Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Architecture
Tropic Architecture, John Shannon Hendrix
Tropic Architecture, John Shannon Hendrix
Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications
Mannerist architects in the Cinquecento created what can be called “tropic architecture.” They set out to break the rules of classical architecture, but the rule-breaking was done systematically, by applying rhetorical tropes, or figures of speech, to architectural composition, the four most common being metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. According to Paul Oskar Kristeller, rhetoric was an important basis of Renaissance humanism. Students learned tropes and other figures of speech from well-circulated classical texts such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Quintilian’s Institutio oratorio. Examples of tropic devices can be found in works such as Giulio Romano’s Palazzo del …