Renaissance Architecture Research Articles

The Transformation of Aristotle's Mechanical Questions: A Bridge Between the Italian Renaissance Architects and Galileo's First New Science

Summary The reception process of Aristotle's Mechanical Questions during the early modern period began with the publication of the corpus aristotelicum between 1495 and 1498. Between 1581 and 1627, two of the thirty-five arguments discussed in the text, namely Question XIV concerning the resistance to fracture and Question XVI concerning the deformation of objects such as timbers, became central to the work of the commentators. The commentaries of Bernardino Baldi (1581–1582), Giovanni de Benedetti (1585), Giuseppe Biancani (1615) and Giovanni di Guevara (1627) gradually approached the doctrine of proportions of the Renaissance architects, some aspects of which deal with the strength of materials according to the Vitruvian conception of scalar building. These aspects of the doctrine of proportions were integrated into the Aristotelian arguments so that a theory of linear proportionality concerned with the strength of materials could be formulated. This very first theory of strength of materials is the theory to which Galileo critically referred in his Discorsi where he published his own theory of strength of materials. Economic and military constraints are determined as the fundamental reasons for the commentators’ commitment to developing a theory of strength of materials that later linked Galileo's work to the practical knowledge of the architects and machine-builders of his time.

Von der „Erfindung“ der Renaissance zur Praxis der Neorenaissance. Paris – Dresden – Berlin – Budapest

The conception of Renaissance as a specific artistic style and cultural epoch is remarkably young: it has been developped in the trend-setting circles of Paris around 1820–1830 – the French word is keeping the memory of this origin – and spread to other languages in the following years. There is a close connection between this historiographic concept and the development of Neorenaissance architecture from the 1830s onwards. In the years around 1840, Parisian domestic architecture and interior decoration were reviving the magnificent French culture of the reign of François I whereas the first renaissance of Italian Renaissance architecture emerged in Dresden. Particularly, the public and private buildings planned by Gottfried Semper (First Hoftheater, Dresden Gallery, Villa Rosa) were the decisive models for the establishment of the Neorenaissance system in German architecture. In Berlin, neoclassical tradition was continued by the Schinkel school into the second half of the 19th century, but in the years around 1870 the architects of the new capital of imperial Germany took up the Neorenaissance style in a general way. That's why the young Budapest architects who studied in Berlin took over the new architectural system and applied it systematically to the massive extension of the capital of Hungary realized in the 1870s. By this way, Budapest turned into the purest model of Neorenaissance urban architecture still existing in Europe.

La "Sforzinda" de Filarete: Ciudad ideal y recreación del mundo

El "Libro architettonico", el cual fue redactado por Filarete alrededor del año 1460, se ha considerado siempre como un mero tratado de arquitectura. No obstante, existe en él más de una línea directriz: la primera trata de destacar los elementos racionales y funcionales de la arquitectura, y la segunda pone de relieve lo simbólico, lo mágico, así como toda una serie de referencias al micro y macrocosmos, la astrología y la alquimia. En estos pasajes del libro el arquitecto del Renacimiento se describe a sí mismo como "alter deus", el cual considera su obra como recreación o bien como restablecimiento de una creación que inicialmente era buena, pero que entretanto ha sido corrompida.

La historia desconocida tras el logo de la Sociedad Chilena de Pediatría: II Bambino de L'ospedale degli Innocenti

There are two kinds of logo standard: a name or a name and drawing and its objective is to capture the essence of the organization that they represent. The logo of the Chilean Society of Pediatrics (SOCHIPE) is a graphic expression of glaced terracottas made by Andrea Delia Robbia in 1463, situated at the Hospital of the Innocents in Florence, the first institution devoted to host, care and education of abandoned children in Europe, whose image shows the reception of the child abandoned at the wheel revolving door, allowing anonymously that abandoned children were recepted for their care and social reintegration. The construction of the hospital by Brunellesco also marks the beginning of the Renaissance architecture, a new conception of forms and spaces for institucionalized children and the establishment of the concept of fraternal help, beyond simple charity, to the child in biological, psychological and social distress, being the first active action by the authorities. SOCHIPE, in the First Article of its Statutes, manifested its intention to promote the rights and welfare of children and adolescents through many initiatives. So, our logo captures and proyects this renaissance conception of the child as a subject of law that, far from being changed, is actually more valid, considering all the situations that interact in current times with the commitment to protect children rights.

