The ‘Conquest’ and Construction of an Urban Place : The Insula dei Gesuiti in Venice in the Early Modern Period

Author(s):  
Ludovica Galeazzo

This article examines the production of place and its socio-economic impact in early modern Venice, reconstructing the urban dynamics in one of the lesser-known peripheries of the city, the insula dei Gesuiti. Building on the idea of place making as a collective enterprise, it concentrates on three stages of urban growth and its pertaining agents: the colonization process undertaken by private citizens and ecclesiastical institutions; their efforts toward a residential urban development; and the state-imposed action to determine the insula’s final outline. These practices were instrumental in securing significant real estate holdings, but they also initiated a profound change in the area’s intended use. Urban transformations engendered a new social identity that would serve as a model for the redesigned Venetian margins.

Almanack ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Dantas ◽  
Emma Hart

Abstract: This dossier argues that the historical phenomena of the urban and the global have interacted in a dialogical fashion: urban dynamics sustained the creation of a modern and globally connected world while the global movement of people, goods, ideas, and practices helped to define urban realities and ideals. The perspective that emphasizes the interconnection between the city and globalization-the global city-is prevalent in urban studies that focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Applying the same analytical perspective to the early modern period using an implicit comparison between different urban centers and communities elucidates the role cities like Rio de Janeiro played in that era of globalization, as well as the impact that historical moment had on the city.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič

The question that sparked this forum was to what extent we can see Prague as an important stage for Renaissance and Reformation exchange and as an internationally connected city. It is striking, though not unexpected, that all the authors have been drawn to some extent to sources and subjects in Rudolfine Prague. It must be stressed, however, that the emphasis of each of these studies is somewhat different to an older field of “Rudolfine studies.” The researchers here do not focus on the emperor's court but use it as context. It is tangential to their main focal points—on Jewish communities, religious change, and the exchange of scientific and musical knowledge—and these are first and foremost historians not of Prague but of social and cultural history, music, art, material culture, and religion. This indicates a marked shift from the historiography. For this generation of scholars, Prague is not only a city that is home to a fascinating and intriguing art historical moment but is also a city of early modern international connections. It provides a unique context for understanding communities, everyday experiences, religion, and culture in early modern Europe—a multilingual, multiconfessional, and multicultural mixing pot whose composition changed dramatically across the early modern period. Rudolf's court was certainly a catalyst for these crossings and encounters, but they did not fade away after his death in 1612, nor were they limited to the confines of the castle above the city.


