Author: Philip Steadman Publisher: UCL Press ISBN: 1787359158 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 418
Book Description
Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly across the sky? How were seas created on stage? How did mechanical birds imitate real birdsong? What was ‘artificial music’, three centuries before Edison and the phonograph? How could pipe organs be driven and made to play themselves by waterpower alone? And who were the architects, engineers, and craftsmen who created these wonders? All these questions are answered. At the end of the book we visit the lost ‘garden of marvels’ at Pratolino with its many grottoes, automata and water jokes; and we attend the performance of Mercury and Mars in Parma in 1628, with its spectacular stage effects and its music by Claudio Monteverdi – one of the places where opera was born. Renaissance Fun is offered as an entertainment in itself. But behind the show is a more serious scholarly argument, centred on the enormous influence of two ancient writers on these subjects, Vitruvius and Hero. Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture were widely studied by Renaissance theatre designers. Hero of Alexandria wrote the Pneumatics, a collection of designs for surprising and entertaining devices that were the models for sixteenth and seventeenth century automata. A second book by Hero On Automata-Making – much less well known, then and now – describes two miniature theatres that presented plays without human intervention. One of these, it is argued, provided the model for the type of proscenium theatre introduced from the mid-sixteenth century, the generic design which is still built today. As the influence of Vitruvius waned, the influence of Hero grew.
Author: Robert Brennan Publisher: Harvey Miller ISBN: 9781912554003 Category : Art, Modern Languages : en Pages : 366
Book Description
"Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance Italy" reconstructs a historical concept of modern art on the basis of sources written between the 1390s and 1440s. The central point of reference in these sources was Giotto, the early fourteenth-century painter who, as one writer put it in 1442, "first modernized (modernizavit) ancient and mosaic figures." The word "modern" was used in a wide variety of ways throughout this period, some quite polemical, others rather prosaic. To call art (ars) modern, however, was to invoke a stable, well-defined concept whose roots ran deep in late-medieval intellectual life. According to this concept, to make an art modern was to set it on a new foundation in science (scientia) and rationalize it accordingly. As familiar as this formulation may sound in principle, each and every one of its key terms--art, modernity, science, rationality--meant something strikingly different in this period than it does in our time. The hallmark of modern art was not verisimilitude or expression or virtually any of the achievements that art historians associate with Giotto today, but rather the invention of techniques that aimed to imitate nature in its very manner of operation, aligning the concrete, step-by-step process of painting with the inner workings of nature itself. By reclaiming this concept and tracking its complex relation to early Renaissance concerns such as linear perspective and the canon of proportion, the book not only establishes a novel framework for the visual analysis of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian painting, but also unravels a fundamental master narrative of Western art history from within, clearing the way for renewed discussions of alternative modernities, including those that precede the story of modernism as we know it. --Publisher's website.
Author: Sir John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy Publisher: ISBN: 9780691018256 Category : Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
This is the twelfth volume of the AW Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, which are delivered annually at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The volumes of the lectures constitute number xxxv in Bollingen series.
Author: Mary Quinlan-McGrath Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226922855 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices. Influences is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also—perhaps even primarily—functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican’s Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays. An original and intellectually stimulating study, Influences adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.
Author: Michael W. Cole Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691198322 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 315
Book Description
"Within a span of seven or eight years in the 1550s, the Italian painter Sofonisba Anguissola produced more self-portraits than any known painter before her had in a lifetime. She was the first known artist in history to take her parents and siblings as primary subject matter, and may have painted the first group portrait featuring only women. Cole examines Sofonisba's paintings as expressions of her relationships and networks, looking at why Sofonisba was able to become a great woman artist: at her father, who decided to allow her to be educated as a painter; at her teacher, Bernardino Campi; and at her relationships with her students, sisters, and patrons, who included the Queen of Spain. Cole demonstrates that Sofonisba made teaching and education a central theme of her painting. The book also provides the first complete catalogue of all of Sofonisba's known works"--
Author: Andrew Graham-Dixon Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 9780520223752 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
A history of Renaissance art, placing the time in its historical and political context and arguing that the Renaissance grew out of the achievements of the medieval period.
Author: Bosiljka Raditsa Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art ISBN: 0870999532 Category : Art, Renaissance Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
Works in the Museum's collection that embody the Renaissance interest in classical learning, fame, and beautiful objects are illustrated and discussed in this resource and will help educators introduce the richness and diversity of Renaissance art to their students. Primary source texts explore the great cities and powerful personalities of the age. By studying gesture and narrative, students can work as Renaissance artists did when they created paintings and drawings. Learning about perspective, students explore the era's interest in science and mathematics. Through projects based on poetic forms of the time, students write about their responses to art. The activities and lesson plans are designed for a variety of classroom needs and can be adapted to a specific curriculum as well as used for independent study. The resource also includes a bibliography and glossary.
Author: Philip Steadman
Author: Jeffrey Chipps Smith
Author: Lynne Lawner
Author: Robert Brennan
Author: Sir John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy
Author: Mary Quinlan-McGrath
Author: Michael W. Cole
Author: Matthew Woodcock
Author: Andrew Graham-Dixon
Author: Bosiljka Raditsa