The New York Times bestselling, award winning story of the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and the Renaissance genius who reinvented architecture to build it.

On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore was announced: Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Dome....shall do so before the end of the month of September. The proposed dome was regarded far and wide as all but impossible to build: not only would it be enormous, but its original and sacrosanct design shunned the flying buttresses that supported cathedrals all over Europe. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air.

Of the many plans submitted, one stood out--a daring and unorthodox solution to vaulting what is still the largest dome in the world. It was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a goldsmith and clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi, then forty-one, who would dedicate the next twenty-eight years to solving the puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he reinvented the field of architecture.

Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Award-winning, bestselling author Ross King weaves this drama amid a background of the plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence to bring the dome's creation to life in a fifteenth-century chronicle with twenty-first-century resonance.

A revelatory exploration of a crucial Renaissance art form--military architecture--and its unexpected connections with contemporary aesthetic, cultural, and technological innovations

Urban fortifications were the most colossal artistic achievements of the Italian Renaissance. Celebrated sculptors, painters, and architects such as Michelangelo, Bramante, Leonardo, Francesco Paciotto, and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger collaborated with humanists and military commanders to design citadels and ramparts. Unprecedented in their geometric sophistication, constructional ambition, and physical grandeur, these monuments profoundly transformed the shape and experience of the built environment. Form and Fortification challenges the long-held assumption that military architecture was merely an instrument of warfare, restoring the practice to its central place at the nexus of sixteenth-century creative and cultural endeavors. Through a rich array of drawings, archival manuscripts, early printed sources, treatises, and realized works, this book traces the remarkable exchanges between fortification and other arenas of art, design, and engineering.

Charting these cross-disciplinary convergences, Morgan Ng develops the novel concept of cognate technologies to describe military and civil structures that coevolved and came to share striking formal affinities. Defensive earthworks bore the same shapes as terraced gardens; subterranean artillery chambers resembled artificial grottoes and hydraulic tunnels; and fortified passageways morphed into palatial galleries. The relationships among such cognate technologies, this book contends, are essential for understanding the interconnected nature of early modern artistic invention.

Included in this indispensable book are some of the most significant documents tracing Freemasonry from its early operative roots to the early collections defining the seeds of Speculative Freemasonry. Included are: Edict of Rothari; The Regius Manuscript; The Matthew Cooke Manuscript; The Torgau Ordinances; The Strasburg Manuscript; Watson Manuscript; The Schaw Statutes; St. Clair Charters; Harleian Manuscript; Inigo Jones Manuscript; Thomas Tew Manuscript; Edinburgh Register House Manuscript; The Kevan Manuscript; Ancient Charges of a Free Mason (1723 & 1738); General Regulations of a Freemason and The Graham Manuscript. Also included are the essays: The Old Charges of Freemasonry and Freemasonry And The Comacine Masters by H.L Haywood. 2013 Revised Edition.

The Renaissance was a diverse phenomenon, marked by innovation and economic expansion, the rise of powerful rulers, religious reforms, and social change. Encompassing the entire continent, Renaissance Architecture examines the rich variety of buildings that emerged during these seminal centuries of European history.

Although marked by the rise of powerful individuals, both patrons and architects, the Renaissance was equally a time of growing group identities and communities -- and architecture provided the public face to these new identities. Religious reforms in northern Europe, spurred on by Martin Luther, rejected traditional church function and decoration, and proposed new models. Political ambitions required new buildings to satisfy court rituals. Territory, nature, and art intersected to shape new landscapes and building types. Classicism came to be the international language of an educated architect and an ambitious patron, drawing on the legacy of ancient Rome. Yet the richness of the medieval tradition continued to be used throughout Europe, often alongside classical buildings.

Examining each of these areas by turn, this book offers a broad cultural history of the period as well as a completely new approach to the history of Renaissance architecture. The work of well-known architects such as Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio is examined alongside lesser known though no less innovative designers such as Juan Guas in Portugal and Benedikt Ried in Prague and Eastern Europe. Drawing on the latest research, it also covers more recent areas of interest such as the story of women as patrons and the emotional effect of Renaissance buildings, as well as the impact of architectural publications and travel on the emerging new architectural culture across Europe. As such, it provides a compelling introduction to the subject for all those interested in the history of architecture, society, and culture in the Renaissance, and European culture in general.

