Machicolation: some postscripts. - Castle Studies Group

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Machicolation: some postscripts.The villa was built after the marriageof Hieronimo Giustinian to AgnesinaBadoer: a union of two of the wealthiest butalso the oldest families in Venice. They didnot need the trappings of feudal architectureto disguise parvenu status, althoughpossibly the move from Venice to terrafirma did call for the suggestion of longtermland ownership and of being part of along-standing mainland aristocracy; therehad been a castle on the site centuries before.Perhaps the Venetian chimneys showa need not to cut ties with the city. The villahas clearly been restored and has sufferedfrom decay. The merlons of the walls andgatehouse have been rebuilt but the cornertowers lack merlons and most of theirmachicolation brackets have been brokenaway. The present merlons, Ghibelline aswe have seen, are puzzling – the Venetianswere not known for espousing the Imperialcause and the drawing of 1536 seems toshow square merlons. 17 But we can be reasonablysure that no restoration would haveconverted merely token machicolation into“real” machicolation: this was built thisway.There has never been much doubtthat machicolation was used as a symbol ofpower and authority even when circumstancesmade it impracticable to use, northat it changed through full-size but nonfunctionalmachicolation into a merely decorativemotif. One thing that Roncade tellsus is that we cannot be sure that the pace ofthis change corresponded with the abandonmentof mediaeval, pre-gunpowderstyles of military architecture. At Roncade,we are in a world where a client is makingchoices about what his building will sayabout him and apparently enjoying it. Andthis seems to include a joke!End Notes1. CSG Journal 23, 2009-10, p. 191.2. The Journal of British Archaeological AssociationConference Transactions No. VIII. Thearticle is entitled “Ecclesia Pulchra, EcclesiaFortis.” The title derives from Henry of Huntingdonwho had written about the strength ofthe church in “Historia Anglorum” (c.1129-33.) Gem’s article is noted by Pevsner andHarris in “Buildings of England: Lincolnshire.”(It should be stated at this point that thepresent writer is not the John Harris whoco-authored the Pevsner book.) Gem had proposedthe idea in 1978 in a paper presented tothe Society of Antiquaries and in 1984 in theessay “English Romanesque Architecture” inthe catalogue to the exhibition “English RomanesqueArt 1066-1200” at the HaywardGallery. Mediaeval Archaeology 41. The articleis entitled “The Early Norman Castle atLincoln and a Re-evaluation of the OriginalWest Tower of Lincoln Cathedral.”3. This piece is immensely interesting in manyways, not least in its study of the use made bythe Normans of Roman fortified sites. Seealso “In Hoc Signo” by Anthony Quiney inArchitectural History Vol. 44 (2000) whichdiscusses the design of the west front as awhole. Quiney suggests there may have beentimber “fighting platforms” spanning the portalsin addition to the machicolation. Onemight think that anyone on the platforms wasat risk from the machicolation above. Remigius(who also appears as Remi) had foughtat Hastings. The tricky questions of militarysymbolism in cathedral architecture and thesignificance of the triple portal entrance areraised in Otto von Simpson “The Gothic Cathedral.”4. Stocker and Vince convincingly argue for thekeep, as has been suggested. There is an argumentthat the decorative frieze on the westfront is part of a conversion of a militarybuilding into a religious one.5. Harris, op cit. p. 193, amongst others. See thearticle by Peter Burton in CSG Journal 22, p.228 et seq., photos 4 and 11.6. Work certainly could be done to place thisstructure in the overall typology of early hallkeeps. See, for instance, the work published in“A Suggested Dual Origin for Keeps” by MW Thompson in Fortress 15, November 1992.7. If we are accept the general idea of thisbuilding being a keep, there may be scope forsuggesting alternatives to these reconstructions.The question of the east wall is difficultto resolve.The Castle Studies Group Journal No 24: 2010-11 226
