New Contributions to Industrial Heritage and the History of Technology Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin Publication Series Volume 3
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M A I K E P R I E S T E R JA H N C L AU D I A S C H U S T E R ( E D S . )
Floating Baroque The Ship as Monumental Architecture T R A N S L AT E D BY PAT R I C K B A K E R
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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet: http://dnb.ndb.de. All rights reserved. The use of the text and images, in whole or in part, without the permission of the copyright holder constitutes a violation of copyright laws. This also applies to reproductions, translations, microfilming and processing via electronic systems. © Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, authors and be.bra verlag GmbH Berlin-Brandenburg, 2018 KulturBrauerei Haus 2 Schönhauser Allee 37, 10435 Berlin post@bebraverlag.de Project Director: Maike Priesterjahn Project Management: Maike Priesterjahn, Jörg Rüsewald, Dr. Tiziana Zugaro Proofreading: Dr. Patrick Baker, Dr. Maria Borgmann, Penny Croucher, Katrin Endres, Maike Priesterjahn, Jörg Rüsewald, Claudia Schuster, Dr. Tiziana Zugaro Cover Design: hawemannundmosch, Berlin (Illustrations: Annika Seifert for Schiel Projektgesellschaft mbH) Layout and Typesetting: typegerecht, Berlin Fonts: Utopia, Myriad Pro Printing and Binding: Westermann Druck, Zwickau ISBN: 978-3-89809-154-1 ISSN: 2626-1618 www.bebraverlag.de
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Contents
DIRK BÖNDEL
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Foreword MAIK E PR IES T ER JAHN / CL AUD IA SCHUS T ER
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Architectura navalis – Floating Baroque JAN PIEPER
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From Ship to Floating Architecture ANKE FISSABRE
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From Ship to Land, or from Shell to Rocaille JAN PIEPER
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The Iconography of the Royal Baroque Stern Façade MARKUS NEUWIRTH
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The Origins of Baroque as a Period Term: Ethos, Power, and the Senses Appendices
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Notes
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Glossary of Names
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Glossary of Terms
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Illustration Credits
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Contributors
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FOREWORD
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Foreword
Thanks to the rebuilding of the City Palace, Baroque architecture looms larger than ever in Berlin. Most people do not know, however, that the design and decoration of Baroque palaces of this kind has something in common with the architecture of ships. This interplay between architecture and shipbuilding is the focus of the Deutsches Technikmuseum’s special exhibition “Architectura navalis – Floating Baroque.” The museum first established a connection between architecture and ships, albeit somewhat differently, with the opening of the new extension in 2001 and the installation there of the permanent exhibition “Lebenswelt Schiff ” in 2003. The larger objects contained in the maritime exhibition were placed there first, and the new building was built around them. “Architectura navalis – Floating Baroque” depicts a different relationship between architecture and shipbuilding, one in which the stern of the ship itself is treated as a piece of architecture. The stern’s artistic and meticulously designed construction and decoration reached breathtaking maturity in Baroque France, during the reign of Louis XIV. In this volume, the editors Maike Priesterjahn and Claudia Schuster introduce the reader to aspects of culture, science, and technology in Baroque France, and sketch the exhibition’s central argument. Jan Pieper outlines the development of stern architecture from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to its heyday in the eighteenth. Anke Fissabre explores the relationship between naval architecture and interior design. In a second article, Jan Pieper explains the visually stunning iconographic program of French ships in the Age of Absolutism. Finally, Markus Neuwirth discusses the concept of the ‘baroque’ from the perspective of art history. Both this book and the special exhibition are based on the research of the architectural historian Jan Pieper, which also appears in a parallel publication, Das barocke Schiffsheck als Architekturprospekt . Our collaboration with Jan Pieper on this aesthetically stimulating and interesting topic has been fruitful in many respects; it has produced new insights, built bridges to existing research, and thus enriched the research profile of the Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. For many years, the Deutsches Technikmuseum has pursued projects with the Technische Universität Berlin and the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin. Now, this new joint effort with the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen has intensified our commitment to research collaboration between the worlds of academe and the museum. This alliance can also be seen in the museum’s exhibitions themselves. Individual displays and research findings from the permanent exhibition “Lebenswelt Schiff,”