Queen of Scotland by birth, Queen of France by marriage, and Queen of England by right (some said), the life of Mary Stuart (1542-1587) was the stuff of legend. A monarch at only six days old, Mary's early years were spent at the glittering court of France. Pampered and indulged, she was little prepared for what lay ahead upon her return to Scotland to take up the reins of power. Murder, scandal, and betrayal would send her fleeing to England to seek the help of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth. Mary's fateful journey, which began with so much hope, would lead to her greatest tragedy.

Roland Hui, author of The Turbulent Crown - The Story of the Tudor Queens, and artist Dmitry Yakhovsky have come together to create a beautiful colouring book which will be enjoyed by all ages. In The Mary, Queen of Scots Colouring Book, Roland Hui's text introduces the characters, events, and places of this absorbing drama, while Dmitry Yakhovsky's stunning artwork and your colouring bring them to life. Relax, unwind, and express yourself while learning about the exciting and moving life of the fascinating Mary Stuart.

- Lot of images take the reader step by step through all the wonders of the palace

- Boxes on important and specific topics to complement the reading

This book provides an insight into the history and beauty of Palazzo Medici Riccardi, one of the most important palaces in Florence. Through its pages it is possible to delve into the events that led to the birth of the building commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici and designed by Michelozzo. The text is therefore a fascinating journey through settings, characters and historical periods, offering useful elements for understanding the history of a palace that is still a legend and for appreciating its famous masterpieces. These include the marvellous Chapel of the Magi, skilfully frescoed by Benozzo and the Galleria degli Specchi from the Riccardi period, with a vault painted by Luca Giordano. The book accompanies the reader in the discovery of all the marvels of the palace, beginning with the façade and the exterior elevations, continuing with the refined courtyard, the garden, the archaeological itinerary in the basement. then climbing the monumental staircase to reach the piano nobile with the Chapel of the Magi, the Charles VIII Room and the other rooms up to the splendid Hall of Bas-reliefs and the Riccardi Gallery.

Why did artists include prominent architectural settings in their narrative paintings? Why did they labour over specific, highly innovative structural solutions? Why did they endeavour to design original ornamental motifs which brought together sculptural, painterly and architectural approaches, as well as showcasing their understanding of materiality? Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy addresses these questions in order to shed light on the early exchanges between artistic and architectural practice in Italy, arguing that architecture in painting provided a unique platform for architectural experimentation. Rather than interpreting architectural settings as purely spatial devices and as lesser counterparts of their built cognates, this book emphasises their intrinsic value as designs as well as communicative tools, contending that the architectural imagination of artists was instrumental in redefining the status of architectural forms as a kind of cultural currency. Exploring the nexus between innovation and persuasion, Livia Lupi highlights an early form of little-discussed paragone between painting and architecture which relied on a shared understanding of architectural invention as a symbol of prestige. This approach offers a precious insight into how architectural forms were perceived and deployed, be they two or three-dimensional, at the same time clarifying the intersection of architecture and the figural arts in the work of later, influential figures like Giuliano da Sangallo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Baldassarre Peruzzi, whose work would not have been possible without the architectural experimentation of early fifteenth-century artists.

The two brief works presented here in translation have played an important role in shaping our understanding of the history of theories of proportion in architecture from Classical times through the Renaissance and thereafter.

Andrea Palladio's villa architecture is still admired for its elegance and harmony, but little is known about the person behind the buildings. Experienced Palladio researcher Guido Beltramini has worked meticulously on material from historical documents about Palladio's person and life, and assembled a full picture of the architect. Palladio in Private follows his career, his rise from being the ordinary miller's son Pietro della Gondola to become the architect Andrea Palladio. Beltramini does not just explore Palladio's origins, his training as a stonemason, and his complex relationship with powerful clients and scholars, but also his private life: his jovial character, his life as a married man with five children, and not least his profound conviction that architecture can and must enrich life. The text is complemented by numerous illustrations. Guido Beltramini, born in 1961, has been director of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza since 1991. He has curated numerous exhibitions at venues including the Venice Biennale, the Royal Academy of Art, London, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.

Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, and Palladio taught themselves how to become architects by studying ancient buildings and Vitruvius, and they replaced Medieval styles with a new design tradition. In this volume, the writings of Alberti, Palladio, and Vasari are compared to determine how buildings were designed and constructed during the Italian Renaissance. Michelangelo's drawings, letters, models, and other primary sources have been reconsidered to reconstruct how he intended for St. Peter's Basilica to look. My conclusion is that he planned to add a six-columned portico and to have a dome of similar height to the present dome, but which was also to have had a lower U-shaped dome on the interior. The work of other architects is also reconsidered mainly on the basis of primary sources.Appended are discussions of the recovery of ancient knowledge during the Renaissance and the role of Aldus Manutius in printing Greek and Latin classics. The Renaissance became increasingly secular in education as well as in architecture and art until the Counter-Reformation reimposed censorship.

