Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture

This book is the first to demonstrate the extent of Pliny's contribution to Italian Renaissance architecture.

Peter Fane-Saunders (Author)

9781107079861, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 July 2016

510 pages, 74 b/w illus. 8 colour illus.
26.2 x 18.5 x 3.5 cm, 1.64 kg

'Peter Fane-Saunders masters a formidable and important topic with sophistication, erudition, and engaging prose. In offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Italian Renaissance reception of Pliny the Elder's writing on architecture, his book fills a significant gap in our understanding of early modern architecture. It makes a major contribution to our conception of the transmission of ideas from ancient Rome into the European architectural tradition.' Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize Award Committee, Renaissance Society of America

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.

1. Pliny the Elder and his place in antique and mediaeval writings on architecture
2. Initial explorations: Petrarch, the Mirabilia Urbis Romae and Flavio Biondo
3. The manuscript hunter and the librarian: Poggio Bracciolini and Giovanni Tortelli
4. A new system: Pomponio Leto and his school
5. Emerging doubts
6. Pliny and Leon Battista Alberti: two 'architectural histories'
7. Pliny, Filarete and the ideal patron of architecture
8. 'Aldus and his dream book': the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
9. A more down-to-earth Pliny
10. Mixing the traditions: the curious case of Cesare Cesariano
11. Developments in the Veneto: the Vitruvian commentaries of Daniele Barbaro and I quattro libri by Andrea Palladio
12. Standing before the marvels: Ciriaco d'Ancona and Pliny's 'Opera mirabilia in terris'
13. In the mind's eye: drawings of Plinian wonders, from Leonardo to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
14. From paper to stone: rebuilding Pliny's architectural marvels
Final thoughts: Pliny's influence on the Renaissance understanding of ancient architecture.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], European history [HBJD]