Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture
Title | Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Fane-Saunders |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 525 |
Release | 2016-07-12 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1316419096 |
The Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder provided Renaissance scholars, artists and architects with details of ancient architectural practice and long-lost architectural wonders - material that was often unavailable elsewhere in classical literature. Pliny's descriptions frequently included the dimensions of these buildings, as well as details of their unusual construction materials and ornament. This book describes, for the first time, how the passages were interpreted from around 1430 to 1580, that is, from Alberti to Palladio. Chapters are arranged chronologically within three interrelated sections - antiquarianism; architectural writings; drawings and built monuments - thereby making it possible for the reader to follow the changing attitudes to Pliny over the period. The resulting study establishes the Naturalis historia as the single most important literary source after Vitruvius's De architectura.
Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance
Title | Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance PDF eBook |
Author | Sarah Blake McHam |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 450 |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 9780300186031 |
Pliny's Natural History (A.D. 77-79) served as an indispensable guide to and exemplar of the ideals of art for Renaissance artists, patrons, and theorists. Bearing the imprimatur of antiquity, the Natural History gave permission to do art on a grand scale, to value it, and to see it as an incomparable source of prestige and pleasure. In Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance, Sarah Blake McHam surveys Pliny's influence, from Petrarch, the first figure to recognize Pliny's relevance to understanding the history of Greek art and its reception by the Romans, to Vasari and late 16th-century theorists. McHam charts the historiography of Latin and Italian manuscripts and early printed copies of the Natural History to trace the dissemination of its contents to artists from Donatello and Ghiberti to Michelangelo and Titian. Meanwhile, benefactors commissioned works intended to emulate the prototypes Pliny described, aligning themselves with the great patrons of antiquity. This is a richly illustrated, comprehensive reference work of social history, myth making, iconography, theory, and criticism.
The Nature of Art
Title | The Nature of Art PDF eBook |
Author | Anna Anguissola |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 372 |
Release | 2021-06-30 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9782503591179 |
In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder organises his discussion of crafts according to the raw materials they utilize. However, scholarly literature has paid little attention to the aspect of materiality, preferring to focus on the biographies and achievements of ancient Greek artists. This collection instead addresses the presentation of artistic processes and their materials in the Natural History. This approach corresponds with current developments in the study of Greco-Roman art, wherein scientific analysis of artistic materials including stones, pigments, and metal alloys, as well as a deeper understanding of workshop practices, has imposed profound changes on the methods used in the study of ancient artefacts.
Leonardo's Library
Title | Leonardo's Library PDF eBook |
Author | Paula Findlen |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 220 |
Release | 2019-05 |
Genre | Renaissance |
ISBN | 9780911221633 |
Illustrated catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition "Leonardo's Library: The World of a Renaissance Reader," Stanford University Libraries, Green Library, May 2 - October 13, 2019.
Inventing the Opera House
Title | Inventing the Opera House PDF eBook |
Author | Eugene J. Johnson |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 349 |
Release | 2018-05-17 |
Genre | Architecture |
ISBN | 1108421741 |
This book examines the invention of the architecture of the modern opera house in Italy between the late fifteenth and late seventeenth centuries.
Natural History
Title | Natural History PDF eBook |
Author | Pliny the Elder |
Publisher | Penguin UK |
Total Pages | 606 |
Release | 1991-12-03 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0140444130 |
Pliny’s Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges, the first water-clock, or the use of asses’ milk to remove wrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiosity that brought about his death is also very much evident in the Natural History — a book that proved highly influential right up until the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger, described ‘as full of variety as nature itself’. John F. Healy has made a fascinating and varied selection from the Natural History for this clear, modern translation. In his introduction, he discusses the book and its sources topic by topic. This edition also includes a full index and notes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Building with Paper
Title | Building with Paper PDF eBook |
Author | Dario Donetti |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 200 |
Release | 2021-05-15 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9782503591186 |
The introduction of paper is one of the major innovations of Early Modern architecture, and it had profound effects on its design processes. Wider use of paper changed representational conventions, while communication networks were affected by the many implications of portability and reproducibility: circulation of models for study and design increased, and new possibilities of remote control of the building site emerged. The material dimensions of these practices are the subject of the present volume, which collects essays that engage with the manifold inter- and multi-medial complexities of Italian Renaissance architectural drawings on paper.