FOREWORD
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such as the reconstruction of ships in the form of models, have been integrated into the special exhibition “Architectura navalis – Floating Baroque.” Likewise, the research findings presented in the permanent exhibition are explored more broadly in the work of Jan Pieper. This connection is also clearly conveyed spatially, as the special exhibition leads directly into the historical section of the permanent exhibition. In turn, the latter includes original models of some of the ships that are discussed in the special exhibition’s portrayal of the historical development of stern architecture. The present volume is intended for those interested in architecture, shipbuilding, and Baroque art. It is not meant to merely supplement the exhibition but rather to stand alone, to delve more deeply into the exhibition’s main themes and the arguments it puts forward. It transports the reader back to an age characterized by rigorous, sumptuous, dramatic creations, and shows how they were gradually transformed into harmonious, playful artistic forms. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who contributed to the account, given both in this book and in the exhibition, of the interplay between land and sea, between architecture and navigation in all its Baroque manifestations. I am especially grateful to Jan Pieper for his help in conceiving the exhibition, to Maike Priesterjahn, the exhibition’s curator, to Claudia Schuster, the Head of the Museum’s Department of Shipping and Navigation, as well as to all the staff members, exhibition designers, graphic designers, and others outside the Museum who have supported this wonderful project and made it a reality. Prof. Dr. Dirk Böndel Chairman, Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin
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FOREWORD
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FOREWORD
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MAIK E PR IES T ER JAHN / CL AUD IA SCHUS T ER
Architectura navalis – Floating Baroque
s for ornamentation, I’d like to do something new. Considering the king’s greatness, it seems fitting not only that his power should be communicated to the furthest reaches of the globe by the number and strength of his ships, but also that his wealth and magnificence should be known by the beauty of his ships’ adornment.”1 With these words, Jean-Baptiste Colbert issued a transformative directive to the builders of the royal fleet in 1669, his first year as Secrétaire d’État à la Marine (Secretary of State of the Navy) to the Sun King, Louis XIV. Thus the ships of France were destined to become floating monumental objects. This statement powerfully expresses the notion, decisive in the Baroque period, that ships ought not only serve commercial interests, military endeavors, the protection of the seaways, and other practical purposes, but that they should also be vehicles at sea and in far-off locations for symbolically communicating the sovereign’s pre-eminence. This representative function clearly accords with the monumental dimension of those architectural manifestations of absolutist rule that continue to fascinate us today in the form of magnificent chateaux and other Baroque palaces. There has been less fascination, however, with Baroque naval architecture as a symbolic means of expressing fame, power, grandeur, and the king’s resplendent position at the center of the absolutist view of the state and the world. And only a handful of experts have concerned themselves with an exciting question: whether and how land-based monumental architecture and naval architecture mutually influenced one another in the Baroque period. It is thus the intention of the Deutsches Technikmuseum’s special exhibition “Architectura navalis,”2 and of the present volume which accompanies it, to make a broader audience aware of the powerful and revealing insights that
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have been gained and the arguments that have been put forward regarding “floating Baroque” architecture. A systematic connection between the architecture of buildings and the construction of ships already existed before Colbert’s programmatic directive. As early as 1629, in his treatise Architectura navalis, Joseph Furttenbach, an architect from Ulm, had not only written about the technical aspects of shipbuilding but also explicitly called ships “sea castles.”3 Nevertheless, it was not until the Baroque age that the artistic design of a ship, especially a part of it as significant as the stern, was used as a medium for the self-fashioning of sovereign power. Only then was the necessary know-how available. Only then was that knowledge applied to shipbuilding. And only then were new organizational structures erected that enabled the merging of concepts and skills from the realms of art, mathematical design, and engineering. It would be shortsighted, however, to think of this as either a purely abstract or a mere analog, one-to-one transfer of the monumental intention of immobile architecture on land to the floating architecture of mobile ships. Rather, an investigation into this connection – which upon closer examination proves to be a mutually reinforcing interaction – must consider the forms and formulas of land and naval architecture on equal footing,4 and it must be embedded in the context of the culture, science, and technology of the time.