A STUDY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNICS OF ENAMEL CERAMICS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY FRANCE (1840-1889)

This paper studies the activities of famous manufacturers of enamel ceramics in nineteenth century France such as Parvillée, Muller and Loebnitz. The study shows that these manufacurers collaborated with famous architects who supported the theory of architectural polychromy and they made many innovations with regard to the technics of enamel ceramics. Analysis of the discourses of Loebnitz reveals that these innovations were closely related to the revival of the medieval and early Renaissance architecture in nineteenth century. The result of these innovations was one of the factors which influenced the shift in aesthetical ideas around 1870s-1880s.

:Sixteenth-Century Italian Art

Acknowledgments. Series Editor's Preface. Introduction: Michael W. Cole. Part I: Pagan Mysteries. Introduction. 1. Raphael's Tomb: Tilmann Buddensieg. 2. St. Peter's as Ruins: On some views by Heemskerck: Christof Thoenes. 3. Virtue Reconciled with Pleasure, from Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance: Edgar Wind. 4. Love's Sweet Poison: A New Reading of Bronzino's London Allegory: Robert W. Gaston. Part II: Nature and Artifice. Introduction. 5. Science and the Poetic Impulse: Martin Kemp. 6. Mannerist Grottos in 16th-century Italy: Philippe Morel. 7. Imitation, Innovation, and Renovation in the Counter-Reformation: Landscapes all'antica in the Vatican Tower of the Winds: Nicola Courtright. 8. Landscape and Still-Life, from Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana: Art Patronage and Reform in Seventeenth-Century Milan: Pamela Jones. Part III: Figures and Bodies. Introduction. 9. Preparing to Finish: Portraits by Pontormo and Bronzino around 1530: Elizabeth Cropper. 10. The Mistress in the Masterpiece: Nancy J. Vickers. 11. Michelangelo's Florentine Pieta: The Missing Leg: Leo Steinberg. 12. Reclining Bodies: Figural Ornament in Renaissance Architecture: Alina Payne. Part IV: The Artist. Introduction. 13. The New Professionalism in the Renaissance: Catherine Wilkinson. 14. On Some Engravings by Giorgio Ghisi Commonly Called Reproductive: Michael Bury. 15. The Historian and technique: On the role of goldsmithery in Vasari's Lives:. Marco Collareta. Part V: Reformations. Introduction. 16. Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna: Charles De Tolnay. 17. Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna: Alexander Nagel. 18. The Carracci and the Devout Style in Emilia: Charles Dempsey. 19. The Gesu in Light of Contemporary Church Design: James Ackerman. Part VI: Theory and Practice. Introduction. 20. Leonardo's Color and Chiaroscuro: John Shearman. 21. The Subject of Savoldo's Magdalene: Mary Pardo. 22. Figure come fratelli: A Transformation of Symmetry in Italian Renaissance Painting: David Summers. 23. Raphael, Angelo Colocci, and the Genesis of the Architectural Orders: Ingrid D. Rowland. Index.

Some Northern European Comparisons for Scottish Renaissance Tall-Houses

The traditional comparison for the Scottish tall-house has been the English country house, based on their apparent proximity. However, the ‘two opposing perceptions of the sixteenth-century noble country house are the English versus the European. The former holds that the English manor house ‘marked the security of English life’; whereas the European deployed a warlike language of crenellations, turrets and tourelles’. Scotland followed the European model, while England developed a unique, mostly symmetrical, low-slung, glazed, indefensible country house. The stark difference between the architecture of these two neighbours, and in particular, the difference between the Scottish Renaissance tall-house and the English country house, has thrown into light the fact that some European traditions of architecture have long been overlooked. The lack of an accepted definition of northern European Renaissance architecture has stranded the isolated Scottish contribution. Instead of historians finding a link between Scottish and continental architecture, they turned to the unflattering conventional view that Scotland's architecture was a vernacular hang-over of the Middle Ages which lasted well into the seventeenth century.

Susan L'Engle and Gerald B. Guest, eds., Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Art and Architecture. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Pp. ix, 532; black-and-white frontispiece portrait and many black-and-white figures. €200.

Susan L'Engle and Gerald B. Guest, eds., Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Art and Architecture. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Pp. ix, 532; black-and-white frontispiece portrait and many black-and-white figures. €200.

