that Piranesi and Adams were ever together at Hadrian’s Villa, nor does Adam every mention Piranesi having been to Hadrian's Villa. Was perhaps Adam at Hadrian’s Villa before Piranesi ever was? It is on record that Adam was at the Villa d’Este mid-June 1755. And again Adam led a survey and drawing expedition at Hadrian’s Villa for six days in April 1756.

Many of the specifics we have today regarding Piranesi's life from June 1755 to late-April 1757 come from the coeval letters of Robert Adam. According to Wilton-Ely: The new decade of the 1760s saw a broadinging of Piranesi's antiquarian concerns... A particular field of operation in this decade was Tivoli and the ruins of the nearby Hadrian's Villa.

Here and there indeed.

Casa Guarnieri

Horti Luciliani

Palazzo Tomati

Pensione For You

Villa Hélène

Friday, August 12 [1977]

Our first morning in Rome and it is hot. No time earlier to write and there is a lot to write about. The plane left over four hours late (3 am approx.), and was very crowded and uncomfortable. It was difficult to sleep. We finally arrived in Rome about 20:00 (Rome time)--we walked from plane to airport through two rows of armed-with-machine-gun soldiers. They seem to take terrorism seriously in Europe. We had to wait an hour for the bus to the city.

The bus ride was incredible. 80 people on a bus designed for 40. It was nice and a perfect introduction to Rome. I sat next to an English woman who helped me out when it came time to pay--had no Italian money as the exchange was closed at the airport. From the train station (Termini) George, Mohammed and I took a taxi to the "For You". George gave the wrong street, so at first we got lost, so to speak.

The "For You" is a story in itself. The pensione does not exist. It is an old, dirty building with stairs in the center. An old lady at the top of the steps yelled at us to go away because the pensione was closed. It's still a mystery about the pensione.

Anyway, after a lot more yelling it was obvious we had no place to stay and a lot of baggage to carry. We all just looked at each other and sort of all understood this had to happen because nothing else happened right so far. (Poor Mr. P.) John and R.B. went to get the police who 'helpfully' spoke no English. Marcy used her French and some feminine charm as best she could. We knew the P.s had their place, but not where it was. The Police did all the arranging for us, including getting taxis, and we finally arrived at the Villa Helena where the P.s are staying. It's a wonderful place, a beautiful villa--large living room and dining room on our floor. R., George and I are sharing a room, and we are going to stay here the rest of trip.

Friday continued...

We got a late start because everyone over slept and Mohammed took a late shower. Finally got to the Termini shortly before 12:00. The rest took a later bus and arrived a half hour later. Walked over to a market to pack a lunch; prices seemed ok. There was such a hassle in the store because no one knew what they were supposed to order. Mindy and Marcy got lost on the way because they got entraced looking in a shoe store.

P. and I shared lunch. We ate in the Colosseum (got there by subway). It's a great place for a picnic. Full of Kahn and Moore references, otherwise just as expected, except didn't expect lots of Japanese tourists.

Tried my first sketch and found I can't do it for shit. This is going to be one hell of an architecture tour. J.P. can sketch great and it makes me sick. He does it so easily and finishes in no time. The Forum is where I really found out I couldn't sketch. Everything I draw looks so fucking shitty. I'll never get through the requirements, and I hate to think that people are going to ask to see the sketches back home. It will be very embarassing. We ended our tour on the Palatine Hill in the Palace of the Ceasars. The masonry structure was incredible. I want to go back alone and study it more.

J.P. and I started to get into all the structure. I was surprised to see how much he really didn't know. I made a couple of references to Kahn and I think he was offended. It's obvious Kahn took a great deal from the architecture of ancient Rome. [Kahn's work in] India doesn't seem all that great anymore; the ruins are better.

Had a great time at night. We [all] first walked to the Spanish Steps and climbed half way up. Then went restaurant hunting; went to a pizzaria down a side street. Some Texans at another table paid for our wine, and the waiter gave us two bottles of wine for free. We didn't leave the place till after twelve.

We walked back to the Spanish Steps where some probably drunk Italian Stallions were kicking empty soda cans down the steps. Went to find what Jean hid for me [a couple weeks earlier] at Quatro Fontane. I'll tell you, she is no big spender--about 11 cents in foreign currency is all she left along with a note. But the search was worth it. Came back to the Spanish Steps and met up with the rest of the crew. Also kicked cans since it was the new thing to do.

Got home at 1:30 and tired as hell but didn't fall asleep till 3:30.

August 13, 1977

Campidoglio was the Campidoglio. Il Gesu closed on us. I and two older American women got lost in the monastery. Saw Massimo and got in the courtyard. Missed Farnese. Piazza Navona was full of dopers and foul looking degenerates left over from hippy days. It was also high noon, extremely hot and hardly any shade. We ate lunch there sitting on a stoop and sidewalk. Some slimy girl stole one of R.'s peaches. I couldn't wait to leave the place. It was trashy.

But the big story today is Santa Maria della Pace. P. was giving a lecture while three fuck-ups were shooting heroin in the doorway. P. thought they were eating lunch and was jabbering right in front of them. It turned everybody's stomach.

Pantheon was next. It was the Pantheon (dirty like the rest of the neighborhood). I think idealism fell out the bottom today

Fleming, passim:

After Holy Week, Robert expected most of the Grand Tourists to 'file off' to Naples. He would have no regrets at their departure. Once established with Clérisseau in his own apartment at the Casa Guarnieri...one of the best houses in Rome...probably on a site fronting on the present Via Sistina and Via Francesco Crispi, slightly above the cosmopolitan artistic quarter around the Via Gregoriana and the more fashionable inns and cafés at the foot of the Spanish Steps.


