Download or read book The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt written by Theodore Bowie and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Medieval Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt written by Villard de Honnecourt and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reliable and contemporaneous graphic observations of everyday life in 13th-century France by an artist/draftsman responsible for creating one of the most treasured documents in art history. 73 black-and-white plates.
Download or read book The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt written by Carl F. Barnes Jr. and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new facsimile edition of the Portfolio of the 13th-century Picard artist Villard de Honnecourt is the first ever to be published in color. The thirty-three leaves are reproduced at actual size from high-quality color transparencies to ensure the best possible color reproduction of the drawings. One can now see variations in inks and quill strokes, traces of preliminary drawings, and corrections made by the artist. This study is also the first to give a thorough description of the condition of the leaves, analysis of each drawing in the portfolio individually, and new transcriptions and literal and free translations of the inscriptions. The opening chapter covers the history and physical condition of the portfolio, including reassigning "hands" to text found on the leaves. The author analyses the tools and inks used, Villard's drawing technique and style, and evaluates Villard as an artist-draftsman. Chapter II, the body of the book, is devoted to detailed analyses of the leaves, one by one, and their drawings and inscriptions. These analyses are of interest to those concerned with medieval technology and theology as well as to those interested in medieval art and architecture. Chapter III is a new biography of Villard that challenges the many wild speculations of the last century and a half about Villard, separating obvious fiction from possible fact. Barnes analyzes in detail Villard's drawings of different Gothic buildings and makes a case for Villard having been a lay representative of the cathedral chapter at Cambrai, one of the buildings Villard drew. An extensive bibliography of Villard studies and a glossary of Villard's technical and artistic terms complete this important new study.
Download or read book The Topkapi Scroll written by Gülru Necipoğlu and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.
Download or read book The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals written by Lynn Courtenay and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great cathedrals and churches of the medieval West continue to awe. How were they built, and why do they remain standing? What did their builders know about what they were doing? These questions have given rise to considerable controversy, which is fully reflected in the papers selected here. The first section of the book is concerned with the medieval builders and their design methods; the second focuses on engineering issues in the context of the infamous collapse of the choir at Beauvais in 1284. The following papers extend the analysis into the 15th century, looking for example at Brunelleschi’s dome for Florence Cathedral, and deal with the often neglected structures of roofs, towers and spires.
Download or read book Reciprocal Frame Architecture written by Olga Popovic Larsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple and beautifully illustrated introduction to the use of reciprocal frame structures in architecture.
Download or read book The Architect as Magician written by Albert C. Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Architect as Magician explores the connection between magic and architecture. There is a belief that a greater understanding of the meaning of magic provides insights about architecture and architects’ design processes. Architects influence the effects of nature through the making of their buildings. In an analogous condition, magicians perform rituals in an attempt to influence the forces of nature. This book argues that architects could gain much by incorporating ideas from magic into their design process. The book demonstrates through historical and current examples the important influence magic has had on the practice of architecture. The authors explain how magic helps us to understand the way we infuse architecture with meaning and how magic affects and inspires architectural creation. Aimed at architects, students, scholars and researchers, The Architect as Magician helps readers discover the ambiguous and spiritual elements in their design process.
Download or read book Stereotomy written by José Calvo-López and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-08 with total page 719 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the general concepts in stereotomy and its connection with descriptive geometry, the social background of its practitioners and theoreticians, the general methods and tools of this technology, and the specific procedures for the members built in hewn stone, including arches, squinches, stairs and vaults, ending with a chapter discussing the open problems in this field. Thus, it can be used as a reference book in the subject, but it can also read as a compelling narrative on this subject, one of the main branches of pre-industrial technology. Construction in hewn stone requires the use of geometrical methods and tools to assure that individual stones, either blocks or voussoirs, fit with one another and conform to the general shape of walls, arches or vaults. During the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, such techniques and instruments were developed empirically by masons and architects. Later on, learned mathematicians and engineers introduced refinements in these procedures and this branch of knowledge, known as stereotomy, furnished much material to descriptive geometry, a science born with the French Revolution which provided the foundation for projective geometry.
