Search results

In about 35-25 B.C.E., the Roman architect Vitruvius produced his encyclopedic ten-book summary of the principles of Hellenistic architecture, De architectura (On Architecture). These ideas have stimulated architects ever since. In the mid-16th century, the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and the humanist Daniele Barbaro (1513-1570) looked to the city of Venice in order to understand and interpret Vitruvius's text - still in need of clarification - which would enable them to solve contempo...

Cervantes’ Architectures is the first book dedicated to architecture in Cervantes’ prose fiction. At a time when a pandemic is sweeping the world, this book reflects on the danger outside by concentrating on the role of enclosed structures as places where humans may feel safe, or as sites of beauty and harmony that provide solace. At the same time, a number of the architectures in Cervantes trigger dread and claustrophobia as they display a kind of shapelessness and a haunting aura that blends w...

In this highly acclaimed reference work David Watkin traces the history of western architecture from the earliest times in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the late twentieth century. For this seventh edition, revising author Owen Hopkins provides a new introduction contextualizing Watkin's approach. The final chapter on the twenty-first century has been completely rewritten by Hopkins, who brings the story right up to date with the inclusion of such topics as re-use, digital cities and virtual architec...

When Italian Renaissance professor Allison Levy takes up residency in the palazzo of her dreams – the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence – she finds herself consumed by the space and swept into the vortex of its history. She spends every waking moment in dusty Florentine libraries, exploring the palazzo’s myriad rooms seeking to uncover its secrets. As she unearths the stories of those who have lived behind its celebrated façade, she discovers that it has been witness to weddings, suicides, orgies, t...

A radical new perspective on the dynamics of urban life in Renaissance Italy The cities of Renaissance Italy comprised a network of forces shaping both the urban landscape and those who inhabited it. In this illuminating study, those complex relations are laid bare and explored through the lens of contemporary urban theory, providing new insights into the various urban centers of Italy’s transition toward modernity. The book underscores how the design and structure of public space during this...

Andrea Palladio's villa architecture is still admired for its elegance and harmony, but little is known about the person behind the buildings. Experienced Palladio researcher Guido Beltramini has worked meticulously on material from historical documents about Palladio's person and life, and assembled a full picture of the architect. Palladio in Private follows his career, his rise from being the ordinary miller's son Pietro della Gondola to become the architect Andrea Palladio. Beltramini does n...

This book is the first study of the portico and its decorative program as a cultural phenomenon in Renaissance Italy. Focusing on a largely neglected group of porticoes decorated with painted pergolas that appeared in Rome and environs in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it tells the story of how an element of the garden—the pergola—became a pictorial topos in portico decoration, and evolved, hand in hand with its real cousin in the garden, into an object for cultural emulation amo...

The cross-cultural exchange of ideas that flourished in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries profoundly affected European and Islamic society. Gardens of Renaissance Europe and the Islamic Empires considers the role and place of gardens and landscapes in the broader context of the information sharing that took place among Europeans and Islamic empires in Turkey, Persia, and India. In illustrating commonalities in the design, development, and people's perceptions of g...

Giuliano da Sangallo (um 1445-1516) war einer der bedeutendsten Florentiner Baumeister seiner Zeit und Wegbereiter der Hochrenaissance. Unter Lorenzo de' Medici stieg er zum Erneuerer der Baukunst auf und bekannte sich zum Erbe Brunelleschis und Albertis. Ab 1504 naherte er sich an Bramantes Antikenrezeption an und gab wesentliche Impulse zu einem Klassizismus dekorativer Pragung. Die Autorin beleuchtet das architektonische Werk Sangallos neu.

This is the first English translation of Francesco Sansovino's (1521-1586) celebrated guide to Venice, which was first published in 1561. One of the earliest books to describe the monuments of Venice for inquisitive travelers, Sansovino's guide was written at a time when St. Mark's Piazza was in the process of taking the form we see today. With in-depth descriptions of the buildings created by the author's father, noted sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), including the Mint, Lib...

The architecture of the Italian Renaissance, theorized by artists such as Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti, influenced styles and trends of the following centuries throughout Europe and beyond. This volume offers a comprehensive compilation of Italian Renaissnace architecture--richly documented, illustrated, arranged by region, and including a glossary.

The remarkable career of the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is largely due to an extraordinary moment of prosperity in the Veneto mainland, both in the city and in the countryside: a boom due in large measure to a little-studied revolution in manufacturing. This book brings to light for the first time the architecture of these early industries, especially the production of textiles (wool, silk), mining and metalworking, paper manufacture, ceramics, sawmilling and leather-tanning. The huge...

500 years after Leonardo da Vinci's death, learn about this great visionary's life and achievements and develop your understanding of one of the world’s most eclectic and extraordinary minds.Famed for creating some of the most iconic images in European art – including Mona Lisa and The Last Supper – Leonardo da Vinci has influenced generations of artists and thinkers, and continues to do so after more than 500 years. While we cannot hope to emulate his achievements, da Vinci showed an attitude t...

Take a 12,000-year walk through history Think of the street you live on. Now think of how it may have looked in 10,000 BCE, or in Roman times, or in Victorian England at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Steve Noon's A Street Through Time takes you on a time travelling journey that you won't forget. Beautiful double-page illustrations bring fourteen key periods in history to life. You will see magnificent buildings go up and come down, new churches built on the site of ancient temples,...