Introduction
In the preface to Renaissance und Barock (1888), one of the
founding modern histories of architecture, the young Swiss
art historian Heinrich Wölffl in explained the intentions of
his book:
The subject of this study is the disintegration of the Renais-
sance. It is intended to be a contribution to the history of style
rather than of individual artists. My aim was to investigate
the symptoms of decay and perhaps to discover in the ‘capri-
ciousness and the return to chaos’ a law which would vouch-
safe one an insight into the intimate workings of art. This, I
confess, is to me the real aim of art history.^1We might not now agree with Wölffl in’s views that the works
of architecture appearing in Rome during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries describe a descent from the High
Renaissance into a state of chaos. Nor would we fi nd it
remarkable to write the histories of art and architecture as
other than the history of painters, sculptors and architects.
Wölffl in’s brief words of introduction nevertheless raise a
number of questions. How, for example, and why should
historians study architecture? How does architecture change
over time as a concept, art and institution? And why does
change occur? Because of factors internal to architecture
itself, or because of the forces to which architects are subject?