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The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance
•••••••• ••• •• • .. • ••••---• • • - • • ••••••• •• ••••••••• • •• ••• ••• •• • •••• .... ••• .. .. • .. •• • • .. ••••••••••••••• .. eo__,_.. _ ••,., .... • • •••••• ..... •••••• .. ••••• •-.• . PETER MlJRRAY . 0 • •-•• • • • •• • • • • • •• 0 ., • • • ...... ... • • , .,.._, • • , - _,._•- •• • •OH • • • u • o H ·o ,o ,.,,,. • . , ........,__ I- .,- --, - Bo&ton Public ~ BoeMft; MA 02111 The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance ... ... .. \ .- "' ~ - .· .., , #!ft . l . ,."- , .• ~ I' .; ... ..__ \ ... : ,. , ' l '~,, , . \ f I • ' L , , I ,, ~ ', • • L • '. • , I - I 11 •. -... \' I • ' j I • , • t l ' ·n I ' ' . • • \• \\i• _I >-. ' • - - . -, - •• ·- .J .. '- - ... ¥4 "- '"' I Pcrc1·'· , . The co11I 1~, bv, Glacou10 t l t.:• lla l'on.1 ,111d 1 ll01nc\ S t 1, XX \)O l)on1c111c. o Ponrnna. • The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance New Revised Edition Peter Murray 202 illustrations Schocken Books · New York • For M.D. H~ Teacher and Prie11d For the seamd edillo11 .I ltrwe f(!U,riucu cerurir, passtJgts-,wwbly thOS<' on St Ptter's awl 011 Pnlladfo~ clmrdses---mul I lr,rvl' takeu rhe t>pportrmil)' to itJcorporate m'1U)1 corrt·ctfons suggeSLed to nu.• byfriet1ds mu! re11iewers. T'he publishers lwvc allowed mr to ddd several nt•w illusrra,fons, and I slumld like 10 rltank .1\ Ir A,firlwd I Vlu,.e/trJOr h,'s /Jelp wft/J rhe~e. 711f 1,pporrrm,ty /t,,s 11/so bee,r ft1ke,; Jo rrv,se rhe Biblfogmpl,y. Fc>r t/Jis third edUfor, many r,l(lre s1m1II cluu~J!eS lwvi: been m"de a,,_d the Biblio,~raphy has (IJICt more hN!tl extet1si11ely revised dtul brought up to date berause there has l,een mt e,wrmc>uJ incretlJl' ;,, i111eres1 in lt.1lim, ,1rrhi1ea1JrP sittr<• 1963,. wlte-,r 11,is book was firs, publi$hed. It sh<>uld be 110/NI that I haw consistc11tl)' used t/1cj<>rm, 1./251JO and 1./25-30 to 111e,w,.firs1, 'at some poiHI betwt.·en 1-125 nnd 1430', .md, .stamd, 'begi,miug ilJ 1425 and rnding in 14.10'. -
MONTEPULCIANO's PALAZZO COMUNALE, 1440 – C.1465: RETHINKING CASTELLATED CIVIC PALACES in FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURAL and POLITI
MONTEPULCIANO’S PALAZZO COMUNALE, 1440 – c.1465: RETHINKING CASTELLATED CIVIC PALACES IN FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS Two Volumes Volume I Koching Chao Ph.D. University of York History of Art September 2019 ABSTRACT This thesis argues for the significance of castellated civic palaces in shaping and consolidating Florence’s territorial hegemony during the fifteenth century. Although fortress-like civic palaces were a predominant architectural type in Tuscan communes from the twelfth century onwards, it is an understudied field. In the literature of Italian Renaissance civic and military architecture, the castellated motifs of civic palaces have either been marginalised as an outdated and anti-classical form opposing Quattrocento all’antica taste, or have been oversimplified as a redundant object lacking defensive functionality. By analysing Michelozzo’s Palazzo Comunale in Montepulciano, a fifteenth-century castellated palace resembling Florence’s thirteenth-century Palazzo dei Priori, this thesis seeks to address the ways in which castellated forms substantially legitimised Florence’s political, military and cultural supremacy. Chapter One examines textual and pictorial representations of Florence’s castellation civic palaces and fortifications in order to capture Florentine perceptions of castellation. This investigation offers a conceptual framework, interpreting the profile of castellated civic palaces as an effective architectural affirmation of the contemporary idea of a powerful city-republic rather than being a symbol of despotism as it has been previously understood. Chapters Two and Three examine Montepulciano’s renovation project for the Palazzo Comunale within local and central administrative, socio-political, and military contexts during the first half of the fifteenth century, highlighting the Florentine features of Montepulciano’s town hall despite the town’s peripheral location within the Florentine dominion. -
The Library of Professor Leo Steinberg
The Library of Professor Leo Steinberg 4164 titles in ca. 4600 physical volumes INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL DICTIONARY OF ART HISTORIANS A Biographical Dictionary of Historic Scholars, Museum Professionals and Academic Historians of Art Steinberg, Leo, né Zalman Lev Date born: July 9, 1920 Place Born: Moscow, Russia Date died: March 13, 2011 Place died: New York, NY Michelangelo- and modernist art historian; Benjamin Franklin professor of art at University of Pennsylvania, 1975- 1991. Steinberg was born in Moscow of German-Jewish parents (his mother was Anyuta Esselson [Steinberg], 1890- 1954) and his father, Isaac Nachman Steinberg (1888-1957), government figure and lawyer in revolutionary Russia. Lenin appointed Steinberg's father commissar of justice. His idealism, (he wanted to abolish the prison system, for example) forced the family into exile in Berlin, where the younger Steinberg grew up. After the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the family moved to London where Steinberg studied (studio) painting and sculpture at the Slade School in London from 1936 to 1940. After World War II he immigrated to New York working initially as a freelance writer and translator (including a holocaust account, Ashes and Fire, 1947). He also taught drawing at the Parsons School of Design. He studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, under Richard Krautheimer and Wolfgang Lotz, receiving his Ph.D., in 1960. His dissertation, written under Lotz, was on Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. In 1962 he an art editor for Life magazine married Dorothy Seiberling (later divorced). Between 1962-1975 Steinberg taught art history and life drawing at Hunter College, the City University of New York. -