Overview: Unconventional Recovery (August 2007)

In the year 1419, Filippo Brunelleschi entered a competition to solve the most daunting architectural and engineering challenge of his time: designing and building the Dome of the Cathedral of Florence. The problem was that when the building was designed in the previous century, no one had any idea about how such a dome would be built (imagine that). To further complicate matters, buttresses were forbidden by the city fathers, internal scaffolding was undesirable, and the use of concrete had long been forgotten, which meant the dome had to be built out of bricks. Worse, his rival, Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was appointed coadjutator for the project, publicly mocked his plans and called them unfeasible.* (Think about that the next time you have a bad day at the office!) Fortunately for Florence and for Renaissance architecture, Brunelleschi endured the hardships and technical challenges to design and create one of the world's most famous and admired structures. Today, we are faced with a daunting challenge: How can we supply the world with the energy our economies demand and, at the same time, reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, burn cleaner fuels, and improve air quality in our cities? In this section, we will look at new technologies that hold at least a promise for meeting this challenge: simultaneous coalbed-methane production and CO2 sequestration, gas production from hydrates, and the use of hydrogen as a fuel for automobiles. Certainly, we do not have all of the answers yet, and we will need to rely on innovators, like Brunellschi in the 15th century, to provide ingenious and unprecedented solutions. But with dogged determination, a little patience (it took 16 years to build the dome), and plenty of public education and support, I think we can make a difference that will improve the lives of many generations to come. Imagine that. Unconventional Recovery additional reading available at the SPE eLibrary: www.spe.org SPE 100674 "Data Analysis of Barnett Shale Completions" by B. Grieser, Halliburton, et al. SPE 101109 "Changes in Completion Strategy Unlocks Massive Jurassic Coalbed Methane Resource Base in the Surat Basin, Australia" by R.L. Johnson Jr., SPE, Queensland Gas Company, et al. Available at the OTC Library: www.otcnet.org OTC 19090 "Electrical Collection and Transmission Systems for Offshore Wind Power," by Jim Green, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, et al. * Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral. Accessed 18 June 2007.

El claustro del Colegio de Corpus Christi de Valencia. Análisis formal y compositivo

The College of Corpus Christi, constructed at the end of the 16th century, is the personal project of the Patriarch San Juan de Ribera, and its cloister is the most significant Renaissance structure in the city of Valencia. A group of columns acquired in Italy by the Duke of Pastrana played a fundamental role in the conception of this architectural structure. The unknown architect based his project on them as well as on the formal and dimensional concepts of Serlio and Vignola. The result is proof of the level of assimilation of the principles of Renaissance architecture in 16th-century Valencia.

Between Science and Drawings: Renaissance Architects on Vitruvius’s Educational Ideas by Liisa Kanerva (review)

