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One of the most visited places in the world, Rome attracts millions of tourists each year to walk its storied streets and see famous sites like the Colosseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Trevi Fountain. Yet this ancient city’s allure is due as much to its rich, unbroken history as to its extraordinary array of landmarks. Countless incarnations and eras merge in the Roman cityscape. With a history spanning nearly three millennia, no other place can quite match the resilience and reinventions of the aptly nicknamed Eternal City. In this unique and visually engaging book, Jessica Maier considers Rome through the eyes of mapmakers and artists who have managed to capture something of its es...
At the turn of the fifteenth century, Rome was a city in transitionparts ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan and Christianand as it emerged from its medieval decline through the return of papal power and the onset of the Renaissance, its portrayals in print transformed as well. Jessica Maier s book explores the history of the Roman city portrait genre during the rise of Renaissance print culture. She illustrates how the maps of this era helped to promote the city, to educate, and to facilitate armchair exploration and what they reveal about how the people of Rome viewed or otherwise imagined their city. She also advances our understanding of early modern cartography, which embodies a delicate, intentional balance between science and art. The text is beautifully illustrated with nearly 100 images of the genre, a dozen of them in color."
This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that wou...
What would an anatomy of the book look like? There is the main text, of course, the file that the author proudly submits to their publisher. But around this, hemming it in on the page or enclosing it at the front and back of the book, there are dozens of other texts - page numbers and running heads, copyright statements and errata lists - each possessed of particular conventions, each with their own lively histories. To consider these paratexts - recalling them from the margins, letting them take centre stage - is to be reminded that no book is the sole work of the author whose name appears on the cover; rather, every book is the sum of a series of collaborations. It is to be reminded, also,...
This is a modern-spelling edition of John Greaves’s Pyramidographia (1646), together with some miscellaneous travel-writings, letters and a biography of Greaves by Thomas Birch. It includes a full scholarly introduction and detailed notes. This book is the first of its kind in English, and undertakes a scientific evaluation of the pyramids through metrics, using state-of-the-art instruments and drawing on both ancient and modern authorities, amongst which is included Arab and Persian writers as well as Western sources. Greaves’s work is distinguished from others by his refusal to be drawn into mystical or theological speculation, and is an excellent example of how seventeenth-century sci...
Few other cities can compare with Rome's history of continuous habitation, nor with the survival of so many different epochs in its present. This volume explores how the city's past has shaped the way in which Rome has been built, rebuilt, represented and imagined throughout its history. Bringing together scholars from the disciplines of architectural history, urban studies, art history, archaeology and film studies, this book comprises a series of studies on the evolution of the city of Rome and the ways in which it has represented and reconfigured itself from the medieval period to the present day. Moving from material appropriations such as spolia in the medieval period, through the carto...
This volume brings together a group of contributors from varied backgrounds to tell a history of intellectual property in 50 objects.
Winner of the 2020 Bainton Prize for Reference Works This volume, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, focuses on Rome from 1492-1692, an era of striking renewal: demographic, architectural, intellectual, and artistic. Rome’s most distinctive aspects--including its twin governments (civic and papal), unique role as the seat of global Catholicism, disproportionately male population, and status as artistic capital of Europe--are examined from numerous perspectives. This book of 30 chapters, intended for scholars and students across the academy, fills a noteworthy gap in the literature. It is the only multidisciplinary study of 16th- and 17th-century Rome that synth...
An examination of groups and individuals in Rome who were not Roman Catholic, or not born so. It demonstrates how other religions had a lasting impact on early modern Catholic institutions in Rome.
People and goods from across the globe filled the vibrant ports of Genoa and Venice during the Renaissance. This book takes us onto the streets, bridges, and waterways of these significant, sensuous cities to reveal the ambitious schemes undertaken to promote the cleanliness and health of their communities. Along the way, we encounter a broad and fascinating cross-section of Renaissance society -- from courtesans to street food sellers and architects to canal diggers -- and, using new archival sources, uncover both the ideals and lived experiences of health and environmental management. During the Renaissance, vital connections were believed to exist between people's natures and those of the...