Christof Thoenes, l’evoluzione storico-critica della ricerca sugli ordini

The essay reconstructs the evolution during the final two decades of the twentieth century of architectural criticism concerning the theme of the language of the orders. At the heart of this phase is the cycle of six seminar lectures Christof Thoenes gave in 1995 to doctoral students in the Department of History of Architecture at the Iuav University of Venice, on the topic of “The theory and use of the architectural orders”. Thoenes synthesized the material he presented in these seminars in an essay written in 1996, in which he reaffirmed the centrality of the orders in Renaissance historiography. The various theoretical positions held by scholars in these decades, and that of the German architectural historian in particular, tended to demonstrate how the classical canon was a complex product of history and not reusable at will. The present contribution is therefore a premise to Thoenes’ text, which was written for the first issue of the doctoral journal Aa.Vv. but remained unpublished, and which is now presented for the first time.