Baroque France In order to understand the drive toward monumentalism in Baroque France, it is helpful to look back to what preceded it. In the fourteenth century, the course of French history was decisively influenced by the struggle for the
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French throne between the English king Edward III, of the House of Anjou-Plantagenet, and Philip IV of the House of Valois. Both men claimed the crown for themselves after the death of the French king Charles IV This dispute led to the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), which France eventually won. The victory gave French rulers the sense that they were superior to other European powers. This can be seen as an early root of the French ruling house’s later obsession with monumentalism in the Baroque period. But first there were the Italian Wars (1494 –1559), in which the French kings Charles VIII and Louis XII also laid claim to their rights of inheritance south of the Alps. Charles VIII took Florence, Naples, and Brescia, and Louis XII seized Genoa and conquered Venice. As John Calvin helped the Reformation make inroads into France, lengthy wars of religion broke out. According to the doctrine of Calvinism, only Holy Writ and not religious tradition was the foundation of the Christian faith. In France, the Huguenots fought (1562 –1598) for religious toleration. This was eventually granted to them by the French king Henry IV in the Edict of Nantes (1598), but Catholicism remained the official religion of France. Under Henry IV, France experienced a remarkable economic boom, government bureaucracy was reformed, and the central authority of the king was strengthened. In 1635, France took the side of Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War (1618 –1648) against its keenest competitor for dominance in Europe at the time, the Habsburgs; the conflict ended with the Peace of Westphalia. This was the dawning of a new age in Europe, one characterized by strong central authority and the further development of the form of government known as absolutism, which is so decisive for the understanding of symbolic forms in Baroque art. In France, absolutism began with Henry IV and reached its zenith under Louis XIV. The Age of Absolutism was marked by the subordination of religion to state interests, the erosion of the aristocracy’s power, the strengthening of the economy, and an inclination toward heightened displays of architectural and ceremonial splendor. For the Catholic Church, the fragmentation of Christianity meant it was necessary to win back the faithful, which it attempted to do in part by confronting sober Protestantism with the opulent power of sacred buildings. As for the European princes, they constructed castles and palaces to make their wealth and power visible to all. Louis XIV considered
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himself to be above all other human beings, chosen by God and accountable to Him alone. As an absolute ruler, he was not bound by the law. He drew France’s nobility to his court at Versailles, which went on to become the country’s political and cultural center. Louis founded the Académie royal de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) in 1648, the Académie royale des sciences (Royal Academy of Sciences) in 1666, and the Académie royale de l’architecture (Royal Academy of Architecture) in 1671. The court became a center for important artists and scholars like Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Charles Le Brun, Molière, and Vincenzo Maria Coronelli. All this was an expression of the new superpower France’s aspiration to achieve a position of cultural dominance comparable only with that of ancient Rome. French architecture and French fashion became influential models in Europe, and the French language became the lingua franca. It was in this context, during the Age of Absolutism, that the characteristic forms of Baroque art were developed. For our purposes, the Baroque period lasted from about 1575 to 1770, during which time enormous expense was incurred for the portrayal of royal power. This power was expressed in magnificent buildings, impressive gardens, lively parties, conspicuous fashion, and opulent menus. Painting was marked by stark contrasts between light and dark and by luminous colors. In the realm of music, opera became the dominant genre at court. At the same time, symmetry, precise orders, rules, and compositional structures gained great importance in architecture, art, literature, and music. In a sense, this formal rigor corresponded with the strict organization of the absolutist state structure.5
The Growing Importance of Navigation In the Baroque period, the importance of European navigation grew enormously. This can be seen as the preliminary culmination of a development that had begun in the fifteenth century at the latest. Deep-sea vessels had been indispensable since the late fifteenth century. They were the European rulers’ key to exercising power and achieving their geopolitical goals. In addition, these rulers had a strong interest in exploring new sea and commercial routes, as well as in the commercial wares
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1 A reproduction of Behaim’s 1492 globe, owned by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. It is currently on loan to the Deutsches Technikmuseum for display in the exhibition “Lebenswelt Schiff.”
