The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science
Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation

This book exposes how artist-architects from Dürer to Rubens inspired modern empirical philosophy and science.

Elizabeth J. Petcu (Author)

9781009422536, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 December 2024

476 pages
26.1 x 18.6 x 2.5 cm, 1.16 kg

'This important and elegant book transforms our understanding of the relationship between architectural culture and empirical science. Through Petcu's exacting scholarship, Dietterlin's corpus has been revealed as a crucible of fertile invention, where design, observation, and fantasy meet. With its remarkable disciplinary and geographical breadth, transporting the reader from Vitruvian architects in Northern Europe to Inca sculptors of colonial Latin America, it should be essential reading for scholars of early modern art and science.' Alexander Marr, Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Art, University of Cambridge

The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation explores how architectural media came to propel scientific discourse between the eras of Dürer and of Rubens. It is also the first English-language book to feature the polymathic, eccentric, and long-misunderstood artist Wendel Dietterlin (c. 1550–1599). Here, Elizabeth J. Petcu reveals how architectural paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints became hotbeds of early modern empiricism, the idea that knowledge derives from sensory experience. She demonstrates how Dietterlin's empirical imagery of architecture came into dialogue with the image-making practices of early modern scientists, a rapport that foreshadowed the intimate relationships between architecture and science today. Petcu's astute insights offer historians of art, science, and architecture a new framework for understanding the role of architectural images in the foundations of modern science. She also provides a coherent narrative regarding the interplay between early modern art, architecture, and science as a catalyst for modern empirical philosophy.

Editorial note
Acknowledgements
Introduction: the renaissance of architecture as art and science
1. Architecture's figural turn
2. Devising the Architectura: rationalism and empiricism in architectural design
3. Drafting the Architectura: drawing as research in art, architecture, and science
4. Printing the Architectura: architectural etching becomes alchemical inquiry
5. Dissecting the Architectura: anatomy, ornament, and the limits of figuration
6. Deconstructing the Architectura: enduring matter and transient forms in Peru
Conclusion: the death and the life of the architectural image
Selective bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Architecture [AM]