Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy. Innovation and Persuasion at the Intersection of Artistic and Architectural Practice

, Brepols - Harvey Miller, 2024 Hardback, approx. 220 pages, Size:220 x 280 mm, Illustrations:3 b/w, 138 col., Language: English. ISBN 9781915487032.

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Summary Why did artists include prominent architectural settings in their narrative paintings? Why did they labour over specific, highly innovative structural solutions? Why did they endeavour to design original ornamental motifs which brought together sculptural, painterly and architectural approaches, as well as showcasing their understanding of materiality? Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy addresses these questions in order to shed light on the early exchanges between artistic and architectural practice in Italy, arguing that architecture in painting provided a unique platform for architectural experimentation. Rather than interpreting architectural settings as purely spatial devices and as lesser counterparts of their built cognates, this book emphasises their intrinsic value as designs as well as communicative tools, contending that the architectural imagination of artists was instrumental in redefining the status of architectural forms as a kind of cultural currency. Exploring the nexus between innovation and persuasion, Livia Lupi highlights an early form of little-discussed paragone between painting and architecture which relied on a shared understanding of architectural invention as a symbol of prestige. This approach offers a precious insight into how architectural forms were perceived and deployed, be they two or three-dimensional, at the same time clarifying the intersection of architecture and the figural arts in the work of later, influential figures like Giuliano da Sangallo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Baldassarre Peruzzi, whose work would not have been possible without the architectural experimentation of early fifteenth-century artists. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The Architectural Imagination of Artists Pictorial Space and Architecture in Painting Visual Rhetoric The Case Studies All'antica Innovation and Paragone 1 A NEW ARCHITECTURAL CONSCIOUSNESS MASOLINO DA PANICALE AT CASTIGLIONE OLONA Masolino and Architecture Architecture as Cultural Currency Architecture, Nature and Encomiastic Ekphrasis 2 PERFORMING MAGNIFICENCE THE PELLEGRINAIO AT SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA IN SIENA Ornament and Structure Architectural Portrait and Ex Novo Reinvention Building the Community The Pellegrinaio as a Stage 3 BUILDING LEGITIMACY FRA ANGELICO'S NICHOLAS V CHAPEL IN THE VATICAN PALACE Fra Angelico and Architecture Crafting Time and Place through Architecture Dignity and Authority Roman Echoes CONCLUSION Craftsmanship and Patronage Innovation and Self-promotion Disegno and Paragone Architectural Forms as Persuasion Appendix