18 June 1755
"Piranesi, who is I think the most extraordinary fellow I ever saw, is becoming immensely intimate with me and as he imagined at first that I was like the other English who had a love of antiques without knowledge, upon seeing some of my sketches and drawings was so highly delighted that he almost ran quite distracted and said I have more genius for the true noble architecture than any Englishman ever was in Italy. He threatens dedicating his next plan of ancient Rome to me, but of this I have no certainty; and he swears whenever he can find opportunity he will thrust me into all his prints as a gentleman of that love, that taste and that genius for Ancient Architecture, who admired such things so much that he got modellers to copy them in order to instil that taste in the minds of his countrymen."
--Adam

Sunday, 8-14-77

Lido
The Roman beach was very middle class. The Tyrannian was very salty and great to float in. We left the beach at about 5:30. We stood the whole way home on the subway.

...ate dinner on the other side of the river. First night the group split into smaller groups. Took a walk to see St. Peter's for the first time. It was a great experience to see the (not floodlit) dome looming in the darkness. The piazza was practically empty [about a dozen people including a father and his young son on a small bicycle], and the architecture had this yellow glow from the few lights that were on.

Standing at the center-point of the colonnade was inspirational.

The colonnade is huge, and so is the basilica.

Monday 8-15-77

Mass at St. Peter's was not a huge spectacle. In fact, the basilica was full of tourists.

Took a long nap in the afternoon. Most others went to the beach again. Late afternoon went to the Campidoglio by myself. Also looked at the Forum and walked home via the Corso. Stopped to sketch at Popolo.

Ate at Othello's, and later sat at the Spanish Steps.

--not much of a day since it was the Assumption; most everything was closed.

Fleming, passim:

4 July 1755
"...so amazing and ingenious fancies as he [Piranesi] has produced in the different plans of the Temples, Baths and Palaces and other buildings I never saw and are the greatest fund for inspiring and instilling invention in any lover of architecture that can be imagined. Chambers, who courted Piranesi’s friendship with all the assiduity of a lover, never could bring him even to do a sketch of any one thing, and told me I would never be able to get anything from him. So much is he out of his calculation that he has told me that whatsoever I want of him he will do for me with pleasure, and is just now doing two drawings for me which will be both singualr and clever..."

Piranesi "having seen some of these sketches was so satisfied with them and with the collection of antique things I have got casts of, that he has absolutely changed his resolution of dedicating his plan of ancient Rome to one of the Cardinals here and has dedicated it to me with the title of Friend and Architect Dilectantissimo nella Antichità!"

"It will cost me some sous, in purchasing eighty or a hundred copies of it."
--Adam

5. Above all, the nymphaeum of the Orti Liciniani, then and still known as the temple of Minerva Medica. Alberti's inclusion of the decagon among his shapes for churches is, no doubt, due to this prototype. See also p. 24, note 1.
Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, p. 5.



But it is in the Horti Luciliani that the mechanical architecture of Piranesi reaches an extreme level of abstraction. He, a complex of structures in semicircles and in sectors of circles obeys the rules of gemmation, as they revolve around the Atrium Minervae: an astonishing mechanism, in which Piranesi achieves the maximum refinement of his geometric instruments.
Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Sardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, p. 36.



1998.04.29
Campo Marzio - more discoveries
Through translating, I have come upon yet more discoveries regarding Piranesi’s “planning” and design of the Campo Marzio, however, a major discovery came about by sorting through older material, namely the Nolli map overlay with the long axis. Today was the first time I overlayed St. Peter’s Basilica directly over the Porticus Neroniani (the “up-side-down” St. Peter’s) and I was shocked by finding that the outline of St. Peter’s Basilica and Square match exactly the outline of the Porticus Neroniani and the Temple and Area of Mars complex. The piazza of St. Peter’s matches the dimensions of the Area Martis, the Temple of Mars fits within the forecourt of St. Peter’s, and the nave and transept crossing of the Neronian Porticus falls right in line with the crossing of St. Peter’s. From the beginning of my research, I have always noted the relationship between the Vatican complex and the Mars complex, but I never knew it was so exact, and now unquestionably deliberate on Piranesi’s part.

The other big discovery deals with the Horti Luciliani and the Horti Luculliani. Up until now, I mistakenly thought it was the Horti Luciliani that Messalena murdered for, but it is actually the Horti Luculliani. This change of circumstances has two effects. Starting with the Horti Luciliani, since it now seems to have no historical background, I was curious to see whether Luciliani showed up in the Latin dictionary. It did show up, and I now know that Lucilius is the father of Roman satire. Of course, this is very thought provoking because it makes me wonder if there is anything satirical in Piranesi’s plan of the garden, and perhaps the answer here has something to do with the shrine to Minerva being in the center of one of the building complexes--literally “wisdom” (but also “weaving”) in the center of a garden of satire. Furthermore, the other aspects of the horti, such as the theater and salons, now make more sense.

satire 1 a : an ancient Roman commentary in verse on some prevailing vise of folly b : a usually topical literay composition holding up human or individual vices, folly, abuses, or shortcomings to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other method sometimes with an intent to bring about c : LAMPOON 2 a : a branch of literature ridiculing vice or folly

[and there's more]
Lauf

Tuesday, 8-16-77

Vatican Museum was well worth it. Sistine Chapel is hard to relate about. For some reason I never get excited over what I see.

Went to the roof of St. Peter's--view was nice, sketching was horrible.

I was the last one to come home in our room.

Wednesday 8-17-77

Baroque churches of Rome
in transit to Venice

Churches were nice--first organized tour in a couple of days A lot of sketching and separateness.

Ate at a horrible place around Termini.

Train at night was a horrible mistake.

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exhausting, hot, ugly day
no more Villa Helena to go to [and this will be the last post here]