Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance (1997)door Liane Lefaivre
Geen Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Is een studie van
"The enigmatic, polyglot 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili' - the inspiration for the bestselling novel 'The Rule of Four' - has fascinated architects and historians since its publication in 1499. Part fictional narrative and part scholarly treatise, richly illustrated with wood engravings, the book is an extreme case of erotic furor, aimed at everything, especially architecture, that the protagonist, Poliphilo, encounters in his quest for his beloved, Polia. Among the instances of the book's manifesto-like character is Polia's tirade defending the right of women to express their own sexuality, probably the first sustained argument of this type, which lifts the book's erotic theme from the realm of ribaldry to the more daring one of sexual politics. Liane Lefaivre offers the closest critical-theoretical reading of 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili' to date, placing it within both the historical context of the quattrocento and the rethinking of the metaphor of the architectural body. Lefaivre is the first to attribute this strange, dreamlike book definitively to none other than the archrationalist Leon Battista Alberti. Intended as his final text, she argues, the book is the legacy of a humanist passionate about his life's work, a treatise on the role of dreamwork in design by one of the mose creative minds of the Renaissance, and a manifesto in defense of humanism by a man who had been dismissed by an anti-humanist pope after a thirty-year career in the papal service"--Back cover. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)853.3Literature Italian and related languages Italian fiction Age of Leo the Tenth 1492–1542LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
As Lefaivre’s title indicates, Leon Battista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili champions authorship by the noted Florentine philosopher and architect. She came to this conclusion independently from Emanuela Kretzulesco-Quaranta (who has also offered it as a hypothesis), and Lefaivre's book is a valuable study in various other respects, but I am unpersuaded regarding her Alberti thesis. The simplest and strongest point against Alberti’s authorship is internal to the text. Lefaivre points out repeatedly that Alberti was a virtually peerless engineer and architect of the quattrocento, and that he merited the title of geometra egregio (“distinguished geometer”) given to him by a patron (116, 120). Yet, pace Lefaivre, Poliphilo is not altogether professional when it comes to his architectural descriptions. Lefaivre notes one such instance herself, where the Doric and Corinthian orders of architecture are confused, only to unaccountably dismiss it as “an Albertian joke” (162). Another example is contained in the measurements of the great composite pyramid-obelisk. Joscelyn Godwin provides a discussion of these flawed numbers, as an example of the mathematical and architectural error that leads him to call Colonna a “very well-informed amateur of classical architecture.” He also observes that while the Hypnerotomachia author certainly must have studied and drawn terms and ideas from Alberti’s De re aedificatoria of 1450 (a point that is uniformly conceded by scholars), he often mixes Albertian and Vetruvian nomenclature for the same object. This practice is in marked contrast to Alberti’s agenda in De re aedificatoria, which, as Lefaivre states, “was to establish a clear terminology,” and to purge Greek vocabulary from the Latin treatment, substituting Latin neologisms as needed (36). Indeed, such a lexical approach could hardly contrast more strongly with the one in the Hypnerotomachia, with its superabundance of Greek neologisms prodigally mixed with Latin in a Tuscan broth.
Lefaivre also fails to situate the writing of the Hypnerotomachia convincingly in Alberti’s biography. She observes that it was longer than any of the writings attributed to Alberti, and spends the largest portion of her “biographical” discussion explaining how it would have been possible for Alberti to have lost the manuscript (178, 146-52). She points to the presence of “musical musings” in the book as distinctively “Albertian,” while having previously noted the role of music in the Dominican studies of Colonna (99, 155). Her observation that Poliphilo wears a cassock and skullcap in the woodcut illustrations may militate against the authorship of Prince Francesco, but it seems to support the monk Colonna at least as well as it does Alberti (in the latter’s uniform as a papal abbreviator). In fact, Poliphilo’s description of himself as being “like a crow among white doves” suggests the characteristic black habit of the medieval and Renaissance Dominicans. While Colonna’s biography implies that he may have earned a reputation for lustfulness or even philandering, Lefaivre admits that it is difficult to reconcile Poliphilo’s admiration of feminine forms and features with the “well-known misogyny” of Alberti (160).
Above and beyond the authorship dispute, Lefaivre is concerned to establish the Hypnerotomachia as the vehicle of a presciently modern perspective on architecture and sexuality. Her study explores its relationship to the culture of the Italian Renaissance and is a significant contribution to the understanding of Poliphilo's adventures.
(This review is mostly excerpted from my thesis on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, "A Renaissance Seduction of Memory.")