Download or read book Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence written by Marica Tacconi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-08 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The service books of the Florentine Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore were, like the church itself, a cultural reflection of the city's position of power and prestige. Largely unexplored by modern scholars, these manuscripts provided the texts and, sometimes, the music necessary for the celebration of the liturgical services. Marica S. Tacconi offers the first comprehensive investigation of the sixty-five extant liturgical manuscripts produced between 1150 and 1526 for both Santa Maria del Fiore and its predecessor, the early cathedral of Santa Reparata. She employs a multidisciplinary approach that recognizes the books as codicological, liturgical, musical, and artistic products. Their cultural contexts, and their civic and propagandistic uses, are uncovered through the analysis of extensive archival material, much of which is presented here for the first time. This important and fascinating study provides new insights into late medieval and Renaissance Florentine ritual and culture.
Download or read book The Secret Language of Churches Cathedrals written by Richard Stemp and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2016-07-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is depicted in that stained glass window? What is the significance of those geometric figures? Why are there fierce-looking beasts carved amidst all that beauty? Is there a deeper purpose behind the play of light and space in the nave? Why is there a pelican on the lectern and ornate foliage on the pillars? The largely illiterate medieval audience could read the symbols of churches and cathedrals and recognise the meanings and stories deliberately encoded into them. For worshippers these were places of religious education and an awe-inspiring feast that satisfied both the senses and the soul. Today, in an age less attuned to iconography, such places of worship are often seen merely as magnificent works of architecture. This book restores the lost spiritual meaning of these fine and fascinating buildings. The Secret Language of Churches & Cathedrals provides a three-part illustrated key by which modern visitors can understand the layout, fabric and decorative symbolism of Christian sacred structures - thereby bringing back to life their original atmosphere of awe and sanctity. Part One is an analysis of structural features, outside and in, from spires and domes to clerestories and brasses. Part Two is a theme-by-theme guide, which identifies significant figures, scenes, stories, animals, flowers, and the use of numbers, letters and patterns in paintings, carvings and sculpture. Part Three is a historical decoder, revealing the evolution of styles - from basilicas through Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic and beyond. For all those who seek to know more about Christian art and architecture, this richly illustrated book will instruct and delight in equal measure.
Download or read book Building the Italian Renaissance written by Paula Kay Lazrus and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building the Italian Renaissance focuses on the competition to select a team to execute the final architectural challenge of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore--the erection of its dome. Although the model for the dome was widely known, the question of how this was to be accomplished was the great challenge of the age. This dome would be the largest ever built. This is foremost a technical challenge but it is also a philosophical one. The project takes place at an important time for Florence. The city is transitioning from a High Medieval world view into the new dynamics and ideas and will lead to the full flowering of what we know as the Renaissance. Thus the competition at the heart of this game plays out against the background of new ideas about citizenship, aesthetics, history (and its application to the present), and new technology. The central challenge is to expose players to complex and multifaceted situations and to individuals that animated life in Florence in the early 1400s. Humanism as a guiding philosophy is taking root and scholars are looking for ways to link the mercantile city to the glories of Rome and to the wisdom of the ancients across many fields. The aesthetics of the classical world (buildings, plastic arts and intellectual pursuits) inspired wonder, perhaps even envy, but the new approaches to the past by scholars such as Petrarch suggested that perhaps the creative classes are not simply crafts people, but men of ideas. Three teams compete for the honor to construct the dome, a project overseen by the Arte Della Lana (wool workers guild) and judged by them and a group of Florentine citizens who are merchants, aristocrats, learned men, and laborers. Their goal is to make the case for the building to live up to the ideals of Florence. The game gives students a chance to enter into the world of Florence in the early 1400s to develop an understanding of the challenges and complexity of such a major artistic and technical undertaking while providing an opportunity to grasp the interdisciplinary nature of major public works.
Download or read book Brunelleschi written by Frank D. Prager and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive book describes how Filippo Brunelleschi built the dome of Florence's famed cathedral: masonry techniques, construction concepts, and more. 28 halftones. 18 line illustrations.
Download or read book Brunelleschi s Dome written by Ross King and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Pippo the Fool written by Tracey E Fern and published by Charlesbridge. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In fifteenth-century Florence, Italy, a contest is held to design a magnificent dome for the town's cathedral, but when Pippo the Fool claims he will win the contest, everyone laughs at him. Based on a true story.
Download or read book Brunelleschi s Cupola written by Giovanni Fanelli and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few icons of the Renaissance are as recognizable as Brunelleschi's cupola rising over the city of Florence. This book offers a two-part innovative analysis and interpretation of Brunelleschi's masterpiece which was completed in 1434.
Download or read book Archaeological Campaigns Below the Florence Duomo and Baptistery 1895 1980 written by Franklin Toker and published by Harvey Miller. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Based on the excavations of 1965-1980, this second volume in the series provides an overview of the medieval art and architecture that was found below the Florence Duomo and Baptistery. Archaeological Campaigns below the Florence Duomo and Baptistery, 1895-1980 presents the results of one of the major archaeological campaigns of our times: the decade-long excavation below Florence's cathedral of S. Maria del Fiore. The book presents a cutaway vision of a great city that would be hard to match anywhere, exploring a site that was in use for 1500 years, from the founding of the Roman settlement of Florence to the burial there of Giotto and Brunelleschi. In terms of structures, the excavation uncovered a Roman house, an Early Christian basilica, a Carolingian crypt, and further rebuildings from the eleventh century and later. For artifacts, the findings constitute a virtual encyclopedia of ancient and medieval art in mosaics, frescoes, the grave of Florence's earliest documented saint, the first elaborate tomb of the Medici, and outstanding examples of Roman and medieval glass, metalwork, and ceramics. Forty-one specialists in material culture and archaeological science report on those finds in the book, and hundreds more illustrations are carried on the author's website, www.franklintoker.com.