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of distant lands. The Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias, financed by the Portuguese king John II, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. The Italian sea captain Christopher Columbus, underwritten by the Castilian Crown, reached America in 1492. In 1498, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama found the maritime route to India. And in 1519, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began his circumnavigation of the globe under the Spanish flag. One important precondition for the successful completion of such far-reaching sea voyages was the further development of navigation and cartography. Thus the Geography of Claudius Ptolemy was disseminated in Europe in its Latin translation, completed in 1409. In this work, Ptolemy had described and applied a special cartographic projection method for portraying the globe.6 It was groundbreaking for the development of cartography and was the basis, along with the first globe, produced by Martin Behaim in 1492 (see fig. 1), for the map of the world created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507. In addition, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used Ptolemy’s coordinates, along with latitudes that had been astronomically determined by sailors, to develop a map of the world that portrayed the globe in the projection that has come to be named after him. Mercator projection allowed angles to be preserved on nautical charts, which was of great importance for steering a course on the open sea. Its regular grid of lines of longitude and latitude decisively simplified navigation as well as the description of landmasses and bodies of water. The necessary improvement in navigation7 also required that astronomical measuring instruments be adjusted and improved so that they could be used at sea. Such instruments were used to measure reference points in the sky to determine the position of a ship. Initially, the tools used for measuring angles on board a ship were the same as those used on land: the quadrant and the astrolabe. The quadrant came from ancient Greece, as did the astrolabe, a multifunctional instrument for astronomical measurements and calculations. Both instruments were adapted in the late fifteenth century to the conditions of the open sea; they were shaped as a rectangular frame or a ring to reduce the surface area exposed to the wind and to enable more precise measurement. In order to simplify it, the mariner’s astrolabe did not have a calculating
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function and was thus transformed into a pure measuring instrument. It remained one of the most important navigational instruments of European seafaring until the end of the seventeenth century (see fig. 2).8 Another measuring instrument initially developed for astronomy and land surveying that was improved for use on ships was the Jacob’s staff. To the best of our knowledge, it was first brought to Europe by Arabs in the early eighth century when they began their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. There is evidence that Vasco da Gama’s Arab pilot used a Jacob’s staff during the voyage to India in 1498.9 Thenceforth, the Jacob’s staff was used on board European ships into the seventeenth century to determine latitude and thus one’s position on the globe (see fig. 3). At the same time, the English navigator John Davis improved upon it with his Davis quadrant (see fig. 4). Using a Jacob’s staff to determine the sun’s angle of elevation meant running the risk of looking directly into the sun and thus losing one’s sight. Thus Davis constructed a new version of the Jacob’s staff in 1594. He turned the Jacob’s staff around, so that the sun was now behind the user of this so-called ‘backstaff’ and only the shadow of the Jacob’s staff’s crossbar was measured. Another innovation came in 1731, when, independently of one another, John Hadley in London and Thomas Godfrey in Philadelphia introduced an instrument using mirror reflection. They replaced the two arcs of the Davis quadrant – spanning a total of 90° (quadrant) and used to determine the elevation angle – with a single arc of 45°, or one-eighth of a circle (octant). Advancements in navigational instruments, and the increasing precision with which a ship’s position at sea could be determined and put in relation to known waters, enduringly increased the boldness of sailors. More and more, the seas could be described mathematically and mastered by navigation – and thus turned into a “space for travel” across the globe.10 With the constant transcending of borders into hitherto unknown regions, the seas became less associated with superstition and frightening stories. In accordance with the old image of the world, the unknown and thus extremely dangerous part of the Atlantic Ocean south of the Canary Islands had till then seemed to sailors to lie behind a daunting psychological barrier. On old maps, in descriptions of the earth and universal histories, that area was inhabited by mythical creatures, imaginary races, monsters and
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2 The mariner’s astrolabe measures the elevation angle between the sun and the horizon.
3 The Jacob’s staff measures the elevation angle between a celestial body and the horizon.
4 With an octant, the horizon is sighted and the elevation angle of a celestial body is measured with the aid of a mirror.
monstrosities (see fig. 5). Stories of sea monsters that devoured boats, of magnetic mountains that attracted pieces of iron, and other myths that stunted plans to travel outside familiar domains – all these now relaxed their grip on the human imagination.
tion, and economic exploitation. In the mid-seventeenth century, a race for colonial supremacy began between Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France, Denmark, Sweden, and other nations, even the Electorate of Brandenburg. They all competed for commercial goods, commercial advantages, and trading centers. In the early seventeenth century, new actors got involved in trade like the English, Dutch, and Danish East India Companies. They were followed by the Swedish, the Portuguese and, in 1664, the French East India Company. Initially, spices like pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves were imported. Later it was Indian cotton, Chinese porcelain,
Navigation and Colonization In the Baroque period, navigation took on extraordinary political and economic importance. The discovery of foreign territories also meant their occupation, coloniza-
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5 On Olaus Magnus’s Carta marina (Venice, 1539), sea creatures rule the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean west of Scandinavia.
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Arabian coffee, and Chinese tea. The Netherlands, England, Denmark, France, and Brandenburg all founded West India and Africa companies to bring sugar, tobacco, and rice to Europe. As part of this development, the transatlantic slave trade reached a tragic peak in the seventeenth century. Spain and Portugal were the leading powers on land and sea with the largest colonial empires in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth, they were joined by England, the Netherlands, and France. For example, a large French settlement colony called New France was founded in North America (see fig. 6). French colonies were governed according to strict order, just like the absolutist mother country.
France’s Navy and Naval Policy As France’s colonial activity intensified, it became increasingly apparent that a powerful navy was necessary to protect the new colonies and trade routes. When Armand-Jean du Plessis, better known as Cardinal Richelieu, took over as France’s First Minister under Louis XIII in 1624, France had no ships that could compare with the vessels of the superior fleets of England, Spain, and the Netherlands. Thus Richelieu had the naval shipyards enlarged, founded the Flotte du Ponant for the Atlantic world and the Flotte du Levant for the Mediterranean world, and opened the naval shipyards at Brest and Toulon. After Richelieu’s death in 1642 and the French civil wars from 1648 to 1653, known as the “Fronde,” in which Spain also participated, the French fleet was dramatically reduced. In 1653, a Spanish fleet captured numerous French warships, burning many of them. When Louis XIV assumed personal rule of the country in 1661, he aspired to make the French fleet pre-eminent among the navies of the great sea powers of the age. Thus he made funds available for a comprehensive shipbuilding program.11 One of the most important individuals in this undertaking was Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of finance, commerce, transportation, building, the navy, the colonies, the arts, and the sciences (see fig. 7). Colbert traveled to Italian and Dutch shipyards to gain knowledge of how ships were built there. Furthermore, he re-organized the fleets of the royal navy. The Mediterranean fleet stayed in Toulon, the Atlantic fleet
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was relocated to Lorient and the new port of Rochefort, and a northern fleet was formed in Brest. Moreover, Colbert had new shipyards established in Le Havre, Dunkirk, Saint-Malo, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseille, and in 1669 he decided that the ships should be built exclusively of French materials. In the same year, Colbert assumed the office of Secrétaire d’État à la Marine (Secretary of State of the Navy). He founded schools for shipbuilding, had canals and ports enlarged, and drew the best craftsmen to France’s shipyards. Colbert’s intention was to document every single step in the process of building a first-rate ship12 from keel laying to launch, and to establish nationwide standards for the construction and size of ships according to rates (see fig. 8). The Academy of Sciences developed a handbook for the construction of ships that contained detailed studies of every section of a vessel. This Atlas de Colbert became a standard reference work for French shipbuilders and naval architects, who were now building ships that traveled faster, were better constructed, and – according to their entirely understandable point of view – were also more beautiful to behold than their contemporary counterparts in England and the Netherlands.13 France investigated problems of statics and dynamics associated with shipbuilding and gave birth – albeit initially only in theory – to modern shipbuilding in Europe.14 Under Colbert’s direction, France’s navy experienced a hitherto unknown flourishing. In 1671, the kingdom had 119 first-rate ships of the line (see fig. 7) and had become the third European sea power after Holland and England. One of the flagships was the Royal Louis (commissioned in 1668), with a tonnage of 2,400 tons (see fig. 9).
Shipbuilding in Baroque France In the Baroque period, the leading seafaring nations went to great pains to emphasize the magnificence, grandeur, and military might of their rulers in the design of their ships. An example of the lengths to which they were willing to go – indeed of utter extravagance – in the pursuit of this ideal is the Swedish galleon Vasa. An overly ambitious desire for monumentality led the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus to overload the ship’s stern. Seven hundred wooden statues and an additional deck
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7 A French statesman with extraordinary influence: Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619 –1683)
of cannon made the ship fatally top-heavy; the Vasa sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. This is a peculiar exception, of course, but it does direct our attention to the part of the ship that was most important for fulfilling its monumental intention: the stern. A magnificently designed stern became the hallmark of Baroque ships. Stern design varied from nation to nation. In the Netherlands sterns boasted panel paintings, in England ornamentation. In France, an initially sculptural decorative style yielded to an architectural character. The architectural historian Jan Pieper has shown that, regardless of these differences, in general the sterns of ships produced by the great European sea powers evolved from merely functional elements into monumental architectural façades. Pieper dates the first beginnings of this specifically architectural chapter in the history of shipbuilding to the time around 1530.15 By the early seventeenth century, naval architecture overwhelmingly followed a uniform pattern. Typical elements of the ship’s stern were a multi-deck structure divided into levels like the façades of buildings on land, a vertical organization along window bays, balustrades, a ceremonial balcony
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in the central bay, and a coat of arms on a pediment (see fig. 10). The monumental architectural design of the ship’s stern achieved its greatest maturity in France. Louis XIV, whom Voltaire dubbed the “greatest patron of the arts in history,” the one who had given the arts a greater impetus than “all the other kings combined,”16 decreed in a royal ordinance of 1673 that ships should adhere to uniform architectural principles not only in their technical but also in their aesthetic design. He had workshops for architecture, sculpture, and painting opened at the naval shipyards, and he filled various offices, such as the Dessinateur des vaisseaux du Roi (Designer of Royal Ships), with artists of the highest quality. It was in this context that the royal court painter Charles Le Brun, who had previously been entrusted with the artistic decoration of the Palace of Versailles, was named by Colbert to head up the artists’ workshops at the shipyards in 1662. He was tasked not only with ensuring that the navigational and design needs of shipbuilding were met, but also that its monumental intention was executed. At the Sun King’s decree, French naval architecture was given the same status as monumental architecture on land. In addition to architectural features that were already considered standard, like division into levels and the ceremonial balcony, other forms were now translated from land-based architecture to the ship’s stern, such as risalits, balusters, and pilasters. This can be seen as a first step in the mutual influence between the architecture of buildings and that of ships during the Baroque period. As for the shipbuilders themselves, they had a special problem to confront: the architecture that was supposed to give the stern a monumental character had to be mounted on the ship’s hull, which was constructed according to the principles of fluid dynamics. Thus elements from building façades could not simply be projected onto the ship. Instead, on the stern we find them tilted and with sloped symmetric axes. They are adapted to the curved form of the hull, which is tilted aft and tapers off above the waterline. But the process did not stop with a mere formal adaptation to the stern’s geometry. According to Pieper, the constraints of functionality in the architecture of the stern façade were “not simply accepted. Rather, they became the starting point for an architectural composition that sought to show, precisely in ship design […], that neither order nor
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8 With the advent of the ‘line of battle’ tactic in the seventeenth century, warships were classified into ‘rates’ (on this image in German: Rang) according to their size and number of cannon.
