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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2025
With just weeks to go before the 1951 IX Triennale of Milan, titled “Divina Proporzione,” the program of the event had not yet been set. Carla Marzoli, the promoter of the event, sent a letter asking Rudolf Wittkower to use his authority to contact Piero Sanpaolesi and Le Corbusier to send their papers for the Triennale in advance. On August 12, 1951, Marzoli wrote:
Mr. Le Corbusier is now extremely glad to come; … but you know as he is and surely he shall not send his report.… I beg to do it of course, but I am sure he shall not send. If you would try to write him perhaps he could answer to you, but I am not sure.
On September 19, Wittkower replied to Marzoli's request:
I think it is better for me not to write to Mr. Sampaolesi [sic] to decide about the last speaker after my arrival. Nor shall I write to Le Corbusier. A letter from me would not mean anything to him. I think his presence has mainly propaganda value; between you and me, he is a very bad speaker and has not very much to say. With so many excellent relazioni on the programme, we might as well do without him.
Wittkower's skeptical and unenthusiastic position toward Le Corbusier, as we will see in this essay, may be explained by analyzing some of the documents from Wittkower's archive, especially those related to his study of Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio. The attitude Wittkower held toward Le Corbusier had deep intellectual roots and can be understood only after having traced the origin, practice, and goal of his theory of proportion, which was the subject of one of the most anticipated papers of the 1951 congress in Milan. This analysis allows the reader to wear the same lenses through which the German scholar perceived and understood the Swiss architect's own system of proportion, The Modulor, published in 1950.
The premises of Wittkower's theory of proportions
The decade of the 1940s was crucial for the rebirth of the theory of proportion as applied to architecture. However, the discourse emanated from two different sources: one established by art and architectural historians, the other by practicing architects, the former with analytical goals, the latter with creative purposes.
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