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more subtle deconstruction of the evidence. Issues of class, gender, and
ethnicity have entered the debate, and historians have begun to consider
how patrons seek to fashion identities through architectural patronage.
The role of the viewer as the “reader” of the agenda presented by the
building has also begun to receive attention.
Yet patronage studies bring their own limitations. The Marxist legacy
tended to foster an over-deterministic approach to architectural design,
perceiving the architect as propelled by inexorable social, political, and
economic forces. The architect-patron relationship may be elucidated in
considerable detail, but it is skewed by the bias towards the patronage
which generated the primary-source material in the first place. Unless a
substantial body of drawings survives, it is challenging task, in a study
based on patronage, to give due attention to artistic development and
design issues, or to assess the more conceptual aspects of the design phi-
losophy. Nonetheless, the multiple nuances conferred by complex patron-
age situations may add a revelatory new dimension—even to an architect
as well studied as Palladio—when based on ground-breaking research.88
The inherent interdisciplinarity of patronage-based studies ensures their
lasting value to scholarship.
Architects and ProtiThe architect’s monograph, enlivened by its human interest, focuses
attention on the development of an individual designer’s personal style
and achievement. One of the first architects in Venice to become the
subject of a modern monograph was Mauro Codussi, whose career had
been almost entirely forgotten since his death in 1504 until his identity
was rediscovered by Paoletti at the end of the 19th century.89 Thanks to
his mastery of space and light, Codussi’s economical style appealed to
Modernist taste and theory. At the same time, the monographic format
tends to privilege the better documented architect, educated in the
classical tradition, over the more technically trained local proto. Pietro
Lombardo’s career ran parallel to that of Codussi, but his refined, erudite
use of classical ornament, executed with consummate skill, appeals less
88 This is impressively demonstrated by Tracy E. Cooper, Palladio’s Venice (New Haven/
London, 2005).
89 Luigi Angelini, Codussi (Milan, 1945); Lionello Puppi and Loredana Olivato Puppi,
Mauro Codussi e l’architettura veneziana del Primo Rinascimento (Milan, 1977).