9 The Royal Louis was the flagship of the French Royal Navy between 1669 and 1691.
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10 Le Soleil Royal (launched ca. 1690) was one of Louis XIV ’s most magnificent ships of the line. This model was made by Hans Bosma and is owned by the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg.
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beauty can exist outside of Euclidean geometry and harmonious proportions.”17 Therefore the aesthetic ideal so characteristic of the Renaissance pertains here as well. As the master builder Leon Battista Alberti had written in the fifteenth century, “Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by concinnitas [i.e. harmony, proper proportion], the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature.”18 According to this logic, the application of architectural forms to the stern also had to respect the laws of optical perception. In this sense, a one-to-one formal translation would not have resulted in an optically convincing stern façade. Instead, the individual architectural elements had to be adapted to the hull by means of perspectival slanting and distortion, and this could only be achieved by following a system. Jan Pieper has demonstrated that the slanted geometry of stern architecture can be expressed in whole-number ratios that correspond to Pythagorean harmony.19 The proportions underlying the sterns on French ships contributed decisively to their stunning effect. In contrast to the Swedish Vasa, which scholars now believe was not built according to a set of plans, French ships were constructed according to blueprints drawn up on a scientific basis. In particular, the stern façade corresponded to a meticulously composed harmony, such that French Baroque ships left an enduringly defining mark on the oceans. The notion of harmony itself was in no way foreign to the time. Rather, it endured through the Renaissance – it suffices to think of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man – and into the Baroque period. According to this view, human beings are divided into mathematically harmonious proportions. Thus in his work on human physiognomy (De humana physiognomonia, 1586), the polymath Giambattista della Porta defined an equal tripartite division of the human figure – from the naval to the genitals, from the naval to the breast, and from the breast to the neck – as a consummate virtue.20 On the other hand, there were also inner virtues and qualities that a ruler in Baroque France was supposed to have, especially prudence (prudentia), wisdom (sapientia), fortitude (fortitudo), justice (iustitia), and moderation (temperantia). Under Louis XIV, reference was supposed to be made to these royal virtues and attributes in the design of ships.
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Thus names were chosen for individual vessels that referred to the qualities or attributes of an ideal ruler; they were displayed on nameplates on the stern. Examples are Le Prudent (The Prudent), Le Brillant (The Radiant), and Le Formidable (The Magnificent). But it was not only the name of the ship that alluded to an individual royal quality or attribute. The lavish ornamentation of French ships was also informed by a comprehensive iconographic program that embraced the stern, the quarter galleries, and the beakhead.21
The Transformation of Naval Ornamentation into a Central Motif of Rococo When Jean Bérain assumed responsibility for the decorative design of French ships in 1674, he was confronted with a problem: how could the decorative and ornamental elements of monumental architecture on land, as well as from the earlier decoration of ships’ hulls, be adapted to the special geometric requirements of the hull in such a way as to enhance their aesthetic and communicative effect? An especially prominent decorative element was the shell motif, which had been used on ships ever since antiquity. Traditionally, this image had been portrayed directly on the stern as if it were on a flat plane, that is without being tilted or curved and certainly not treated as an element of architecture. This changed with Jean Bérain. As Jan Pieper in particular has demonstrated, Bérain also ingeniously adapted the shell motif to the tilted and slanted geometry of the hull. At the same time, he aimed at a creative unity between the ship’s ornamentation and its physical structure.22 When François-Antoine Vassé succeed Bérain in the office of Dessinateur des vaisseaux du Roi in 1711, Colbert’s grand project of building up the royal fleet had long been completed. Nevertheless, during Vassé’s tenure in office several ships of the line were produced each year in Brest and Le Havre alone.23 For these ships, Vassé meticulously expanded on his predecessor’s decorative program. He repurposed the seashell and its organic ornamental structure as an architectural medium, transforming the hitherto decorative shell motif into a
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11 Rocaille is characterized by asymmetry, tilted axes, and S- and C-curves inspired by the shape of scalloped shell edges.
