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The Renaissance was not just a rebirth of the mind. It was also a new dawn for the machine. When we celebrate the achievements of the Renaissance, we instinctively refer, above all, to its artistic and literary masterpieces. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the Italian peninsula was the stage of a no-less-impressive revival of technical knowledge and practice. In this rich and lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period, capturing the fusion of artistry and engineering that spurred some of the Renaissance’s greatest technological breakthroughs. Galluzzi traces the emergence of a new and important historical figure: ...
Set in the context of Counter-Reformation Rome, this book focuses on the twenty-year long relationship (1611-1630) between Galileo Galilei and Federico Cesi, the founder of the Academy of the Lynx-eyed. Contrary to the historiographical tradition, it demonstrates that the visions of Galileo and Cesi were not at all convergent. In the course of the events that led to the adoption of the anti-Copernican decree of 1616, Galileo realized that the Lynceans were not prepared to support his battle for freedom of thought. In addition to identifying the author of the anonymous denunciation of Galileo’s Assayer, Paolo Galluzzi offers an original reconstruction of the dynamics which culminated in the Church’s condemnation of the famous Tuscan scientist in 1633. This book was originally published in Italian as Libertà di filosofare in naturalibus: I mondi paralleli di Cesi e Galileo (Storia dell’Accademia dei Lincei, Studi 4). Rome: Scienze e Lettere, Editore Commerciale, 2014.
In this book, Brendan Dooley examines Italian scientific communications in early modern history. He demonstrates that Italian science between the age of Galileo and the age of Galvani and Volta underwent two revolutions. While the methodological innovations of the time have received copious attention, Dooley is concerned with the revolution in published communicatons, which has hardly been studied at all. What his innovative research shows, in sum, is that the accomplishments of Galvani and Volta were not based upon a cultural void, but rather a century and a half of fervid activity aiming to consolidate the accomplishments of Galileo, reinforce scientific institutions, establish observation and experiment as the dominant methodology, and improve science's public relations. This process challenged traditional institutional hierarchies of specialized knowledge and had far-reaching, interdisciplinary implications for the development of universities, the profession of university science researcher, the academies, and even state government.
In A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities: The Innovative Water Supply Systems of Toledo, London and Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, Chaim Shulman presents an analysis of three projects of urban water supply systems carried out between 1560s–1610s. The technical and economic differences between these projects resulted from external conditions not directly related to the water supply problem. Although the same basic technology was apparently available at the time in all cases, the geographical, engineering, entrepreneurial and cultural nature of each region differed. The inhabitants’ wellbeing improvement achieved varied accordingly. Much broader insights are drawn on the policies of the three monarchies regarding the initiative of and support for grand scale public works in general.
Leonardo’s Fables explores the compositional methods and sources of Leonardo’s fables and their relationship to illustrations and scientific studies. By concentrating on the chaotic character of Leonardo’s textual and visual annotations, the author gradually discloses the artist’s creative thinking that uses the page as a space for experimentation. Fables allow Leonardo to tie together his technical and artistic skills, empirical observation, and experience to reveal the interactive forces at the basis of physical phenomena and the tensions between painting and humanistic culture. This study reevaluates Leonardo’s fables as part of a literary, aesthetic, and scientific project aimed at the investigation of Nature.
The Renaissance was not just a rebirth of the mind. It was also a new dawn for the machine. When we celebrate the achievements of the Renaissance, we instinctively refer, above all, to its artistic and literary masterpieces. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the Italian peninsula was the stage of a no-less-impressive revival of technical knowledge and practice. In this rich and lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period, capturing the fusion of artistry and engineering that spurred some of the Renaissance’s greatest technological breakthroughs. Galluzzi traces the emergence of a new and important historical figure: ...
Concentrating on Europe, this volume's sixteen essays discuss different forms of medievalism in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Serbia. Medievalism, the whole spectrum of post-medieval response to the middle ages, is now accepted as a vital key to the understanding of Western culture and society from 1500 to the present, pervading every aspect of our time, from the popular and artistic to the scholarly. Studies in Medievalism, now published annually, is the one series to provide a regular forum for discussion of medievalism. This volume is devoted to medievalism in Europe, excludingEngland (the subject of Volume IV,1992). Contributors from Europe and America consider medievalism in Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Serbia over a wide range of topics from eighteenth-century French politics and nineteenth-century German nationalism to contemporary Italian film.
The remarkable astronomical discoveries made by Galileo with the new telescope in 1609-10 led to his famous disputes with philosophers and religious authorities, most of whom found their doctrines threatened by his evidence for Copernicus's heliocentric universe. In this book, Eileen Reeves brings an art historical perspective to this story as she explores the impact of Galileo's heavenly observations on painters of the early seventeenth century. Many seventeenth-century painters turned to astronomical pastimes and to the depiction of new discoveries in their work, yet some of these findings imposed controversial changes in their use of religious iconography. For example, Galileo's discovery...
Histories of medicine and science are histories of political and social change, as well as accounts of the transformation of particular disciplines over time. This volume considers the effect that demands for social and political reform have had on the theory and, above all, the practice of medicine and science, and on the promotion of human health, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment up to the present.
There is scant research on the art produced under the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, with the exception of a couple of general books focused primarily on major Oratorian art pieces. Therefore, this book of essays aims to discuss the art and culture produced by or associated with the Oratorians by providing a broad overview focused especially on rarely investigated issues. The authors focus on this very important artistic production, commonly forgotten when compared with other religious productions of art, by covering geographical areas spanning from Sri Lanka to Mexico, including Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, India and Brazil.