ABSTRACT
I say first that one should decide whether the present building should receive additional acccessories that improve it and make it more commodious or whether you would like to give more nobility to a building . . . and this with a certain disharmonious disunion. I say that there are two ways of doing things well: either with magnificence and pomp, or else truly with a sprezzatura that, carried out successfully, makes it more pleasing to the eye. In the first case, one will search to give the particular building everything in terms of fitness to the site. In the second, it will be necessary . . . to use hard work and grace, because lacking in the first requirement [fitness] it makes a virtue out of necessity. [. . .] Sprezzatura in buildings can be of two types. The first is when you do not wish to make an incremental change to a building, such as enlarging a room, improving the lighting conditions, broadening the stairs or that kind of thing. That kind of sprezzatura is not the one that I am considering here because it is far from being relevant to the immediate concern of the present design. The other sprezzatura with just as much concern for commodity is to be seen just as much of an intrinsic form which does not profess to create a sublime thing but rather something with ‘maniera’ or rustic or grotto-like or something of the same nature, representing something which is new and consequently, by the same turn, more attractive. Whichever concept of sprezzatura one chooses, I think it is necessary one way or the other to decide which approach to adopt.