8. This problem - whether the tower, accepted as akeep, was the way into the church or not - iscrucial. If it was specifically a keep, why thethree portals into a ground floor space? If thenarthex to the church, what defensive measureswere present in the church building to equalthose on the west elevation? There may be somefunction of the undercroft ground floor spacethat we are not aware of.9. There are odd features to the wall near thejunction with this tower which may be connectedwith a change in the design. I have made thepoint that rectangular towers were more commonin Italy in the Middle Ages, but this is notan absolute rule. My attention has been drawn toa tower, probably originally of the late 14th orearly 15th century, at the Rocca di Sanvitale diFontanellato which is remarkably like the roundSoncino tower, except that it lacks the upperrange of machicolation. It seems very likely thatit was once a shorter tower, up to the machicolationlevel – it almost matches other towers at therocca, round ones – but has been raised inheight, retaining the machicolation, when it wasintegrated into the residential range of a newcastle. If a similar thing happened at Soncino,the relative levels of the machicolation on theround tower and the rest of the castle seem onlyto explained by the round tower having beenpart of an earlier, lower enceinte, with roundtowers, perhaps of an early 15th century date,retained and raised for some reason when a newcastle with higher walls and square towers wasbuilt. That would account for the anomalousround tower, but raises not only the question ofwhy the round tower was kept and altered, butother questions as well, such as the strangelylow height of the supposed original and why theoriginal, lower range of machicolation was notdemolished when the tower was raised.10. As seen in paintings such as Carpaccio’s“Miracle of the Reliquary of the Holy Cross” of1494, for instance.11. The angle of the batter here rather dispels thesuggestion that vertically dropped missiles wereintended to be deflected into a horizontal trajectory.12. Undemanding because the brackets cantileverout in small steps, minimising stresses on thematerial.Machicolation: some postscripts.13. (a.k.a Maschikulis) Built 1724-29, the architectwas Maximilian von Welsch and the engineerBalthasar Neumann. The tower itself isround, too, which reinforces the mediaevalfeel.14. See Paul Holberton “Palladio’s Villas” forthe history of this villa (although no-one suggeststhat its unknown architect was Palladio.)See also Carolyn Kolb Lewis “The VillaGiustinian at Roncade,” (New York 1977 -Lewis argues that the architect was TullioLombardo) and the review of this book inJSAH vol. 39, no. 3, (Oct. 1980) by GeorgeHersey.15. At Lorenzo’s grandfather Cosimo’s countryhouses or farms of some four decades earlier:Cafaggiolo and Carregi for instance, it is thehouse that has the trappings of fortification,albeit with false machicolation. At Poggio,the house is clearly and ostentatiously unfortified.16. This similarity is the more evident becausethe towers are shown in the map of 1536 ashaving low-pitched tiled roofs over theircrenellation, a feature that is often found todayon other Italian castles, but the date forwhich is usually difficult to decide.17. Although an 18C drawing shows these merlonsas having the Ghibelline form. SomeVenetian villas, though, do seem to have hadGhibelline merlons from their earliest days,for instance the Villa Porto (a.k.a the CastelloPorto-Colleoni) in Thiene, a Venetian villawhich seems to have been built with them inthe late 1450s. They are built into the masonryof the wall of an additional storey added inabout 1520 but still visible (intentionally so?).Other similar merlons on the building havebeen restored and might not be authentic. Itmay be that the move from city to countrysidesuggested to Porto a retrospective wish todemonstrate a Ghibelline alliance, along witha feudal past. But it may also be the case thatsuch merlons had simply acquired a non-politicaldecorative significance and became afashion statement; you can see earringsformed of the CND motif worn on CoronationStreet. The model might have been the VaticanBelvedere of 1484-7 (see Ackerman,“Distance Points – Essays in Theory andRenaissance Art and Architecture” 1991, pp.303-320.) But there are plenty of unquestionableexamples of thoughtless restoration usingswallow tails, and Italian restorers doseem to have had a penchant for the shape.The Castle Studies Group Journal No 24: 2010-11 227
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