Alum in Action: Ann C. Huppert's Scholarship Acknowledges Construction as a Collective Enterprise

Ann C. Huppert (MArH '92, PhD in Arch. History '01)
Associate Professor of Architectural History, 
University of Washington, College of Built Environments

Alumna Ann C. Huppert (MArH '92, PhD in Architectural History '01) was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship to support her ongoing project titled "The Culture of Construction in Sixteenth-Century Rome" that she is developing into a forthcoming book. 

Huppert is an architectural historian whose research and teaching address architecture, landscape, and urbanism in the early modern period, especially on the Italian peninsula and in the broader Mediterranean world. In addition to her forthcoming title supported by the NEH fellowship, she is also is writing a comprehensive construction history of the Roman Church of Il Gesù in collaboration with Pamela O. Long. 

Her first book, Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy: Art, Science, and the Career of Baldassarre Peruzzi, (Yale University Press, 2015), investigates the close connections between architecture and the figural arts in the early sixteenth century, and through the lens of period drawings, explores Peruzzi’s mathematical aptitude, representational skills, and the influence of antiquity on his designs. She has written on Vitruvius in Bramante’s Rome, Giorgio Vasari and Siena, mapping Rome, and on the design process for new St. Peter’s at the Vatican, with articles appearing in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome and in edited volumes.

We asked Huppert to tell us more about her investigations into crafting a narrative around the culture of construction as a collective endeavor, how her fellowship will support this scholarship, and what inspires her teaching in architectural history.

Tell us about some of the main ideas and themes are you are developing for your book project "The Culture of Construction in Sixteenth-Century Rome."

There has long been a need to dismantle the myth of the individual heroic architect, and considerations of modern practice have initiated this reckoning for the profession and its histories. As I examine in my work, the pervasive narrative of the architect operating in isolation stems to the early modern period, and I explore its origins within the orbit of Michelangelo, especially in his work on rebuilding St. Peter’s at the Vatican in the mid-sixteenth century.  

Overall, my project aims to tell an alternative and more inclusive story by acknowledging that construction was a collective enterprise and by amplifying the myriad and essential contributions of a wide range of workers, including stone carvers, carters, masons and merchants. 

I also seek to redefine architectural authorship: alongside the theoretical erudition considered the purview solely of the designer I also elevate the importance of practical knowledge and the contributions of workers. 

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One aspect of this research is your goal to “highlight the unsung contributors of early modern construction.” Tell us more about this.

I am looking at a series of well-known monuments that define Rome’s sixteenth-century urban fabric. Buildings like St Peter’s Basilica, the Palazzo Farnese, the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Church of the Gesù, and the Villa Giulia are recognizable landmarks, and we associate names of both patrons and architects with bringing them into existence: popes like Julius II and Paul III and a wide-ranging group of architects that includes Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Vignola as well as Michelangelo. 

My interest lies not only in what designs took form but
how those designs were realized, which I elaborate by 
casting a different focus on the surviving documentary
and visual evidence for these projects.

My explorations in the archives have revealed an expanded cast of contributors within the workforce. These individuals are not entirely unknown, but their contributions have been undervalued.  One such worker, with a particularly compelling story, is Bartolommeo Baronino, who was a mason originally from Milan. Like many other northern craftsmen, the booming construction trade drew Baronino to Rome in 1535. Arriving at age 24, his first recorded position was as a technical advisor in the civic office of the Maestri di Strade, which oversaw the maintenance of the city’s streets and infrastructure. These “Masters of the Streets” served at the behest of the pope and that connection seems to have served Baronino well. He soon appears at multiple building projects undertaken by Pope Paul III Farnese, including the family palace, and these assignments escalated his social standing and responsibilities. At the Palazzo Farnese, Baronino rose from an initial job of paving the fronting piazza to serving in the important role of capomaestro, or master mason, throughout the 1540s. Written notations on drawings provide a record of the exchanges over design decisions that occurred between Baronino and Antonio da Sangallo, the pope’s chief architect.

Baronino continued to ascend in the building ranks. By 1551 he was administering the construction of the Villa Giulia, built for a subsequent pope, Julius III, and he held that supervisory position for the next several years. One late evening in September 1554, following a dinner party, he was murdered by an unidentified assailant, possibly a professional rival. The attack took place just inside Rome’s northern gate.  

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Baronino was buried in Pantheon in the chapel of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi. This newly established confraternity of artists and architects included Sangallo and Vignola, Perino del Vaga and Taddeo Zuccaro among its members. Baronino’s burial plaque, still visible in the chapel today, identifies him as “most celebrated architect” and indeed he had been responsible not only for supervisory roles at several papal projects but also designed the Palazzo Capodiferro-Spada down the street from the Palazzo Farnese. His prominent burial site attests to his standing in the period and assured his lasting memory, but his story deserves to be more widely known.
 

What specifically will the fellowship allow you to do? 

Above all, this fellowship grants me precious time to immerse myself in writing and bring together the strands of the research I have completed. I will spend my time in both Seattle and in Rome, with access to archives.

My previous research focused on architectural drawings as a record of the design ideas and professional development for one sixteenth-century architect, Baldassarre Peruzzi. 

Drawings remain a source of information for my current
project but much of my research involves more humble
account registers. 

These mundane records list daily expenditures, including workers’ wages and, more occasionally, references to specific building parts or elements. From these lists it is possible to track not only the involvement and connections between individuals, but also changes in their status, from member of the workforce to supervisory roles, for example.

Baronino is just one among many craftsmen whose stories emerge from the account books.  He worked on several projects together with a stone carver, Paolo Pianetti. Pianetti’s story is less about rising to a position of authority than to being a participant in multiple significant projects. He was a significant contributor to various important works, from St. Peter’s to the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Villa Giulia.

I have been able to piece together a network of intertwined individuals whose stories emerge from the traces in the records: stone carvers tasked with creating architectural elements like column capitals modeled on built examples within the city, wood merchants operating warehouses near the Tiber River and behind the Pantheon, and carters responsible for transporting materials, including large amounts of travertine brought into Rome from nearby Tivoli. It is not entirely surprising to find many of them working together, as might be true in any city. Finding these individuals and mapping the locations of their labors brings the early modern city to life.

You have taught architectural history for over 25 years. What are some of your favorite aspects of teaching, especially in this discipline?

It’s exciting to convey stories of buildings from the past and to see a spark of curiosity ignite in my students, many of whom are beginning to study architecture as their future career, along with others who simply come to the courses out of a general interest in the built environment.  

Architecture provides a vivid lens through which to
examine history and human creation.
 

What kinds of lessons or lasting impacts from the A-School do you take with you in your professional life?

My time at the A-school offered me a wonderful introduction to the built environment in its multiple facets. 

As I delved into the richness of architectural history, 
I also learned from classes and classmates in landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, in particular. 

I continue to work across these fields and with a range of interdisciplinary colleagues in my current position at the University of Washington. I also established lasting friendships and professional connections with architectural historians and professional practitioners alike, including Rob Corser (MArch '93). That’s where the professional and personal come together since we’ll celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary in September.