REVIEWS 245 compound words, and how they were critically interpreted in nineteenth-century philology, Jurasinski makes his case that nineteenth-century philologists often engaged in oversimplifying the complex nature of land tenure in AngloSaxon England, projecting upon the poem naïve, presentist notions of democracy . Chapter 3 and 4 are more closely related in their thematic concerns with the notions of vengeance and the blood-feud, and the (in-)applicability of the vengeance principle in the case of accidental homicides, illustrated by the Finn episode and the Hrethel episode in the poem respectively. In chapter 3, Jurasinski takes to task the nineteenth-century idea that revenge was a sacred duty in Germanic society by suggesting that the scholarly work of most nineteenthcentury and twentieth-century philologists had unwittingly confused a willingness to countenance vengeance in some parts of Germanic legislation with a sacral reverence for feud and revenge in early Germanic society. Chapter 4 extends this argument by studying how feohleas gefeoht, a fight for which no monetary compensation is possible, is critically read within nineteenth-century philology and its latter heirs as a crime which is inexpiable, thereby fudging the differences between accidental and intentional homicide within early Germanic society. Underlying these two chapters is the assumption that nineteenth-century legal historians such as Brunner, who read the Hrethel episode as an example of the absence of distinction between accidental and intentional homicide, were working from the implicit evolutionary model of Germanic history in which Germanic society was seen to progress from a “primitive” to a more “enlightened” state. In engaging the wealth of secondary critical materials found in Grimm, Klaeber, Kemble, and various other nineteenth-century literary scholars and legal historians concerning the Beowulf poem, Jurasinski provides a compelling series of arguments for his premise that presentist notions imposed by nineteenth -century philological studies still form the core critical tradition with which twentieth-century literary criticism approaches the poem. One Achilles’s heel of his study is an occasionally undiscriminating attitude on his part towards the various sub-categories of Germanic society—such as Merovingian Gaul, early Icelandic society and Nordic society—which can tend to indicate a uniform “Germanic” ethnic umbrella although he maintains the mutability of Germanic customs. This tendency, on the other hand, points to a relative dearth of non-literary material evidence about Anglo-Saxon legal institutions. That said, Jurasinski’s work will reinstate the importance of the Beowulf poem within Anglo-Saxon studies, drawing attention to the critical-philological baggage with which modern twentieth-century scholarship is loaded, and thereby creating among Anglo-Saxonists a greater awareness of Beowulf criticism ’s historical genesis and its limitations. Given the attack fostered by modern critical theory against philology, this study thus helps facilitate a more selfconscious practice of philological study. KEVIN TEO, English, University of Calgary Liisa Kanerva, Between Science and Drawings: Renaissance Architects on Vitruvius’s Educational Ideas (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters 2006) 203 pp., ill. REVIEWS 246 Liisa Kanerva’s Between Science and Drawings is a well-researched and thoughtful study of how Vitruvius’s ideas on the education of the architect were received by Renaissance “architect-writers.” It is also, in a way, a personal tribute to the topic in its unusually hand-crafted presentation. The author’s own art graces both the cover of the book and the chapter title pages where Kanerva has placed vignettes adapted from woodcuts of Caporali. She also illustrates certain passages with her own drawings of architects’ instruments and demonstrations of perspective. Kanerva’s hands-on attention to the production of this volume reflects a personal commitment to her subject which comes through in the text as an insatiable (and contagious) curiosity and a will to make the story she is telling maximally accessible to her audience. Kanerva is refreshingly transparent in setting out not only her goals in writing this book, but also her starting points and sources of inspiration. She outlines in concise terms her debt to Panofsky and his assertion that the Renaissance was a period of “decompartmentalisation” which allowed theory and practice, and art and science, to come together as they had not during the Middle Ages (12). Her...

Disruptive Spatiality and the Experience of Recordings of Bach's Solo Cello Suites

Antechamber: Bach and Space Architecture, so the saying goes, is frozen music. Music, conversely, is liquid architecture. (1) This aphorism, popular in the early nineteenth century, soon became a cliche. Should one perhaps speak of ruins, quips Schopenhauer in 1844, a 'frozen cadenza'? ([1819/44] 1977:534). However maligned, though, the cliche persists in Bach studies. It is still commonplace to speak of the of Bach's music (Wolff 1969; Schulenberg 1992; Corten 1995), and even the composer himself has been labeled an architect (Joseph 1992). The very structures of this music, are frequently told, are architectonic. While discourse on Bach has tended to adopt this architectural metaphor as an unquestioned, and at times tacit, assumption, there is little evidence to suggest that his music corresponds with any degree of precision to concrete examples of architectural theory or practice. Nor have commentators drawn consistent parallels between Bach's music and any one architectural style, let alone a single historical period. The analogy between high Gothic architecture and Bach's counterpoint was common in the first half of the nineteenth century, and articles and books on Bach continue to be peppered with pictures of Gothic cathedrals. Other commentators, however, claim to detect stylistic parallels with the architecture of Baroque Rome: Raymond Court, for instance, writes that we place the music of J. S. Bach opposite this grand Baroque architecture of papal Rome as in a mirror in to discover analogous stylistic traits (1989:15). It is easy to see how images of tall Gothic spires, lofty vaults, and slender columns summon up a widespread--and often explicitly theological--image of Bach. Yet most detailed and concrete attempts to unearth an architectural principle behind the music evoke the ideals prized by Renaissance architects of exact proportion, suitable disposition, and harmonious order rather than the asymmetrical excess of the Baroque (Joseph 1992:83). As commentators track symmetries and reveal the elegant proportions of Bach's forms, their analytical diagrams begin to look like blueprints, such as Wolff's (figure 1). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Analyses which claim to detect an architectonic structure in Bach's music usually aim to elucidate geometrical designs and numerically conceived hierarchies and patterns. When Ulrich Siegele asserts, for example, that the formal dispositions of Bach's concerto movements reveal a marked tendency towards proportional shaping (1997), he subscribes to a long-standing analytical paradigm which has tended to dominate literature on Bach, especially in studies of his ritornello forms. There is also widespread support for the idea that Bach demonstrates a strong interest in symmetrical design in certain passages of his large-scale choral works, including, for instance, the Symbolum Nicenum of the B Minor Mass (e.g., Butt 1991 and Stauffer 1997). Eduard van Hengel and Kees van Houten (2004), for example, rely on considerations of symmetry to argue that, contrary to established scholarly opinion, the Et incarnatus had been planned from the outset. (2) They suggest that a quick look at the facades of Baroque and Classical palaces, churches, residences, and other large, multisectional buildings would corroborate their claims (2004:93). In short, to liken Bach's music to architecture is to say that its structure exhibits some kind of symmetry or that its formal arrangement is governed by proportions. Because the analogy between musical structure and architectural design hinges on the mathematical principles and ratios which are said to underpin both, it is, unsurprisingly, often closely associated with numerological analysis. Much doubt, however, has been cast upon the interpretative value of readings which center around number symbolism, as well as their historical validity as a guide to pre-compositional thinking. …

:Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian

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Review: Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian by David R. Coffin

Review: Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian by David R. Coffin

Mark Rosen. Review of "Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian" by David R. Coffin.

Mark Rosen. Review of "Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian" by David R. Coffin.

Pirro Ligorio: the Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian (review)

Pirro Ligorio: the Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian (review)

A real-time freeway network traffic surveillance tool

This paper presents a real-time freeway network traffic surveillance tool RENAISSANCE. Based on a stochastic macroscopic freeway network traffic flow model and the extended Kalman filter, RENAISSANCE is fed with a limited amount of real-time traffic measurements to enable a number of freeway network traffic surveillance tasks, including traffic state estimation and prediction, travel time estimation and prediction, queue tail/head/length estimation and prediction (queue tracking), and incident alarm. The paper first introduces the stochastic macroscopic freeway network traffic flow model and a real-time traffic measurement model, upon which a complete dynamic system model for freeway network traffic is established, with a special attention to the handling of some important model parameters. The addressed traffic surveillance tasks are described along with the functional architecture of RENAISSANCE. A simulation test was conducted for the tool with respect to a hypothetical freeway network example, while the traffic state estimator of RENAISSANCE was also tested with real traffic measurement data collected from a Bavarian freeway.

La « salle du légat » de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. Une architecture oubliée de la Renaissance française

"The 'Salle du Légat' of the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris : a forgotten French Renaissance building", by Flaminia Bardati. The 'Salle du Légat' of the Hôtel-Dieu, built in the 1 530s for the Cardinal-Chancellor Antoine Du Prat, was one of the rare examples of the early Renaissance architecture in Paris. Demolished by a fire in 1773, the building has long suffered critical neglect, but many unpublished documents have survived, which allow its one-time appearance to be graphically reconstructed. The main façade is one of the most significant of the early French Renaissance because, for the first time in France, the motif of the triumphal arch from the Classical world is employed. The overall design shows deep sensitivity and remarkable competence in using Italian Renaissance forms in a traditional French context. Given that the Italian architect Domenico da Cortona was working in Paris in these very years, building the Hôtel de Ville, it is tempting to propose that the Salle du Légat is also by him : certainly, it is stylistically closer to his oeuvre than to any contemporary French architect's one. The adoption of the triumphal arch motif is characteristic of the patronage of Antoine Du Prat, who requested the same form in the Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire Abbey altar. This choice could be interpreted as Du Prat's wish to give a clear message to all those who, between 1516 and 1527, had tried to oppose his immense power and to demonstrate the esteem in which he was held by both King François I and his mother, Louise de Savoie.

The Bel Family and their Renaissance Tall-houses

This paper examines the work of the Bel Family of masons and their unique interpretation of the tower-house, here precisely identified as tall-houses. Their non-defensive nature is explored demonstrating the features which made a distinctive contribution to Renaissance architecture in Scotland and Europe.

Pirro Ligorio: the Renaissance artist, architect, and antiquarian

Pirro Ligorio: the Renaissance artist, architect, and antiquarian