A glamorous and unprecedented exploration of Palladio's work in one of the most beautiful of all cities

Cities are shaped as much by a repertoire of buildings, works and objects, as by cultural institutions, ideas and interactions between forms and practices entangled in identity formations. This is particularly true when seen through a city as forceful and splendid as Venice. The essays in this volume investigate these connections between art and identity, through discussions of patronage, space and the dissemination of architectural models and knowledge in Venice, its territories and beyond. They celebrate Professor Deborah Howard?s leading role in fostering a historically grounded and interdisciplinary approach to the art and architecture of Venice. Based on an examination and re-interpretation of a wide range of archival material and primary sources, the contributing authors approach the notion of identity in its many guises: as self-representation, as strong sub-currents of spatial strategies, as visual and semantic discourses, and as political and imperial aspirations. Employing interdisciplinary modes of interpretation, these studies offer ground-breaking analyses of canonical sites and works of art, diverse groups of patrons, as well as the life and oeuvre of leading architects such as Jacopo Sansovino and Andrea Palladio. In so doing, they link together citizens and nobles, past and present, the real and the symbolic, space and sound, religion and power, the city and its parts, Venice and the Stato da Mar, the Serenissima and the Sublime Port.

This volume features a collection of papers dedicated to "Canons of Form-Making", in honor of the 500th anniversary of the birth of architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Theorist as well as practitioner, Palladio's architecture was based on well-defined canons that he had gleaned from studying the treatises as well as the remains of architecture from antiquity. Palladio himself left to posterity not only his large corpus of built works, but his Quattro libri d'architettura. Three of the papers in this issue are specifically about Palladio and his work. The other papers deal with canons of form-making, ancient and contemporary.

This dictionary provides a historical overview of the major architectural developments and styles, building materials and types, major structures and locations, sites and architects. Historical eras like ancient Egyptian architecture and the Renaissance in Europe and movements such as Art Deco are covered. Materials discussed range from concrete, stone, glass and wood, while types of structures include architectural inventions such as the arch and dome to building types from monasteries and mosques to museums and skyscrapers. Major structures highlighted in this volume include not only great achievements such as Hagia Sophia and the Eiffel Tower, but also important sites such as the Great Zimbabwe and Angkor Wat, found on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. General geographical areas are also covered, such as African and Russian architecture. Noted architects include theorists from the ancient Chinese engineer Yu Hao Roman engineer Vitruvius to many current architects such as Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava, with a focus on architects who have enjoyed lasting fame through history or have won international prizes such as the Pritzker Architecture Prize. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Architecture contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on architects, famous structures, types of materials, and the different architectural styles. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about architecture.

Architecture, which can be understood in its most basic sense as a form of enclosure created with an aesthetic intent, first made its appearance in the Prehistoric Age. From its earliest developments, architecture changed over time and in different cultures in response to changing cultural needs, aesthetic interests, materials, and techniques. The A to Z of Architecture provides information on architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Tadao Ando, Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov, as well as on famous structures like the Acropolis, the Colosseum, the Forbidden City, Machu Pichu, Notre Dame, the Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, and the World Trade Center. The dictionary examines the development of architecture over the centuries through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the major architects, well-known buildings, time periods, styles, building types, and materials in world architecture.

Inspired by Deborah Howard’s leading role in fostering a historically grounded and interdisciplinary approach to the art and architecture of Venice, the essays here examine the connections and rapports between art and identity through the discussion of patronage, space (domestic and ecclesiastical), and dissemination of architectural knowledge as well as models within Venice, its territories and beyond.

