ABSTRACT
The year is 1506 and the 27-year-old architect and painter Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi begins construction on the Villa Farnesina in Rome. The suburban villa is typical of a time when it was not only fashionable, but practically required, for an architect to adorn a patron with a range of services that went beyond bricks and mortar—a time when architectural services were at their most dimensional, perhaps. Peruzzi would not only design the building, but after its construction would also paint the walls of the second floor ballroom (1518–1519). Through a two-dimensional marble colonnade, the “Sala delle prospettive” presents the observer with a view of attenuated villages dotted across rolling hills. The wall painting, though routine for this style of residential architecture, is compelling not for what is being observed, but instead, for how it should be observed. First, the view’s proper standing point is not inside, but outside of the room. For the perspectival trick to work in which painted marble columns appear aligned with the physical walls, doors, and windows of the ballroom, one must stand in the anteroom. From this vantage point, an interior wall transforms into a veranda—a painting is rendered architecture.