Download or read book Assassin s Creed Renaissance written by Oliver Bowden and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, a young man embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance during the Renaissance in this novel based on the Assassin's Creed™ video game series. “I will seek vengeance upon those who betrayed my family. I am Ezio Auditore Da Firenze. I am an Assassin…” To eradicate corruption and restore his family’s honor, Ezio will learn the art of the Assassins. Along the way, he will call upon the wisdom of such great minds as Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavello—knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live. To his allies, he will become a force for change—fighting for freedom and justice. To his enemies, he will become a threat dedicated to the destruction of the tyrants abusing the people of Italy. So begins an epic story of power, revenge and conspiracy... An Original Novel Based on the Multiplatinum Video Game from Ubisoft
Download or read book The Art History and Architecture of Florentine Churches written by Susan Bracken and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Churches and palaces in Florence have been the subject matter of book-length, often multi-volume studies over the centuries. This book is a compendium of the main churches in Florence and has been written with two distinct audiences in mind: English-speaking students of Renaissance art, architecture, literature and history and the well-read traveller to Florence who wishes to place the works of art and architecture into the wider context of Italian culture. The choice of churches discussed here was influenced by the author’s experience as teacher for several university programmes on site in Florence. The buildings described and analysed are those which students will most likely encounter in the course of their study-abroad stay in Florence, whether they wish to specialise in art, architecture or the history of the Florentine Renaissance. This book represents a textbook that offers concise information on the history, art, and architecture of 25 of the main Florentine churches, provides plans and photos of the façades, and introduces the student to some of the most important vocabulary and the main textual sources of the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
Download or read book Lorenzo Ghiberti s Gates of Paradise written by Amy R. Bloch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 874 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the heretofore unsuspected complexity of Lorenzo Ghiberti's sculpted representations of Old Testament narratives in his Gates of Paradise (1425–52), the second set of doors he made for the Florence Baptistery and a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture. One of the most intellectually engaged and well-read artists of his age, Ghiberti found inspiration in ancient and medieval texts, many of which he and his contacts in Florence's humanist community shared, read, and discussed. He was fascinated by the science of vision, by the functioning of nature, and, above all, by the origins and history of art. These unusually well-defined intellectual interests, reflected in his famous Commentaries, shaped his approach in the Gates. Through the selection, imaginative interpretation, and arrangement of biblical episodes, Ghiberti fashioned multi-textured narratives that explore the human condition and express his ideas on a range of social, political, artistic, and philosophical issues.
Download or read book Museology and Values written by Timothy Verdon and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do 21st-century women and men still believe that museums can, through the way they display art, help shape their visitors' sense of the dignity of the person? Through the readings of history and style which they propose, can museums help bridge the gap that today seems to separate present from past, isolating individuals and groups in a contemporaneity without roots? If so, how? If not, why?
Download or read book Filippo Brunelleschi written by Eugenio Battisti and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Florence's greatest architectural master.
Download or read book The Cathedrals of Pisa Siena and Florence written by Pietro Matracchi and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The construction techniques and concepts of the cathedrals of Pisa, Siena and Florence are examined in detail, based on new data and using a methodological architectural diagnostics approach. New detailed surveys, carried out using often advanced tools, together with direct and in-depth inspections to examine all parts of the buildings, have enabled us to identify the building phases and the different construction techniques used over time. The information thereby acquired also formed the basis for a new interpretation of the archival documents. Accordingly, the problems encountered and the solutions adopted in the three cathedrals have been understood: in Pisa the construction of the elliptical dome above the rectangular crossing consisting of six thin pillars below; in Siena the design changes from the first system in the 13th century to the ‘Duomo Nuovo’, and the structural adaptations following earthquakes; the specific construction solutions adopted in Florence during the instability encountered in the construction of the large vaults of the basilican body. The comparison of the three buildings in terms of architectural and construction solutions also revealed unexpected relationships between the construction events of Siena’s Duomo Nuovo and the solutions then used in the large basilican body of Santa Maria del Fiore. The methodology employed has led to an understanding of the actual structure of the three cathedrals, an essential basis for a correct evaluation of the state of conservation of the churches for any restoration work. The book is aimed at scholars of architecture and ancient building structures, graduate and postgraduate students, and architects and engineers who plan architectural conservation and strengthening works for historical buildings.
Download or read book Hidden Wonders written by Etienne Guyon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hidden elegance in everyday objects and physical mechanisms, from crumpled paper to sandcastles. Hidden Wonders focuses on the objects that populate our everyday life--crumpled paper, woven fabric, a sand pile--but looks at them with a physicist's eye, revealing a hidden elegance in mundane physical mechanisms. In six chapters--Builders, Creating Shapes, Building with Threads, From Sand to Glass, Matter in Motion, and Fractures--the authors present brief stories, set in locales ranging from the Eiffel Tower to a sandcastle, that illustrate the little wonders hidden in the ordinary. A simple experiment that readers can perform at home concludes each story. More than 200 illustrations bring the stories to life.
Download or read book The New Opera Del Duomo Museum written by Timothy Verdon and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Bookseller of Florence written by Ross King and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A marvel of storytelling and a masterclass in the history of the book' WALL STREET JOURNAL The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of another kind: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers. At a time where all books were made by hand, these people helped imagine a new and enlightened world. At the heart of this activity was a remarkable bookseller: Vespasiano da Bisticci. His books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. With a client list that included popes and royalty, Vespasiano became the 'king of the world's booksellers'. But by 1480 a new invention had appeared: the printed book, and Europe's most prolific merchant of knowledge faced a formidable new challenge. 'A spectacular life of the book trade's Renaissance man' JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES
