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The Italian Renaissance Of Machines
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Book Synopsis The Italian Renaissance of Machines by : Paolo Galluzzi
Download or read book The Italian Renaissance of Machines written by Paolo Galluzzi and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-04 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Renaissance was a rebirth of art and literature--and of machines. In this lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period featuring Taccola's and da Vinci's fusion of artistry and engineering and new concepts of learning that enabled Galileo's revolutionary mathematical science of mechanics.
Book Synopsis Renaissance Fun by : Philip Steadman
Download or read book Renaissance Fun written by Philip Steadman and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature by : Jessica Wolfe
Download or read book Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature written by Jessica Wolfe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-03 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how machinery and the practice of mechanics participate in the intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism. Before the emergence of the modern concept of technology, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writers recognized the applicability of mechanical practices and objects to some of their most urgent moral, aesthetic, and political questions. The construction, use, and representation of devices including clocks, scientific instruments, stage machinery, and war engines not only reflect but also actively reshape how Renaissance writers define and justify artifice and instrumentality - the reliance upon instruments, mechanical or otherwise, to achieve a particular end. Harnessing the discipline of mechanics to their literary and philosophical concerns, scholars and poets including Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, George Chapman, and Gabriel Harvey look to machinery to ponder and dispute all manner of instrumental means, from rhetoric and pedagogy to diplomacy and courtly dissimulation.
Book Synopsis Venice's Most Loyal City by : Stephen D. Bowd
Download or read book Venice's Most Loyal City written by Stephen D. Bowd and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative microhistory of a fascinating yet neglected city shows how its loyalty to Venice was tested by military attack, economic downturn, and demographic collapse. Despite these trials, Brescia experienced cultural revival and political transformation, which Bowd uses to explain state formation in a powerful region of Renaissance Italy.
Book Synopsis Niccol Di Lorenzo Della Magna and the Social World of Florentine Printing, Ca. 1470Ð1493 by : Lorenz Bninger
Download or read book Niccol Di Lorenzo Della Magna and the Social World of Florentine Printing, Ca. 1470Ð1493 written by Lorenz Bninger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history of one of the foremost printers of the Renaissance explores how the Age of Print came to Italy. Lorenz Bninger offers a fresh history of the birth of print in Italy through the story of one of its most important figures, Niccol di Lorenzo della Magna. After having worked for several years for a judicial court in Florence, Niccol established his business there and published a number of influential books. Among these were Marsilio FicinoÕs De christiana religione, Leon Battista AlbertiÕs De re aedificatoria, Cristoforo LandinoÕs commentaries on DanteÕs Commedia, and Francesco BerlinghieriÕs Septe giornate della geographia. Many of these books were printed in vernacular Italian. Despite his prominence, Niccol has remained an enigma. A meticulous historical detective, Bninger pieces together the thorough portrait that scholars have been missing. In doing so, he illuminates not only NiccolÕs life but also the Italian printing revolution generally. Combining Renaissance studiesÕ traditional attention to bibliographic and textual concerns with a broader social and economic history of printing in Renaissance Italy, Bninger provides an unparalleled view of the business of printing in its earliest years. The story of Niccol di Lorenzo furnishes a host of new insights into the legal issues that printers confronted, the working conditions in printshops, and the political forces that both encouraged and constrained the publication and dissemination of texts.
Book Synopsis The Beauty and the Terror by : Catherine Fletcher
Download or read book The Beauty and the Terror written by Catherine Fletcher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of the birth of the West through its birthplace--Renaissance Italy The period between 1492--resonant for a number of reasons--and 1571, when the Ottoman navy was defeated in the Battle of Lepanto, embraces what we know as the Renaissance, one of the most dynamic and creatively explosive epochs in world history. Here is the period that gave rise to so many great artists and figures, and which by its connection to its classical heritage enabled a redefinition, even reinvention, of human potential. It was a moment both of violent struggle and great achievement, of Michelangelo and da Vinci as well as the Borgias and Machiavelli. At the hub of this cultural and intellectual ferment was Italy. The Beauty and the Terror offers a vibrant history of Renaissance Italy and its crucial role in the emergence of the Western world. Drawing on a rich range of sources--letters, interrogation records, maps, artworks, and inventories--Catherine Fletcher explores both the explosion of artistic expression and years of bloody conflict between Spain and France, between Catholic and Protestant, between Christian and Muslim; in doing so, she presents a new way of witnessing the birth of the West.
