A Hardie Grant Books book

Drawing after Architecture Renaissance Architectural Drawings and their Reception

Carolyn Yerkes

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Why did early modern architects continue copying drawings long after the invention of print should have made such copying obsolete? Carolyn Yerkes answers that question in a fresh investigation into the status of architectural drawing in the 16th and 17th centuries. Drawing after Architecture: Renaissance Drawings and their Reception investigates the status of architectural drawing after the invention of print, and explores a vast group of 16th and 17th century manuscripts and collections of drawings that are each part of a larger network of copies. Made by French and Italian draftsmen who studied Roman monuments, the drawings contain information about the buildings – buildings that include the most important ancient and modern works, the Pantheon and Saint Peter's – that is not known from any other sources. But the information that the drawings preserve is only part of their value: the drawings also show how that information was recorded, transferred, and analysed by other draftsmen. In the 16th century, survey drawing was the key mechanism through which the material past was understood, and many 16th and 17th century drawings after ancient architecture are extant. Ultimately, this book pursues the nature of architectural evidence, in that it asks how Renaissance architects used images to explore structures, to create biographies, and to write history.