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The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance

The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance

The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance

Architectural Invention, Ornament and Literary Culture
Alina A. Payne, University of Toronto
April 2011
Available
Paperback
9780521178235
$63.00
USD
Paperback
USD
Hardback

    Vitruvius's Ten Books of Architecture, the only architectural treatise to have survived from antiquity, was the fountainhead of architectural theory in the Italian Renaissance. Offering theoretical and practical solutions to a wide variety of architectural issues, this treatise did not, however, address all of the questions that were of concern to early modern architects. Originally published in 1999, this study examines the Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to negotiate between imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400–1600, Alina Payne identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused. Ornament, she argues, facilitated a dialogue across disciplines and invited exchanges with literary and rhetorical practices. Payne's study also highlights the place of the architectural treatise in the text-based culture of the period and of architectural discourse in Renaissance thought.

    • Situates Renaissance architectural theory within broader context of Renaissance culture
    • Well illustrated with 88 half-tones

    Reviews & endorsements

    "Payne's book will richly reward anyone concerned with the goals of architechture today." Architecture Magazine

    "Paired with a meticulous exegesis of content and careful inclusion of the Latin and Italian originals throughout, such sensitivity makes Payne's study stand out among the flood of recent publications devoted to paper architecture...[the book] will be valuable chiefly to specialists in the history of aesthetics, rhetoric, or philosophy, as well as art and architecture in Italy. Its most original contribution...remains its engagement with the historiography of Renaissance architecture." Renaissance and Reformation

    "...useful far beyond the more narrow study of Renaissance architecture. This is an important book." The Art Book

    See more reviews

    Product details

    April 2011
    Paperback
    9780521178235
    362 pages
    254 × 178 × 19 mm
    0.63kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Of archaeology and license
    • 2. Vitruvius
    • 3. Literary grids and artistic intersections
    • 4. Alberti
    • 5. Francesco di Giorgio Martini
    • 6. Serlio and the theoretization of ornament
    • 7. Spini and the Architectural Imitatio
    • 8. Palladio and Aesthetics Necessita
    • Scamozzi and Gesamttheorie.
      Author
    • Alina A. Payne , University of Toronto