Cultivating the Renaissance

Cultivating the Renaissance

Author: Katie Campbell

Publisher:

Published: 2021-12-31

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781032062105

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By exploring the evolution of the Medici family's villas, Cultivating the Renaissance charts the shifting politics, philosophy and aesthetics of the age and chronicles the rise of an extraordinary family from obscure farmers to European royalty. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, the Medici family dominated European life. While promoting both arts and sciences, the Medici helped create a new style of architecture, present a new idea of villa life and promote the novel idea of living in harmony with nature. Used variously for pleasure and sports, scholarly and amorous liaisons, commercial enterprise and botanical experimentation, their villas both expressed and influenced contemporary ideas on politics, philosophy, art and design. Each patron's public interests and private passions, as well as the architects, artists and philosophers they employed, are examined. Through a chronological approach, this book reveals how the villas were used, their reception by contemporary commentators, their legacy and their current state approximately five centuries after they were first built. Lavishly illustrated, Cultivating the Renaissance is of great interest to students and scholars of architecture, horticulture, landscape history, philosophy, art, and the history of the Renaissance in Italy.


Lorenzo De' Medici at Home

Lorenzo De' Medici at Home

Author: Richard Stapleford

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 027105641X

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"An inventory of the private possessions of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, head of the ruling Medici family during the apogee of the Florentine Renaissance"--Provided by publisher.


Possible Palladian Villas

Possible Palladian Villas

Author: George L. Hersey

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780262082105

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Drawing on Palladio's original published legacy of approximately 40 designs, the authors attempt to reveal the rigorous geometric rules by which Palladio conceived these structures. Using a computer, they test each rule in every possible application.


Villa Madama

Villa Madama

Author: Claudio Strinati

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13:

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The ideal model of a suburban residence desired by Leo X (1513-1521), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and continued by his cardinal cousin Giulio de' Medici, the future Clement VII (1523-1534), the 'vigna del papa', or papal residence, to be called Villa


The Medici Conspiracy

The Medici Conspiracy

Author: Peter Watson

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2007-06-12

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 1586485407

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The story begins, as stories do in all good thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase. Eight Apuleian vases of the fourth century B.C. are discovered in the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. More valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals and dealers. It reveals the existence of a web of tombaroli -- tomb raiders -- who steal classical artifacts, and a network of dealers and smugglers who spirit them out of Italy and into the hands of wealthy collectors and museums. Peter Watson, a former investigative journalist for the London Sunday Times and author of two previous expos's of art world scandals, names the key figures in this network that has depleted Europe's classical artifacts. Among the loot are the irreplaceable and highly collectable vases of Euphronius, the equivalent in their field of the sculpture of Bernini or the painting of Michelangelo. The narrative leads to the doors of some major institutions: Sothebys, the Getty Museum in L.A., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York among them. Filled with great characters and human drama, The Medici Conspiracy authoritatively exposes another shameful round in one of the oldest games in the world: theft, smuggling and duplicitous dealing, all in the name of art.


Architectural Invention in Renaissance Rome

Architectural Invention in Renaissance Rome

Author: Yvonne Elet

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1108216110

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Villa Madama, Raphael's late masterwork of architecture, landscape, and decoration for the Medici popes, is a paradigm of the Renaissance villa. The creation of this important, unfinished complex provides a remarkable case study for the nature of architectural invention. Drawing on little known poetry describing the villa while it was on the drawing board, as well as ground plans, letters, and antiquities once installed there, Yvonne Elet reveals the design process to have been a dynamic, collaborative effort involving humanists as well as architects. She explores design as a self-reflexive process, and the dialectic of text and architectural form, illuminating the relation of word and image in Renaissance architectural practice. Her revisionist account of architectural design as a process engaging different systems of knowledge, visual and verbal, has important implications for the relation of architecture and language, meaning in architecture, and the translation of idea into form.


Magnificent Italian Villas and Palaces

Magnificent Italian Villas and Palaces

Author: Massimo Listri

Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13:

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Italy boasts a rich cultural history that has found its expression in beautiful, powerful architectural forms, at times measured and hidden, at times ostentatious and triumphant. This volume focuses on about thirty residential villas and palaces, giving the reader the opportunity to visit the magnificent palaces of Venice, Genoa, and Mantua, the elegant villas designed by Palladio and decorated by Tiepolo; the country villas of Tuscany, hidden in olive groves and vineyards; and the austere palaces of Florence-not to mention the Versaces' villa on Lake Como. The interiors of these palaces are magnificent to behold: splendid tapestries, exquisite paintings and murals, sumptuous furniture and interior decoration of all kinds, from elegant carved molding to magnificently inlaid and tiled floors to beautiful renaissance, baroque, and neoclassical furniture.


Villa Madama

Villa Madama

Author: Guy Dewez

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9781878271969

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The Villa Madama, one of Raphael's most important architectural projects, was unfinished at the time of the artist's death in 1520, and though some further work on the building, commissioned by the Medici as a guest-house for important visitors to Rome, was done by his collaborator Giulio Romano, it was never completed. Nonetheless the Villa, itself intended to emulate the villas of classical Antiquity, has always played a key role in architectural history, serving as a model and an inspiration down to the present post-Modern age. Villa Madama is a critical study of the design history of the building, taking in contemporary literary and visual sources, including an important descriptive letter from Raphael to his patron. Through a rigorous analysis of the surviving designs, and from reconstruction plans and elevations based on measurement of the surviving structure, Guy Dewez presents a comprehensive account of the villa Raphael might have built, had circumstances been different. In so doing Guy Dewez not only restores to an unfinished masterpiece its true form, but he also extends the range of architectural discourse, through a multi-layered, interwoven approach to text, annotation and illustration. This book extends the formal canon of the measured drawing into a new field: its use as a creative tool in analyzing architectural meaning. A traditional instrument of record becomes a means of exploring the architect's intentions and aims. Raphael's Villa Madama remains one of the most important buildings of the Italian Renaissance, admired and studied over the years by architects and art historians. Villa Madama, the most recent study, presents the building in a new aspect, and in so doing provides a model for the study of historic buildings, leading to a fresh appreciation of the complexities of the architectural process, and of Raphael's status as an architect.