Form and fortification : the art of military architecture in Renaissance Italy / Morgan Ng.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ng, Morgan, author.

Contributor:

Yale University Press, publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Military architecture--Italy--History--Influence.

Military architecture.

Architecture, Renaissance--Italy--Influence.

Architecture, Renaissance.

Artistic collaboration--Italy--History.

Artistic collaboration.

Renaissance--Italy.

Renaissance.

Italy--Buildings, structures, etc--History.

Italy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 245 pages) : 179 illustrations (chiefly color), plans

Other Title:

Art of military architecture in Renaissance Italy

Place of Publication:

New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"Urban fortifications were the most colossal artistic achievements of the Italian Renaissance. Celebrated sculptors, painters, and architects ... collaborated with humanists and military commanders to design citadels and ramparts.... Form and Fortification challenges the long-held assumption that military architecture was merely an instrument of warfare, restoring the practice to its central place at the nexus of sixteenth-century creative and cultural endeavors. Through a rich array of drawings, archival manuscripts, early printed sources, treatises, and realized works, this book traces the remarkable exchanges between fortification and other arenas of art, design, and engineering. Charting these cross-disciplinary convergences, Morgan Ng develops the novel concept of 'cognate technologies' to describe military and civil structures that coevolved and came to share striking formal affinities. Defensive earthworks bore the same shapes as terraced gardens; subterranean artillery chambers resembled artificial grottoes and hydraulic tunnels; and fortified passageways morphed into palatial galleries. The relationships among such cognate technologies, this book contends, are essential for understanding the interconnected nature of early modern artistic invention"--Publisher's description.

Contents:

1. Macroinfrastructure : mining, military, and hydraulic tunnels

2. Microinfrastructure : tubes, flues, vents, and spouts

3. Landscape : ramparts and gardens, cannons and fountains

4. Multifunctionality : the everyday life of fortifications

5. Iconography : the many meanings of a papal citadel

2. Superstructure : raised corridors.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-237) and index.

Description based on print version record and online resource (A&AePortal, viewed on February 23, 2026).

ISBN:

0-300-28632-5

OCLC:

1574220488