The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (Hardcover)

by Christoph Luitpold Frommel (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A landmark survey and analysis of Italian Renaissance architecture by an internationally renowned expert in the field.

The literature on Italian Renaissance architecture is vast, but every popular account is out-of-date almost before it is written. Once in a generation, however, there is a scholar who is a master of both the documentary evidence and the buildings themselves. In this new study, Christoph Luitpold Frommel, who has won a worldwide reputation through his contributions to specialist journals in Germany and Italy, distills his scholarship into a new synthesis that is both up-to-date and securely based on primary sources.

Avoiding the straitjacket of fashionable theory, he organizes the book traditionally by period and architect. Social context, technical innovation, and aesthetic judgment are all given due weight, with particular emphasis on the way in which each architect balanced individual inspiration with the accepted Vitruvian canon. Generously illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings, plans, and reconstructions, it brings into vivid relief the extraordinary flowering of architectural genius between the birth of Brunelleschi and the death of Michelangelo, a turning point in Western culture whose riches and pleasures prove themselves yet again to be literally inexhaustible. 290 illustrations.

About the Author
Christoph Luitpold Frommel has held academic posts in America(the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley), Germany (Bonn University), and Italy (La Sapienza in Rome). From 1980 to 2001 he was Director of Rome's Biblioteca Herziana.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (March 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500342202
• ISBN-13: 978-0500342206
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #870,632 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars L. Mark Taylor (Kingston, Jamaica), March 4, 2007

By	L. Mark Taylor (Kingston, Jamaica) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Now six years into the 21st century we should demand a general book on the architecture of the Italian Renaissance, in English, worthy of our time. Unfortunately this is not it.
We have had classic books that have endured over generations and now are in need of revision and update, making room for more recent scholarship to assert itself and supplant these revered but outdated tomes. Books by Jacob Burckhardt, Peter Murray and Heinrich Klotz have dominated the English speaking market from the late 19th century until today.
This book by Thames and Hudson gives us little that is new and in fact almost mocks us with their contempt. For certain Prof. Frommel is knowledgeable and a master of his subject but this is not enough. My disappointment in fact is not directed so much at the author who has proven his worth (see contributions in "The Renaissance from Brunnelleschi to Michelangelo" published by T&H in 1994) but at the publishers. The promise of the cover photographs is not met inside the book, which has b/w photos throughout and insufficient drawings for a work on Architecture (and indeed no new ones).
Let us be clear, to experience the full polychromatic display of the interior of a renaissance palace is something never to be forgotten. We must therefore have full colour photos of the more important interiors of the Renaissance. Recent books reproducing the original drawings of masters of the past have understood that to copy them large and in full colour is to transmit the true majesty of the creation (books on Bernini's architecture and Leonardo's drawings amongst others).
Knowledge and scholarship are very important but publishing values are equally important. The bar must be raised. If the target audience is architects or architectural students then the books must have clear plans, sections, elevations, sketches and diagrams to illustrate the buildings (eg. why not incorporate some of Letarouilly,s drawings of Roman buildings). They must also be accompanied by the best photos (these should be colour photos wherever possible unless historic b/w photos better illustrate the point) of the whole or the part, sufficient to illustrate the point being made.
I suspect that for a work worthy of this century we need to tell the story in 2-4 large volumes and directed at the architect. The publishers and authors must do more work if they expect us to purchase their work and provide us with new, expanded and uplifting scholarship worthy of the 21st century.
For this project Konemann remain my publishers of choice as they have consistently proven that they can produce works of a very high standard at an affordable price, without dropping their standards.
Obviously I cannot recommend this book to potential purchasers especially not at the price quoted. I await the production in English of the definitive contemporary text(s) on the Architecture of the Italian Renaissance.