Book Synopsis The Machines of Leonardo Da Vinci and Franz Reuleaux by : Francis C. Moon
Download or read book The Machines of Leonardo Da Vinci and Franz Reuleaux written by Francis C. Moon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-10-29 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book will be of as much interest to engineers as to art historians, examining as it does the evolution of machine design methodology from the Renaissance to the Age of Machines in the 19th century. It provides detailed analysis, comparing design concepts of engineers of the 15th century Renaissance and the 19th century age of machines from a workshop tradition to the rational scientific discipline used today.
Book Synopsis Tuscany in the Age of Empire by : Brian Brege
Download or read book Tuscany in the Age of Empire written by Brian Brege and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history explores how one of Renaissance ItalyÕs leading cities maintained its influence in an era of global exploration, trade, and empire. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was not an imperial power, but it did harbor global ambitions. After abortive attempts at overseas colonization and direct commercial expansion, as Brian Brege shows, Tuscany followed a different path, one that allowed it to participate in EuropeÕs new age of empire without establishing an empire of its own. The first history of its kind, Tuscany in the Age of Empire offers a fresh appraisal of one of the foremost cities of the Italian Renaissance, as it sought knowledge, fortune, and power throughout Asia, the Americas, and beyond. How did Tuscany, which could not compete directly with the growing empires of other European states, establish a global presence? First, Brege shows, Tuscany partnered with larger European powers. The duchy sought to obtain trade rights within their empires and even manage portions of other statesÕ overseas territories. Second, Tuscans invested in cultural, intellectual, and commercial institutions at home, which attracted the knowledge and wealth generated by EuropeÕs imperial expansions. Finally, Tuscans built effective coalitions with other regional powers in the Mediterranean and the Islamic world, which secured the duchyÕs access to global products and empowered the Tuscan monarchy in foreign affairs. These strategies allowed Tuscany to punch well above its weight in a world where power was equated with the sort of imperial possessions it lacked. By finding areas of common interest with stronger neighbors and forming alliances with other marginal polities, a small state was able to protect its own security while carving out a space as a diplomatic and intellectual hub in a globalizing Europe.
Book Synopsis Influences by : Mary Quinlan-McGrath
Download or read book Influences written by Mary Quinlan-McGrath and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis The Duke and the Stars by : Monica Azzolini
Download or read book The Duke and the Stars written by Monica Azzolini and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first to examine the important political role played by astrology in Italian court culture. Reconstructing the powerful dynamics existing between astrologers and their prospective or existing patrons, The Duke and the Stars illustrates how the “predictive art” of astrology was a critical source of information for Italian Renaissance rulers, particularly in times of crisis. Astrological “intelligence” was often treated as sensitive, and astrologers and astrologer-physicians were often trusted with intimate secrets and delicate tasks that required profound knowledge not only of astrology but also of the political and personal situation of their clients. Two types of astrological predictions, medical and political, were taken into the most serious consideration. Focusing on Milan, Monica Azzolini describes the various ways in which the Sforza dukes (and Italian rulers more broadly) used astrology as a political and dynastic tool, guiding them as they contracted alliances, made political decisions, waged war, planned weddings, and navigated health crises. The Duke and the Stars explores science and medicine as studied and practiced in fifteenth-century Italy, including how astrology was taught in relation to astronomy.
Download or read book Lost Girls written by Nicholas Terpstra and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1554, a group of idealistic laywomen founded a home for homeless and orphaned adolescent girls in one of the worst neighborhoods in Florence. Of the 526 girls who lived in the home during its fourteen-year tenure, only 202 left there alive. Struck by the unusually high mortality rate, Nicholas Terpstra sets out to determine what killed the lost girls of the House of Compassion shelter (Casa della Pietà). Reaching deep into the archives' letters, ledgers, and records from both inside and outside the home, he slowly pieces together the tragic story. The Casa welcomed girls in bad health and with little future, hoping to save them from an almost certain life of poverty and drudgery. Yet this "safe" house was cruelly dangerous. Victims of Renaissance Florence’s sexual politics, these young women were at the disposal of the city’s elite men, who treated them as property meant for their personal pleasure. With scholarly precision and journalistic style, Terpstra uncovers and chronicles a series of disturbing leads that point to possible reasons so many girls died: hints of routine abortions, basic medical care for sexually transmitted diseases, and appalling conditions in the textile factories where the girls worked. Church authorities eventually took the Casa della Pietà away from the women who had founded it and moved it to a better part of Florence. Its sordid past was hidden, until now, in an official history that bore little resemblance to the orphanage’s true origins. Terpstra’s meticulous investigation not only uncovers the sad fate of the lost girls of the Casa della Pietà but also explores broader themes, including gender relations, public health, church politics, and the challenges girls and adolescent women faced in Renaissance Florence.
Book Synopsis The Fruit of Liberty by : Nicholas Scott Baker
Download or read book The Fruit of Liberty written by Nicholas Scott Baker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the middle decades of the sixteenth century, the republican city-state of Florence--birthplace of the Renaissance--failed. In its place the Medici family created a principality, becoming first dukes of Florence and then grand dukes of Tuscany. The Fruit of Liberty examines how this transition occurred from the perspective of the Florentine patricians who had dominated and controlled the republic. The book analyzes the long, slow social and cultural transformations that predated, accompanied, and facilitated the institutional shift from republic to principality, from citizen to subject. More than a chronological narrative, this analysis covers a wide range of contributing factors to this transition, from attitudes toward officeholding, clothing, the patronage of artists and architects to notions of self, family, and gender. Using a wide variety of sources including private letters, diaries, and art works, Nicholas Baker explores how the language, images, and values of the republic were reconceptualized to aid the shift from citizen to subject. He argues that the creation of Medici principality did not occur by a radical break with the past but with the adoption and adaptation of the political culture of Renaissance republicanism.
Book Synopsis A Brief Illustrated History of Machines and Mechanisms by : Emilio Bautista Paz
Download or read book A Brief Illustrated History of Machines and Mechanisms written by Emilio Bautista Paz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-08-02 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Machines have always gone hand-in-hand with the cultural development of m- kind throughout time. A book on the history of machines is nothing more than a specific way of bringing light to human events as a whole in order to highlight some significant milestones in the progress of knowledge by a complementary persp- tive into a general historical overview. This book is the result of common efforts and interests by several scholars, teachers, and students on subjects that are connected with the theory of machines and mechanisms. In fact, in this book there is a certain teaching aim in addition to a general historical view that is more addressed to the achievements by “homo faber” than to those by “homo sapiens”, since the proposed history survey has been developed with an engineering approach. The brevity of the text added to the fact that the authors are probably not com- tent to tackle historical studies with the necessary rigor, means the content of the book is inevitably incomplete, but it nevertheless attempts to fulfil three basic aims: First, it is hoped that this book may provide a stimulus to promote interest in the study of technical history within a mechanical engineering context. Few are the co- tries where anything significant is done in this area, which means there is a general lack of knowledge of this common cultural heritage.
Download or read book Milan Undone written by John Gagné and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history of how one of the Renaissance’s preeminent cities lost its independence in the Italian Wars. In 1499, the duchy of Milan had known independence for one hundred years. But the turn of the sixteenth century saw the city battered by the Italian Wars. As the major powers of Europe battled for supremacy, Milan, viewed by contemporaries as the “key to Italy,” found itself wracked by a tug-of-war between French claimants and its ruling Sforza family. In just thirty years, the city endured nine changes of government before falling under three centuries of Habsburg dominion. John Gagné offers a new history of Milan’s demise as a sovereign state. His focus is not on the successive wars themselves but on the social disruption that resulted. Amid the political whiplash, the structures of not only government but also daily life broke down. The very meanings of time, space, and dynasty—and their importance to political authority—were rewritten. While the feudal relationships that formed the basis of property rights and the rule of law were shattered, refugees spread across the region. Exiles plotted to claw back what they had lost. Milan Undone is a rich and detailed story of harrowing events, but it is more than that. Gagné asks us to rethink the political legacy of the Renaissance: the cradle of the modern nation-state was also the deathbed of one of its most sophisticated precursors. In its wake came a kind of reversion—not self-rule but chaos and empire.
Book Synopsis Rats, Bulls & Flying Machines by : Deborah M. Prum
Download or read book Rats, Bulls & Flying Machines written by Deborah M. Prum and published by . This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read about artists, inventors, and a lot of people who lived during the Renaissance and Reformation.
Book Synopsis The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy by : Anthony F. D’Elia
Download or read book The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy written by Anthony F. D’Elia and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weddings in 15th-century Italian courts were grand, sumptuous affairs, often requiring guests to listen to lengthy orations given in Latin. D'Elia shows how Italian humanists used these orations to support claims of legitimacy and assertions of superiority among families jockeying for power, as well as to advocate for marriage and sexual pleasure.
Book Synopsis Friendship, Love, and Trust in Renaissance Florence by : Dale Kent
Download or read book Friendship, Love, and Trust in Renaissance Florence written by Dale Kent and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-31 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kent explores the meaning of love and friendship as they were represented in the fifteenth century, particularly the relationship between heavenly and human friendship.
