14 - The Matrix Regained: Reflections on the Use of the Grid in the Architectural Theories of Nicolaus Goldmann and Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand

Summary

The gulf between Dutch 17th-century architectural theory and architectural education in early 19th-century France is large. This distance is more than one of time and space; it is defined by a cultural and intellectual context that had changed radically, by different aims and motives and by another way of thinking about architecture. Nevertheless, this article will focus on two architectural theorists on either side of the divide, making a comparison between the mid-17th-century architectural theorist Nicolaus Goldmann (1611–1665) in the Dutch Republic and the French architect and academy teacher Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760–1834) in the revolutionary years around 1800. Could Goldmann have been an Early Modern source for aspects of Durand's compositional method? Their writings show some remarkable similarities, the most obvious being aspects of the visual appearances of their theories; to be more precise, in their similar uses of the grid. Although they do so each in their own specific ways, they both apply the grid as a modular design tool and as an elaborate proportional system, which constitutes the core of both theories. The various visual similarities between these two theories raise the question of whether their work could be historically interconnected in some way.

Goldmann's universe

When, at the age of 54, the Silesian-born Nicolaus Goldmann died in the Dutch university town of Leiden in 1665 he left his magnum opus, a book comprising the whole field of architecture, unpublished. However, for several decades he had shared his insights with students from all over Europe, especially the German states, Poland, and Scandinavia, but even from as far away as Ireland. Following the publications of his books on fortification, an influential tract on the Ionic volute, and two manuals on specific instruments for drawing architecture to scale, his comprehensive theory on civil architecture was about to be published in Berlin under the sponsorship of the Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm. Had his life not ended prematurely, the influence of his work in northern Europe might have equaled that of Vincenzo Scamozzi's L’idea della architettura universale (Venice, 1615)—both being systematic handbooks in which architecture was conceived as a mathematical discipline, in accordance with contemporary scientific standards. Nevertheless, his legacy spread across northeastern Europe in the form of nearly identical manuscript copies taken home by his mainly aristocratic students.