Download or read book The Medieval Machine written by Jean Gimpel and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The common, simplistic view of the Middle Ages as religion-centered and materially backward is challenged by Jean Gimpel in this milestone study, originally published in 1976. The Medieval Machine tells how, between the years 900 and 1300, Europeans created their first industrial revolution, which set Western civilization on the road to global dominance. Gimpel describes the main features of this early machine age: the pervasive use of waterpower (the oil of the medieval era); the agricultural innovations that energized the population through better nourishment; the spread of mining along with mechanized iron mills; and the appearance of modern industrial problems such as labor unrest and pollution. This is a story of technology triumphant: architect-engineers were adulated; there were tallest-building contests like those of the twentieth century. The climax comes with the invention of the key modern device - the mechanical clock. The subsequent technological decline, Gimpel explains, was due to a plague, famine, and a reversion to mysticism. In the epilogue, Gimpel asserts that the West in his time faced another technological decline; he did not forsee the digital boom of the 1980s and 90s and the development of post-industrial economies. Nevertheless, his predictions may provide valuable material for historians of the recent past"--Page 4 of cover.
Download or read book The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt written by Villard (de Honnecourt) and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt written by Villard (de Honnecourt.) and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Origins Imitation Conventions written by James S. Ackerman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002-03-29 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve studies by eminent art historian James S. Ackerman. This collection contains studies written by art historian James Ackerman over the past decade. Whereas Ackerman's earlier work assumed a development of the arts as they responded to social, economic, political, and cultural change, his recent work reflects the poststructural critique of the presumption of progress that characterized Renaissance and modernist history and criticism. In this book he explores the tension between the authority of the past—which may act not only as a restraint but as a challenge and stimulus—and the potentially liberating gift of invention. He examines the ways in which artists and writers on art have related to ancestors and to established modes of representation, as well as to contemporary experiences. The "origins" studied here include the earliest art history and criticism; the beginnings of architectural drawing in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches for churches, the first in the Renaissance to propose supporting domes on sculpted walls and piers; and the first architectural photographs. "Imitation" refers to artistic achievements that in part depended on the imitation of forms established in practices outside the fine arts, such as ancient Roman rhetoric and print media. "Conventions," like language, facilitate communication between the artist and viewer, but are both more universal (understood across cultures) and more fixed (resisting variation that might diminish their clarity). The three categories are closely linked throughout the book, as most acts of representation partake to some degree of all three.
Download or read book On Illustrious Men The Fathers of the Church Volume 100 written by Saint Jerome and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often cited as a source of biographical information on ancient Christian authors, On Illustrious Men provides St. Jerome's personal evaluations of his forebears and contemporaries, as well as catalogs of patristic writings known to him
Download or read book The Gargoyles of Notre Dame written by Michael Camille and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the seven million people who visit the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris each year probably do not realize that the legendary gargoyles adorning this medieval masterpiece were not constructed until the nineteenth century. The first comprehensive history of these world-famous monsters, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame argues that they transformed the iconic thirteenth-century cathedral into a modern monument. Michael Camille begins his long-awaited study by recounting architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s ambitious restoration of the structure from 1843 to 1864, when the gargoyles were designed, sculpted by the little-known Victor Pyanet, and installed. These gargoyles, Camille contends, were not mere avatars of the Middle Ages, but rather fresh creations—symbolizing an imagined past—whose modernity lay precisely in their nostalgia. He goes on to map the critical reception and many-layered afterlives of these chimeras, notably in the works of such artists and writers as Charles Méryon, Victor Hugo, and photographer Henri Le Secq. Tracing their eventual evolution into icons of high kitsch, Camille ultimately locates the gargoyles’ place in the twentieth-century imagination, exploring interpretations by everyone from Winslow Homer to the Walt Disney Company. Lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred images of its monumental yet whimsical subjects, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame is a must-read for historians of art and architecture and anyone whose imagination has been sparked by the lovable monsters gazing out over Paris from one of the world’s most renowned vantage points.
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.
Download or read book Visual Thinking written by Rudolf Arnheim and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 35th anniversary of this classic of art theory.
Download or read book Observation and Image Making in Gothic Art written by Jean A. Givens and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jean Givens demonstrates how medieval image making offers new insights into the syntax of visual communication and the function of descriptive art in both sacred and secular contexts. In defining late medieval visual communication strategies, Givens reveals the various modes of organizing and displaying knowledge. Her study of the working practices of medieval artists challenges many assumptions about pre-modern science and art, especially the notion that descriptive art is a natural response to scientific empiricism.