Durante el siglo XVI, los espa oles ejecutaron en el Nuevo Mundo americano la m s grande y descomunal operaci n de poblamiento que se haya realizado jam s en la historia de la humanidad, sin parang n en ning n otro tiempo.

Nunca antes un pa s fund tantos pueblos, villas y ciudades, en un territorio tan grande, en un per odo de tiempo tan corto, y en una forma tan regular y ordenada como lo hizo Espa a en Am rica durante ese siglo, siendo el resultado de ese proceso la creaci n de un modelo urbano que a n cuando ejecutado en Am rica, sin duda fue producto de la penetraci n de las ideas renacentistas en la Corona espa ola, pudiendo considerarse globalmente como patrimonio cultural de la humanidad, y aparte la lengua, el m s importante aporte cultural espa ol al Nuevo Mundo.

Ello, sin embargo, lamentablemente es casi completamente ignorado en las cl sicas obras de Historia del Urbanismo escritas fuera del mundo hispanoamericano. En este libro, el profesor Allan R. Brewer-Carias busca llenar ese vac o, constituyendo esta obra, en definitiva, una historia de la ocupaci n del territorio de la Am rica colonial, a trav s de la fundaci n ordenada de ciudades.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

A leading architect of the Italian Renaissance, Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481-1536) has, until now, been a little-known, enigmatic figure. A paucity of biographical documentation and a modest number of surviving buildings, coupled with an undeservedly critical assessment by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), have long cast Peruzzi's career in shadow. With Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy, Ann C. Huppert taps into a known, but neglected resource--Peruzzi's autograph drawings--and reveals the full scope and artistic mastery of Peruzzi's work and its enduring influence.

Extraordinary not only in their beauty and design inventiveness, but also in the varied representational techniques and practical mathematics noted within them, Peruzzi's drawings record an evolving artistic process. Reassessing his architectural masterworks, Huppert also explores lesser-known work: his studies of Roman antiquity, realized paintings and unrealized buildings, as well as engineering projects. Huppert shows that Peruzzi anticipated modern representational methods and scientific approaches in architecture, and pinpoints the moment when architecture began to emerge as a profession distinct from the other arts.

The Tempietto, the embodiment of the Renaissance mastery of classical architecture and its Christian reinvention, was also the preeminent commission of the Catholic kings, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, in papal Rome. This groundbreaking book situates Bramante's time-honored memorial dedicated to Saint Peter and the origins of the Roman Catholic Church at the center of a coordinated program of the arts exalting Spain's leadership in the quest for Christian hegemony. The innovations in form and iconography that made the Tempietto an authoritative model for Western architecture were fortified in legacy monuments created by the popes in Rome and the kings in Spain from the later Renaissance to the present day. New photographs expressly taken for this study capture comprehensive views and focused details of this exemplar of Renaissance art and statecraft.

The Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder provided Renaissance scholars, artists and architects with details of ancient architectural practice and long-lost architectural wonders - material that was often unavailable elsewhere in classical literature. Pliny's descriptions frequently included the dimensions of these buildings, as well as details of their unusual construction materials and ornament. This book describes, for the first time, how the passages were interpreted from around 1430 to 1580, that is, from Alberti to Palladio. Chapters are arranged chronologically within three interrelated sections - antiquarianism; architectural writings; drawings and built monuments - thereby making it possible for the reader to follow the changing attitudes to Pliny over the period. The resulting study establishes the Naturalis historia as the single most important literary source after Vitruvius's De architectura.

This is the first English translation of Francesco Sansovino's (1521-1586) celebrated guide to Venice, which was first published in 1561. One of the earliest books to describe the monuments of Venice for inquisitive travelers, Sansovino's guide was written at a time when St. Mark's Piazza was in the process of taking the form we see today. With in-depth descriptions of the buildings created by the author's father, noted sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), including the Mint, Library, and Loggetta, the volume presents a vivid portrait of Venice during a particularly rich moment in the city's history. An engaging introduction and scholarly annotations to the original text provide the modern reader with an appreciation of the history of this great city as well as a practical guide for seeking out and enjoying its Renaissance treasures.

A unique, richly illustrated study of Ottoman religious buildings standing today in Cairo

With the conquest in 1517 CE of Egypt by the Ottomans, Cairo lost its position as the capital of the Islamic empire to Istanbul but it retained an eminent position as the second most important city, with Egypt still regarded as one of the wealthiest provinces of the new empire. Round minarets with pointed hoods, as symbols of the new rulers, began filling the landscape alongside the octagonal minarets with pavilion tops of the Mamluks, new mosques, zawiyas, and madrasas/takiyas were built to emphasize the continuation of Sunni Islamic rule, while the use of tiles imported from Turkey introduced new decorative styles to the city's existing rich carvings and marble paneling.

This book invites readers and students to revisit a long-overlooked era of Cairo's architectural evolution, offering a unique, comprehensive study of Ottoman religious buildings still standing today. It provides detailed descriptions and walk-throughs of the buildings covered, visually, through its rich collection of plans, line drawings, and photographs, and through the narrative that infuses each image with life, shedding light on the continuous evolution of architecture in Cairo even after the city had ceased to be the capital of the Islamic empire.

Palladio was the first to provide a visual representation of an ancient concrete walling construction method using removable wooden formwork, which he termed maniera riempiuta, a method since used by modern and contemporary architects. The current study traces Palladio' s creative reading of Vitruvius, focusing on the afterlife of Vitruvian emplekton, since it seems to have been equated during the Renaissance with the maniera riempiuta. It also investigates the Classical literary and archaeological sources of the concrete walling methods proposed by Palladio, identifying a forgotten aspect of their enduring impact on European architecture until at least the early nineteenth century.

The Ottoman Renaissance, which took place during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the cities of Bursa, Edirne, and Istanbul, produced an extraordinary array of artworks in the form of monumental imperial architecture, Iznik tiles, calligraphy, and illustrated manuscripts. Notwithstanding this exceptional artistic production, Ottoman art and architecture have not received the same attention in historiography as, for instance, the celebrated Italian Renaissance. Drawing upon notions of rebirth characteristic of the Renaissance, more generally, The Ottoman Renaissance seeks to situate Renaissance Ottoman art within a more global context. This book recognises the cultural interaction and sharing of values across the Mediterranean basin that characterised the period more broadly, yet examines art and architecture through specifically Ottoman conceptions of rebirth. Ottoman ideas of rebirth, although built on the classical Greece and Rome, moved well beyond these legacies. Indeed, the Ottomans were much more focused on their Eastern (Turkic, Timurid, Persian) and Islamic heritage than that of the classical world which features in the West. Both the ancient and recent past provided inspiration on which to build a cultural identity specific to the Ottoman artistic experience. In order to fully understand the shared values of the early modern Mediterranean and critically engage with the period's different interpretations of rebirth, this study compares the works of three Renaissance contemporaries: the Italian Giorgio Vasari and the Ottomans Mustafa Ali and Mimar Sinan.This study argues that the unique geographic location of the sultans of the Ottoman court allowed artists of the Ottoman Empire to capitalise on the inherited legacies of both the Islamic-Timurid-Turkic-Persian East and the Latin West. The result was a synthesis of Eastern and Western exemplars which ultimately produced a rebirth in the arts distinct from their early modern Italian and European counterparts. This work traces this Renaissance from its beginnings in 1413 through to its triumphant phase in the Süleymanic Age (1520-75, including the reign of his son, Selim II). In its examination of the Empire's architecture, decorative tiles, calligraphy, and miniature paintings, the study contributes to current scholarship in the field that seeks to assess the Renaissance from a more complex, multi-focal, and multinational perspective. Furthermore, it reinforces the idea that many renaissances arose concurrently in the Mediterranean basin in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Before reaching the tender age of 30, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) had already sculpted Pietà and David, two of the most famous sculptures in the entire history of art. As a sculptor, painter, draftsman, and architect, the achievements of this Italian master are unique--no artist before or after him has ever produced such a vast, multifaceted, and wide-ranging oeuvre.

This fresh TASCHEN edition traces Michelangelo's ascent to the cultural elite of the Renaissance. Ten richly illustrated chapters cover the artist's paintings, sculptures, and architecture, including a close analysis of the artist's tour de force frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.Full-page reproductions and enlarged details allow readers to appreciate the finest details in the artist's repertoire, while the book's biographical essay considers Michelangelo's more personal traits and circumstances, such as his solitary nature, his thirst for money and commissions, his immense wealth, and his skill as a property investor.