structural element of naval architecture. For example, the shell shape was used for corbels, pediments, cartouches, and pedestal-like components.24 As Pieper argues, French Baroque shipbuilding thus also ultimately gave rise to the decorative motif known as rocaille. With its intentional asymmetry, tilted axes, and striking scalloped shell edges, rocaille became a central stylistic motif of Late Baroque art25 (see fig. 11). In Pieper’s view, rocaille was thus the product of a transfer during the Late
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Baroque, or Rococo, period (beginning ca. 1720) from this type of naval architecture to the interior design of buildings on the French mainland.26 The striking asymmetries, slanted axes, and distortions typical in the Rococo interior design of palaces and other buildings were, however, still governed by geometric principles. Indeed, they can be understood as a translation of ship design back to the architectural design of interior rooms, as in the division of wall space, for example. This process can also be traced historically. Pieper notes that Vassé worked on designs for the Galerie Dorée, the “golden gallery,” in the Hôtel de Toulouse at the same time (the early eighteenth century) as he was overseeing the construction of Louis XIV’s fleet. LouisAlexandre de Bourbon, former admiral of the royal fleet and head of the shipbuilding commission, had asked Vassé to develop a maritime-themed interior design for his mansion, the Hôtel de Toulouse – “the very same Paris mansion that art historians consider the birthplace of the new style.”27 It is therefore not surprising that the shell elements characteristic of Rococo art, which had initially been developed for the stern design of French Baroque ships, were now also to be found in the realm of interior design. The path from the shell to rocaille, the second step in a process of mutual transformation and transfer between the stone and floating architectures of Baroque France, seems to have already been understood by the goldsmith and architect Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. Such is the impression, at any rate, when the frontispiece of his Œuvre, published in 1748 (see fig. 12), is inspected in this light.28 These two processes – the transformative translation of the architectural forms and formulas of buildings to the sterns of ships, and the transfer of architectural elements of stern design back to land – are the focus of the present volume and of the Deutsches Technikmuseum’s exhibition “Architectura navalis – Floating Baroque.”29
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12 The sea god Triton presents the mother of the arts with a shell, so that she may use its natural form as a model. And indeed, above these figures rises an architectural composition with a broad balcony whose balustrade terminates in a gigantic rocaille. The classical architecture of the building in the upper left recedes into the background. Across from the Rococo structure is a seventeenth-century-style Baroque stern façade.
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JAN PIEPER
From Ship to Floating Architecture
he history of shipbuilding is generally written as a history of technology. It is framed as a story of continuous progress in the construction, size, and longevity of hulls, and of constant improvement in the engineering and rigging of sailing vessels – until wind power was ultimately replaced in the nineteenth century by machines, whose technical perfection was then destined to proceed into the future. From this point of view, the ship is exclusively a technical device, a watercraft undergoing a never-ending historical process of increasing sophistication. This view is of course legitimate, and it makes perfect sense considering that ships are clearly functional in nature and are the products of engineering. Yet ships, unlike all other means of conveyance, also possess all the qualities of architecture. They have habitable interiors, sophisticated and monumental outward-facing façades, and a mixture of public and private spaces. It is therefore not only possible but also advisable to view the history of shipbuilding as architectural history – a history in which the expressive value, quality of accommodation, iconographic program, and monumental intention of the floating building are articulated as precisely as in all other forms of architecture, a history in which, all functionality aside, power of expression is accorded the same prominence as it is for stationary buildings on land. This is the approach taken in the exhibition Architectura navalis, as well as in this contribution, which traces the origins of this development. Ships did not always have architectural qualities. Rather, such qualities accrued gradually, in a precisely traceable process of historical transformation spanning from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.