Palaces, villas and churches. These were the highlights of my first visit to Italy. I took a lot of photos and looked forward to sharing them with friends and family. Back home, though, I found that I didn’t recall much about the places that impressed me. Although I had the benefit of a half-day guide in Rome, Florence and Venice, I sometimes had difficulty hearing what was said on crowded streets and busy interiors. The guides were capable but had only enough time to mention a few major features. As a rule, they skimped on actually describing buildings that intrigued me. And so they were not especially helpful in providing the insights I wanted. Upon my return, I found myself wondering: Where did the architects actually find their ideas? What did they want to accomplish? And what do their choices tell us about their time? My sojourn in Italy would have been more satisfying if I had come away with a fuller account of what I had seen. What I most needed was context. This book supplies that context. Contemplation of antiquity and the exchange of views among architects released a surge of intellectual energy not seen for a millennium, a development that would never have happened so quickly were it not for Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable type. This development, in turn, led to architects’ heightened self-awareness of their collective enterprise. They read what their fellow architects wrote and thereby gained in sophistication. They were no longer merely masons. They became architects in the modern sense. They took pride in their achievements and shared a conviction that the visual culture they created was far superior to that of the previous thousand years. Their embrace of classical civilisation had a visceral urgency. Rome, after all, was a culture with a storied past, peopled by larger-than-life figures. To learn what the ancients had created in word or stone could supply a shortcut to wisdom. And emulating the Romans would provide new models of aesthetic excellence. This endeavour became known as the Renaissance, or rebirth. The Reformation, however, changed everything. Martin Luther brought to issue a quandary: How exactly was Christianity to be reconciled with the pagan past, if at all? Could one source of inspiration be sustained without compromising the other? Religious reform questioned the aesthetic achievements of the previous hundred years. The story of Renaissance architecture represents the effort to find an accommodation.

Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice, a woodcut first printed in the year 1500, presents a bird’s-eye portrait of Venice at its peak as an international hub of trade, art, and culture. An artistic and cartographic masterpiece of the Renaissance, the View depicts Venice as a vibrant, waterborne city interconnected by canals and bridges and filled with ornate buildings, elaborate gardens, and seafaring vessels. The contributors to A View of Venice: Portrait of a Renaissance City draw on a high-resolution digital scan of the over nine-foot-wide composite print to examine the complexities of this extraordinary woodcut and portrayal of early modern Venetian life. The essays show how the View constitutes an advanced material artifact of artistic, humanist, and scientific culture. They also outline the ways the print reveals information about the city’s economic and military power, religious and social infrastructures, and cosmopolitan residents. Featuring methodological advancements in the digital humanities, A View of Venice highlights the reality and myths of a topographically unique, mystical city and its place in the world. Contributors. Karen-edis Barzman, Andrea Bellieni, Patricia Fortini Brown, Valeria Cafà, Stanley Chojnacki, Tracy E. Cooper, Giada Damen, Julia A. DeLancey, Piero Falchetta, Ludovica Galeazzo, Maartje van Gelder, Jonathan Glixon, Richard Goy, Anna Christine Swartwood House, Kristin Love Huffman, Holly Hurlburt, Claire Judde de Larivière, Blake de Maria, Martina Massaro, Cosimo Monteleone, Monique O’Connell, Mary Pardo, Giorgio Tagliaferro, Saundra Weddle, Bronwen Wilson, Rangsook Yoon

This volume provides readers interested in urban history with a collection of essays on the evolution of public space in that paradigmatic western city which is Rome. Scholars specialized in different historical periods contributed chapters, in order to find common themes which weave their way through one of the most complex urban histories of western civilization. Divided into five chronological sections (Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Modern and Contemporary) the volume opens with the issue of how public space was defined in classical Roman law and how ancient city managers organized the maintenance of these spaces, before moving on to explore how this legacy was redefined and reinterpreted during the Middle Ages. The third group of essays examines how the imposition of papal order on feuding families during the Renaissance helped introduce a new urban plan which could satisfy both functional and symbolic needs. The fourth section shows how modern Rome continued to express strong interest in the control and management of public space, the definition of which was necessarily selective in this vastly extensive city. The collection ends with an essay on the contemporary debate for revitalizing Rome's eastern periphery. Through this long-term chronological approach the volume offers a truly unique insight into the urban development of one of Europe’s most important cities, and concludes with a discuss of the challenges public space faces today after having served for so many centuries as a driving force in urban history.

Venice, one of the world's most storied cities, has a long and remarkable history, told here in its full scope from its founding in the early Middle Ages to the present day. A place whose fortunes and livelihoods have been shaped to a large degree by its relationship with water, Venice is seen in Dennis Romano's account as a terrestrial and maritime power, whose religious, social, architectural, economic, and political histories have been determined by its unique geography.