The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance
Architectural Invention, Ornament and Literary Culture

A 1999 analysis of the significance of the architectural treatise in Renaissance Italy.

Alina A. Payne (Author)

9780521178235, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 April 2011

362 pages
25.4 x 17.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.63 kg

Review of the hardback: '… useful far beyond the more narrow study of Renaissance architecture… This is an important book.' The Art Book

Vitruvius's Ten Books of Architecture, the only architectural treatise to have survived from antiquity, was the fountainhead of architectural theory in the Italian Renaissance. Offering theoretical and practical solutions to a wide variety of architectural issues, this treatise did not, however, address all of the questions that were of concern to early modern architects. Originally published in 1999, this study examines the Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to negotiate between imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400–1600, Alina Payne identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused. Ornament, she argues, facilitated a dialogue across disciplines and invited exchanges with literary and rhetorical practices. Payne's study also highlights the place of the architectural treatise in the text-based culture of the period and of architectural discourse in Renaissance thought.

1. Of archaeology and license
2. Vitruvius
3. Literary grids and artistic intersections
4. Alberti
5. Francesco di Giorgio Martini
6. Serlio and the theoretization of ornament
7. Spini and the Architectural Imitatio
8. Palladio and Aesthetics Necessita
Scamozzi and Gesamttheorie.

Subject Areas: History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600 [ACN]