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Antiquity – The Ship as a Living Being Water vessels may be the oldest means of transportation in human history. They existed long before plants and animals were domesticated in the tenth millennium B.C., and certainly before the invention of the wheel in the fourth millennium B.C. The oldest extant depictions of boats, such as a carving on an ivory dagger hilt from Gebel el-Arak in northern Egypt (see fig. 1) (3300/3200 B.C.), date to Egypt’s pre-dynastic period, but it is safe to say that boats are much older. They were probably known to prehistoric hunter-gatherer cultures. Of course, these small, structurally and nautically simple vessels were not yet ships. In the proper sense of the word, one cannot speak of ships until the advent of large, seagoing vessels, such as those Pharaoh Sahure sent from the Nile Delta to Syria over the Mediterranean. A relief from his mortuary temple, dated to the year 2480 B.C. (see fig. 2), depicts these ships. They are open, about 18 meters in length, with a towering bow and stern, tapered at both ends, and manned by about 16 rowers but also equipped with a mast and sail. Stretched along the entire length of the ship’s central axis is a thick hawser that served to strengthen the hull lengthwise and prevent it from sagging. About 1,000 years later, ships were once again depicted on a mortuary temple, this time of Pharaoh Hatshepsut (see fig. 3). They are shown returning to the legendary Land of Punt after a long sea voyage. Their construction is basically the same, but they are more sophisticated in every detail and, at about 30 meters in length, are almost twice the size. These Egyptian reliefs from the Old and the New Kingdom exhibit a peculiarity of early ships that would remain unchanged down to the Middle Ages. A wide-open eye is painted on
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2 Relief from the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Sahure, ca. 2480 B. C.
1 Carving on an ivory dagger hilt from Gebel el-Arak (3300 / 3200 B. C., Louvre)
3 Depiction of ships from the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut (1460 B. C.)
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4 The first ship in ancient mythology, the Argo , was portrayed as a living being. It could speak and had all-seeing eyes on its bow that recognized all threats ahead of time.
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5 The custom of painting large, wide-open eyes on the bow of the ship was part of the standard decoration of Greek and Roman triremes.
6 Roman cargo ship with a swan neck on the stern. Torlonia relief from the port of Ostia, 2nd cent. B. C.
the bow, and the equally high stern stem curves back on itself like a tail. This is certainly more than a mere decorative fancy. Rather, it is the manifestation of an archaic understanding of the ship as a living being – a notion that arose either because of the similarity of the ship’s rolling motion in water to that of large amphibians, or because it was meant to forge a supernatural connection to the world of mythical creatures. The first ship of ancient mythology, the Argo (see fig. 4), could speak, had all-seeing eyes on its bow that recognized all threats ahead of time, and was able to warn the Argonauts about them. To those who traveled on it, this first ship of antiquity was thus much more than a mere technical device or a watercraft, much more than a protective shell between them and the bottomless deeps. It was the personification of all the rescuing and aiding powers that sought to protect the men on board from the dangers of the sea.
open, as if to inspire fear in – or perhaps express dismay about – a threat appearing in the ship’s course. Additional zoomorphic forms appeared on the ships of the Roman commercial fleet. In line with the ships’ non-military function, they were less aggressive. The stern stem, which since Egyptian times had been curved upward like a tail, became the neck of a swan, as can be seen on the so-called Torlonia relief from the port of Ostia (second century B.C.) (see fig. 6). The zoomorphic shape of the stem was also a characteristic element of ship decoration in northern European seafaring. The dragon ships of the Vikings (see fig. 7), which are familiar to us above all from the picture stones of Gotland and the Bayeux Tapestry (see fig. 8), are a perfect example. Medieval Christian merchant ships also retained this decorative form. We know this especially from depictions of ships in illuminated manuscripts of the age, for example one from a thirteenth-century English bestiary (see fig. 9). In this period, however, something quite new emerged with the advent of the Hanseatic cog: the bow and stern of the cog were outfitted with elevated platforms meant to improve the ship’s defensive capabilities. This was a decisive innovation in shipbuilding, one that must be understood as a first step away from a zoomorphic understanding of ships and toward the architectural design of fore- and aftercastles. Here we see the beginning of a process in which ships were given a new, architectural form. It lasted into the seventeenth century and, in sum, entailed the metamorphosis of the
From Animal Form to Architecture Zoomorphic elements of ship decoration attesting to the continued existence of this conceptual world over many centuries can be found in large numbers in all ancient cultures, both in the Mediterranean world and in northern Europe. Especially long-lived was the custom of painting large, wide-open eyes on the bow of the ship. Not only were they on the mythical Argo, but they were also part of the standard decoration of Greek and Roman triremes (see fig. 5). Their eyes were wide
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