Architecture, Domestic—Italy—Rome
Architecture, Domestic—Italy
Architecture, Domestic—History
Architecture, Renaissance—Italy
Country homes--Italy
The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior, 1400-1700 by
Adopting a broad chronological framework and expanding the regional scope beyond Florence and Venice to include domestic interiors from less studied centers such as Urbino, Ferrara, and Bologna, this collection offers new perspectives on the home in early modern Italy. The volumeOCOs dual emphasis is on reconstructing the material culture of specific residences, and on how particular domestic objects reflect, shape, and mediate family values and relationships within the home."
Italian Splendor: Palaces, Castles, and Villas by
This well-illustrated tour through 50 magnificent villas and palaces built by the Italian aristocracy, covers country retreats in Tuscany and the Vento, impressive residences in Rome and Sienna, fortress-like castles and grand villas in Trieste and Sicily, and many more. A tour some of the world's grandest and most impeccably built homes. The book will appeal to architecture historians as well as those interested in the history and glamour of the most wealthy and well-known families in Italy.
La Villa by
Published in 1559 and appearing here for the first time in English, La Villa is a rare source of Renaissance landscape theory. Written by Bartolomeo Taegio, a Milanese jurist and man of letters, after his banishment (possibly for murder, Thomas E. Beck speculates), the text takes the form of a dialogue between two gentlemen, one a proponent of the country, the other of the city. While it is not a gardening treatise, La Villa reflects an aesthetic appreciation of the land in the Renaissance, reveals the symbolic and metaphorical significance of sixteenth-century gardens for their owners, and articulates a specific philosophy about the interaction of nature and culture in the garden. This edition of the original Italian text and Beck's English translation is augmented with notes in which Beck identifies numerous references to literary sources in La Villa and more than 280 people and places mentioned in the dialogue. The introduction illuminates Taegio's life and intellectual activity, his obligations to his sources, the cultural context, and the place of La Villa in Renaissance villa literature. It also demonstrates the enduring relevance of La Villa for architecture and landscape architecture. La Villa makes a valuable contribution to the body of literature about place-making, precisely because it treats the villa as an idea and not as a building type.
Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and the Art of the Plan by
Winner, Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, Society of Architectural Historians. "Buildings have lives in time," observes Patricia Waddy in this pioneering study of the relation between plan and use in the palaces of the Borghese, Barberini, and Chigi families. Waddy reconstructs what was done at precise moments in a building's life, relating these acts of building to the needs and purposes of the owners and offering a rich understanding of architectural activity in seventeenth-century Rome. In its analysis of the relation between plan and use over the course of several decades, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palacesprovides a valuable measure for estimating architectural changes over time and a basis for reevaluating seventeenth-century design skills. It is also a fascinating account that shows how the requirements of a hierarchical diplomatic society, whose leaders were celibate churchmen, intersected with a tradition of plasticity, flexibility, and revision in the architecture of Rome's major palaces. Waddy first delves into the complex workings of the household to conceptualize a general program for any large Roman palace of the period. She explains the intricate relationships between design and use at a time when elaborate rules of behavior governed the flow of aristocratic life. The activities of households requiring as many as one hundred staff are examined in lively detail as Waddy describes the specialized workplaces and living quarters, the segregated residences for the family's noblewomen and their attendants, seasonal apartments, the circulation of carriages and people, and the settings that reflected the patron's special interests—varying from theater and ball games to art and bathing. She then considers five palaces commissioned by families at the pinnacle of Roman society. The architects range from the well-known Carlo Maderno and Gianlorenzo Bernini to others who are barely remembered. Patricia Waddy is Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University. An Architectural History Foundation Book.
The Villas of Palladio by
The Renaissance architect and builder Andrea Palladio is arguable the most influential architect in Western history, and certainly the most beloved. His sixteenth-century villas in the Italian Veneto revolutionized the course of architecture, and the principles on which he based his work are still felt today. For the past several years, Italian watercolorist Giovanni Giaconi has devoted his talents to creating exquisite large-format pen-and-ink watercolor renderings of all thirty-two of Palladio's villas. Each drawing captures the timeless beauty of Palladian architecture and provides a detailed record of these masterpieces. Together with brief descriptions of each villa, samples of Giaconi's preparatory sketches, and where available, Palladio's own woodcuts, these works of art leave a deep impression of Palladio's oeuvre and give the reader an opportunity to compare the original designs with the actual buildings and their present state of conservation. This beautiful book is a must-have and the perfect gift for architects, travelers, and lovers of Italy and Palladio's architecture.
