Carlo Lodoli

Since his own writings have been lost his theories are only known from the works of others. Together with architects and architectural theorists including Claude Perrault, Abbé Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier, Lodoli articulated a rational architecture which challenged the prevailing Baroque and Rococo styles.

• Name — Carlo Lodoli • Born — 28 November 1690 • Birthplace — Venice, Republic of Venice • Died — 27 October 1761 • Place of death — Padua, Republic of Venice • Notable Works — Apologhi immaginati (1787) • Occupation — Architectural theorist, architect, Franciscan priest, mathematician, teacher • Footnotes — He is known as the Socrates of architecture • Resting Place — Convento di San Francesco Grande (Padua) • Movement — Rationalism

Carlo Lodoli came from a family who had close connections with the Venetian Arsenal and military engineering. After completing his initial studies at the monastery of San Francesco della Vigna, Venice, in 1706 he became an Observant Friar Minor in Dalmatia. In 1709 he was transferred to the monastery of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli in Rome, where he continued his studies in philosophy, science, theology, Greek and French. He remained in Rome for about four years, during which time he developed his interest in art and architecture; he was then transferred to the monastery of San Biagio in Forlì. From 1715 to 1720 he lived in Verona, where he began teaching astronomy, physics and mathematics to Veronese noblemen, and philosophy to the novices of the monastery of San Bernardino. Also in Verona he contributed to an edition of the works of the French humanist Marcus Antonius Muretus and began his friendship with the writer Angelo Calogerà and Francesco Scipione Maffei. During this period he probably also visited Tuscany, including Florence, acquiring a profound knowledge of the art of the region. In 1720 Lodoli was transferred to Venice to teach theology and was immediately at the centre of the city’s cultural life. Also during the 1720s Lodoli was engaged in the extension and reorganization of the library of San Francesco della Vigna and acted as historian of the Franciscan Order and its writers. In the 1730s Lodoli began to teach the sons of Venetian noblemen. Architecture was included in the course of study, and in the garden of San Francesco della Vigna he assembled a collection of architectural fragments for teaching purposes. From 1739 to 1751 Lodoli held the office of Padre Generale Commissario di Terra Santa in Venice, and he also devoted himself to the restoration (1739–43) of the pilgrim’s hospice attached to the monastery. This project, the only one Lodoli executed, encapsulates the essence of his architectural theories as set out in the only surviving original source: two draft outlines of his unpublished treatise on architecture (untraced), which appeared in the second volume of Andrea Memmo’s Elementi d’architettura lodoliana. In these two draft outlines, Lodoli’s functionalism and rationalism are expressed in condensed form. According to Memmo, Lodoli wanted to find in architecture the same scientific principles that Galileo Galilei had discovered in physics; his architecture thus assumed the character of a science based on certain principles and static rules. It also concerned the search for structural truth, expressed in terms of a building’s solidity, which involved the honest use of materials, especially stone. This concept reflected the military engineering environment of the Venetian Arsenal and the rationalist and anti-Baroque tendencies present in Venice in the early 18th century. Lodoli argued that proper function and form were the only final, scientific aims of civil architecture, and that nothing should be put on show that is not a working part of the structure. The different architectural systems of antiquity were set out, but Vitruvius’ five orders of architecture were criticized as being inappropriate to stone because they were originally based on timber structures. Following an original classification, the treatise deals with the primary integral elements of architecture, solidity and proportion, as well as with the secondary integral elements, convenience and ornament. Lodoli admitted ornament, except mosaic, and in order to overcome the monotony of continuous imitation of the same forms he encouraged the invention of new ones or the selection from ancient and modern architectural styles, including Gothic and Moorish, of ornament that suited the characteristics of stone. According to Memmo, Lodoli also admitted those elements of the Classical orders that corresponded to a structure’s function and suited the characteristics of stone: columns, bases, capitals, pedestals, triglyphs, metopes and consoles. He particularly favoured ground-floor rustication and included drawings of 16 different types in his treatise. His taste for Doric and Tuscan capitals probably arose from the fact that to him, as later to his friend Piranesi, these represented examples of primitive Italic architecture, the origin of the art. Passionately keen on painting and sculpture, he was one of the first connoisseurs of medieval art, and his own collection, which included relics of Hellenistic and Byzantine painting as well as primitive and modern works, was arranged in such a way as to illustrate the development of art.