The Virtù of Architectural Invention
THE VIRTÙ OF ARCHITECTURAL INVENTION: RHETORIC, INGEGNO, AND IMAGINATION IN FILARETE’S LIBRO ARCHITETTONICO Jonathan Powers School of Architecture McGill University, Montreal, Canada January 2014 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Jonathan Powers 2014 i All human creation occurs through the offices of love. This dissertation came to be under the aegis of the generosity, compassion, and encouragement of my wife, Heather Lee Mitchell Powers. I dedicate this work to her. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .............................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................................ xv Introduction: Architectural Excellence .................................................................................................... 1 Better Architecture through Better Patronage -
Pre-Publication Version of Caspar Pearson, “The Return of the Giants: Leon Battista Alberti's Letter to Filippo Brunelleschi
Pre-publication version of Caspar Pearson, “The Return of the Giants: Leon Battista Alberti’s Letter to Filippo Brunelleschi”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes LXXXIII, 2019. The Return of the Giants: Leon Battista Alberti’s Letter to Filippo Brunelleschi1 The letter to Filippo Brunelleschi with which Leon Battista Alberti prefaced the vernacular version of his treatise on painting, De pictura, has long been seen as a central document of the Italian Renaissance. Its praise of what seem like the members of a veritable artistic avant-garde – Masaccio, Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, and of course Brunelleschi himself – has held a lasting grip on the imaginations of readers. Moreover, Alberti’s suggestion that, in building the cupola of Florence cathedral, Brunelleschi not only matched but might even have surpassed the achievements of the ancients has echoed down the centuries (Fig. I). Taken up by subsequent writers, including Vasari, this notion continued to register in the prose of nineteenth-century historians such as Jules Michelet and Edgar Quinet, where it became a key component in their efforts to formalise the idea of the Renaissance itself.2 Alberti’s short text – which had little impact during his own lifetime – has ultimately done much to establish the reputation of both its author and its addressee.3 In the most recent reorganisation of the Museo 1 Much of the research for this article was conducted during a stay at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, in 2018. I am especially grateful to the Director, Professor Alina Payne, for her generosity and support. -
Building Blocks of Power: the Architectural Commissions and Decorative Projects of the Pucci Family in the Renaissance
Building Blocks of Power: The Architectural Commissions and Decorative Projects of the Pucci Family in the Renaissance Carla Adella D’Arista Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Carla A. D’Arista All rights reserved 1 ABSTRACT Building Blocks of Power: The Architectural Commissions and Decorative Projects of the Pucci Family in the Renaissance Carla A. D’Arista This dissertation analyzes the dates and artistic provenance of key architectural and decorative projects commissioned by the Pucci family for their townhomes, villas, and palaces during the Renaissance. It identifies the family’s insistent identification with prestigious Renaissance architects and artisans as a key element in a political and social stratagem that took its cue from the humanist ethos cultivated by their political patrons, the Medici. Temporally, this study is bracketed on both ends of the Renaissance by architectural commissions related to the Pucci’s long-standing patronage of Santissima Annunziata, the most important pilgrimage church in Florence. Methodoligically, it is an archival project that relies principally on previously unknown letters, wills, payment records, inventories, and notarial documents. 1 Table of Contents List of Captions………………………………………………….. ii. Abbreviations …………………………………………………… iii. Conventions ……………………………………………………… iv. Acknowledgements ……………………………………………… v. Introduction: “Beneath the Shadow of Thy Wings I Sleep:” Artistic Identity as Political Stratagem ……………………….. 1. I. From the Beginning: Puccio Pucci (1389-1449) …………….. 13. II. The Pucci Oratory in Santissima Annunziata …………….. 36. III. Antonio di Puccio Pucci: Dynastic Promotion and Image-Building ………………………………………………….. 79. IV. Casa Pucci in Florence (1503-1537): Fashioning Social Hierarchies ………………………………………………………. -
Copyrighted Material
