Or how to solve puzzles in architecture and art (and tourism) using wisely your search engine
Modern tourism has changed, sometimes for the better. You don’t need to wonder what’s in front of you: point your phone’s camera at it and most of the time, Google Lens will point you to the a Wikipedia article or some other helpful resource.
That’s mostly good for bulky, well geolocated, monuments. It does not work so well for details.
This story starts with such a detail, the goat (?) skull in this picture (also inset to the left). And I say goat because it’s got curled (twisted?) horns. I found them in Verona, close to Juliet’s balcony (which you should probably miss), and multiplied by three. In the center of triangles, and looking positively as sinister as the bone-dry skulls in spaghetti westerns, with riders in the background, are meant to evoke. Was it because the owners were cattle herders or owners? Or (gasp) Satanic worshipers?
It obviously piqued my curiosity, but looking up skulls, or goat skulls, or even satanic skulls, + Verona didn’t really yield anything meaningful. I was 1/3rd through my trip, and there were better and beautiful things to think about (like, why are there so many commercial signs in mosaic in Venice? That’s left (maybe) for another one).
But I was going to visit Vicenza next, the cradle and building site of Palladio. So of course I tried to read the “Four books of architecture”, by the same author. It’s a rather dry treaty on how to build, but it yields some curious engineering tips (also left for other post, maybe).
Along with copious illustrations. Like this one (not the one I saw, I didn’t get that far), which shows a goat or cow or at any rate, the same kind of skull, in a slightly different context.
Palladio was possibly the greatest architect ever. By “diligently” (his words) measuring and observing ancient buildings in Rome, he reduced them to a series of rules, or what we call today architectural patterns, to be used in every edifice.
Not only he suggested how buildings should be made and how they should look. He put it to good use in his own buildings.
In this picture (which I know realize illustrates a different thing, a Doric column as opposed to the simple Tuscan column in the building, also shown to the left), you see that he’s drinking his own Kool-Aid (or the opposite, he builds stuff and he uses the drafts as illustrations for his “Four” books).
Of course, these are architectural patterns. They are bound to show up all over the place. And they do. Oh boy they do.
The visit to Vicenza, which is, by the way, a World Heritage place and totally worth the day trip from Verona, Padua or even Venice, continued apace. It’s a small town, and everything can be walked comfortably, even in the searing August sun.
And this visit started to show the skull again: in the basilica (top), and in other palaces he projected and executed in the city of Vicenza (left).
So at least I had an explanation for the first goat skull. They all look the same: they seem to have something, maybe garlands, hanging from the horns (which, hey, you can’t blame me if it reminds me of Goya’s Witches Sabbath), and the same empty skull looking at us from the frieze.
Palladio’s idea of architecture, like Vitrubium’s, was based on three principles: durability, utility… and beauty. Can’t see the beauty here? Well, I can’t either. Or maybe I do. So why oh why?
A switch flipped in my mind whey I started to think of it as a a cow skull. Not just a cow skull, something maybe a bit more encumbered. An ox skull? And then, since this was all happening in Italy, why not translate it into that language? And then, of course, search for it together with the word Palladio. And there, the second hit gives you the word. Bucranio, or bucranium, in English.
There you go. Bucranium. Its origin is in actual ox skulls, from sacrifices, and stuck to temple walls, in Ancient Greece. Maybe someone, some time, realized they didn’t need the actual, stinking thing and substituted it by a marble version. And then came the Romans and said, “hey, that looks (s)cool” (pardon the pun, Romans probably didn’t speak English, and used only Times Roman) and they started to use it all over.
Of course, they used it in Rome itself. The Wikipedia article mentions its use in the Ara Pacis Augustae, and in fact, you can see it in this picture, garlands and bunting and all. It was used, over all, in the Doric order, which is where it first appears in Palladio’s book.
So, mystery solved. The trip from (not totally) inoffensive ox skulls in temples, to architectural pattern introduced in the Italian meme space by Palladio and eventually on to Somerville USA, is kinda complete.
When my daughters were small, they sometimes asked me to draw a dinosaur. To this day, if you ask them to draw a dinosaur it will look kinda the same. Everyone looked up to Palladio for advice on what to put in friezes, niches or wherever some horror vacui needed to be addressed. He said “Well, there’s this thing, it’s kinda a cow skull, but… “ And here you go. Cow skulls all the way down.
Couple of lessons to draw here. Or maybe three or more. When touristing, always look up. Be curious about what you see, and don’t take it at face value. Try to get into the mindset of the time and space you’re dwelling, and the first thing there is to try and use the same language. And of course, two opposite and contradictory lessons. Everyone is not in Google, everything is in Google if you are not lost for words and describe it precisely, and in the right language.