1 The Humanist Brain Alberti, Vitruvius, and Leonardo first we observed that the building is a form of body (Leon Battista Alberti)1 In most architectural accounts, Renaissance humanism refers to the period in Italy that commences in the early fifteenth century and coin- cides with a new interest in classical theory. The ethos of humanism was not one-dimensional, for it infused all of the arts and humanities, including philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, art, architecture, law, and gram- mar. Generally, it entailed a new appreciation of classical Greek writers (now being diffused by the printing press), whose ideas had to be squared with late-antique and medieval sources as well as with the teachings of Christianity. In this respect, Leon Battista Alberti epito- mized the humanist brain. In the case of architecture, humanism often had a slightly different connotation. It has not only entailed the belief that the human being, by virtue of his divine creation, occupies a privileged place within the cos- mos but also the fact that the human body holds a special fascination for architects. I am referring to the double analogy that views architecture as a metaphor for the human body, and the human body as a metaphor for architectural design.COPYRIGHTED In this sense too Alberti MATERIALwas a humanist, for when his architectural treatise of the early-1450s appeared in print in 1486 (alongside the “ten books” of the classical Roman architect Vitruvius) he promulgated a way of thinking about architecture that would largely hold fast until the eighteenth century. In this way Alberti became perhaps the first architect in history to construct a unified body of theory – what historians have referred to as the theoretical basis for a new style. -
The Depiction of the Attributes of the Architect in Frontispieces to Sixteenth Century Italian Architectural Treatises
Inscribing the Architect: The Depiction of the Attributes of the Architect in Frontispieces to Sixteenth Century Italian Architectural Treatises. Desley Luscombe Thesis submitted for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2004 Inscribing the Architect: The Depiction of the Attributes of the Architect in Frontispieces to Sixteenth Century Italian Architectural Treatises. Desley Luscombe Abstract This study investigates the changing understanding of the role of the ‘architect’ in Italy during the sixteenth century by examining frontispieces to published architectural treatises. From analysis of these illustrations four attributes emerge as important to new societal understandings of the role of ‘architect.’ The first attribute is the desire to delineate the boundaries of knowledge for architecture as a discipline, relevant to sixteenth-century society. The second is the depiction of the ‘architect,’ as an intellectual engaged in the resolution of practical, political, economic and philosophical considerations of his practice. The third represents the ‘architect’ having a specific domain of activity in the design of civic spaces of magnificence not only for patrons but also for the city per se. The fourth represents the ‘architect’ and society as perceiving a commonality of an architectural role beyond the boundary of individual locations and patrons. Five treatises meet the criteria set for this study: Sebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di architetura sopra le Cinque maniere de gli edifici cioè, Toscano, Dorico, Ionico, Corinthio, et Composito, con gli essempi dell’antiquita, che, per la magior parte concordano con la dottrina di Vitruvio, 1537, his, Il Terzo libro nel qual si figurano, e descrivono le antichita di Roma, 1540, Cosimo Bartoli’s translation of Alberti’s De re aedificatoria titled L’architettura di Leonbattista Alberti, tradotta in lingua fiorentina da Cossimo Bartoli, Gentilhuomo, & Academico Fiorentino, 1550; Daniele Barbaro’s translation and commentary on Vitruvius’ De’architetura titled, I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. -
Building the Virgin's House: the Architecture of the Annunciation in Central and Northern Italy 1400-1500 Alasdair Stamford Fl
Building the Virgin’s House: The Architecture of the Annunciation in Central and Northern Italy 1400-1500 2 Volumes Volume One Alasdair Stamford Flint PhD University of York History of Art October 2014 2 Abstract This thesis examines the architectural settings constructed by painters for their depictions of the Annunciation, seeking to understand how and why painters employed them. The first, fundamental function of pictorial architecture was to organise the scene, demarcating the spaces allotted to each of the protagonists, often through the use of a central architectural dividing element such as a wall or a column. At the same time it constructed the narrative, and provided concrete metaphors for the Immaculate Conception, with the passage of the Holy Spirit through an arch acting as a stand-in for its entrance into Mary herself. Having established these compositional essentials, painters were then able to use architecture to add further resonances to their images, employing it to expound upon the character of Mary and the intense holiness of the Annunciation itself. Echoes of explicitly sacred places and spaces – tabernacles, cloisters, and chapels – could, for example, serve to imbue Mary’s house with a sanctity entirely suited to an event which represented the moment at which Christ appeared on earth. Finally, architecture could promote an audiences’ direct, meditative engagement with the scene portrayed by placing it in contemporary, recognisable architectural settings, thereby collapsing the distance between the remote biblical event and the viewer’s present. These works with realistic and recognizable buildings existed on a continuum (no painting lacked imagined, fantastical, and ideal elements in its pictorial architecture) with Annunciations that contained buildings that were to varying extents fantastical or imaginary.