Author(s):  
Константин Сергеевич Носов

В работе рассматриваются взгляды на военное зодчество двух итальянских архитекторов XV в. - Леона Баттисты Альберти и Антонио Аверлино (Филарете). Трактат Альберти «Десять книг о зодчестве» стал первым архитектурным трактатом со времен Витрувия, а Филарете писал свой «Трактат об архитектуре» параллельно с руководством строительными работами в Кастелло Сфорцеско. Проводится сопоставление представленных в этих трактатах теоретических взглядов на военное зодчество с реализацией их на практике на примере строившегося в то же время этого миланского замка. В результате исследования было выявлено, какие рекомендации Альберти и Филарете нашли воплощение на практике, а какие остались лишь в теории. Самым удивительным представляется тот факт, что главная воротная башня Кастелло Сфорцеско, даже получившая название Башня Филарете в честь строившего ее архитектора, не имеет практически ничего общего с описанием ворот как цитадели, так и города Сфорцинды из трактата. Сравнение описаний военного зодчества в трактатах Альберти и Филарете позволило выявить как черты сходства, так и отличия. К чертам сходства автор работы считает возможным отнести общую концепцию планировки города с цитаделью и главной башней внутри и одинаковый концептуальный подход к фортификации - оба архитектора относятся еще к эпохе башенной фортификации, описания бастионов в их работах нет. Различия состоят в подходе к источникам и общем осмыслении системы обороны. Если Альберти в основном следует античной традиции, Филарете опирается на реалии современной ему итальянской фортификации. Однако в трактатах обоих архитекторов есть новаторские идеи, которые начнут широко применяться только в Новое время в так называемой «новой фортификации». У Альберти это гласис, у Филарете - треугольный равелин перед воротами. The work deals with the views on military architecture of two 15th century Italian architects - Leon Battista Alberti and Antonio Averlino (Filarete). Alberti’s treatise “De re aedificatoria” became the first architectural treatise since Vitruvius, while Filarete wrote his “Libro architettonico” while directing the building works in Castello Sforzesco. Theoretical views on military architecture presented in these treatises are compared here with their realization in Milan castle (Castello Sforzesco), erected at the same time. The research reveals which of Alberti’s and Filarete’s recommendations were implemented and which remained only in the realm of theory. The most surprising is the fact that Castello Sforzesco’s main gate tower, named Filarete Tower after the architect who erected it, has nothing in common with either the citadel gate or the city Sforzinda gate described in the treatise. Comparing military architecture described by Alberti and Filarete reveals similarities as well as differences. The general conception of the city - with the citadel and the main tower inside - and identical conceptual approach to fortification can be attributed to similarities in their approaches: both architects belong to the era of tower fortification, their works lack any descriptions of bastions. The differences constitute their approach to sources as well as their general comprehension of defense systems. Whereas Alberti mainly follows ancient tradition, Filarete is guided by realistic contemporary Italian fortification. Both treatises, however, are comprised of new ideas, which will begin to be widely used only in the Early Modern period in the so-called fortificazione alla moderna. They are Alberti’s glacis and Filarete’s triangular ravelin in front of the gate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Teresa Schröder-Stapper

The Written City. Inscriptions as Media of Urban Knowledge of Space and Time The article investigates the function of urban inscriptions as media of knowledge about space and time at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period in the city of Braunschweig. The article starts with the insight that inscriptions in stone or wood on buildings or monuments not only convey knowledge about space and time but at the same time play an essential role in the construction of space and time in the city by the practice of inscribing. The analysis focuses on the steadily deteriorating relationship between the city of Braunschweig and its city lord, the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, and its material manifestation in building and monument inscriptions. The contribution shows that in the course of the escalating conflict over autonomy, a change in epigraphic habit took placed that aimed at claiming both urban space and its history exclusively on behalf of the city as an expression of its autonomy.


Author(s):  
Thomas Leinkauf

This article tries to point out that in the early modern period, including the Renaissance, philosophy increasingly developed a certain kind of thinking and arguing that needed to be sustained by ›icons‹, ›pictures‹ or ›signs‹. Following a suggestion made by Stephen Clucas in inviting a group of scholars to discuss the topos of ›silent languages‹ at Birbeck College (University of London), this paper discusses 1. a general possible meaning of ›silent language‹, divided into three modes of symbolic and geometric representation, and introducing 2. three ›stages‹ in the historical development of philosophical systems representing these three modes: Plotinus, Cusanus, the philosophy of the 16th and 17th century.


Author(s):  
Nick Mayhew

In the mid-19th century, three 16th-century Russian sources were published that alluded to Moscow as the “third Rome.” When 19th-century Russian historians discovered these texts, many interpreted them as evidence of an ancient imperial ideology of endless expansion, an ideology that would go on to define Russian foreign policy from the 16th century to the modern day. But what did these 16th-century depictions of Moscow as the third Rome actually have in mind? Did their meaning remain stable or did it change over the course of the early modern period? And how significant were they to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly? Scholars have pointed out that one cannot assume that depictions of Moscow as the third Rome were necessarily meant to be imperial celebrations per se. After all, the Muscovites considered that the first Rome fell for various heretical beliefs, in particular that Christ did not possess a human soul, and the second Rome, Constantinople, fell to the Turks in 1453 precisely because it had accepted some of these heretical “Latin” doctrines. As such, the image of Moscow as the third Rome might have marked a celebration of the city as a new imperial center, but it could also allude to Moscow’s duty to protect the “true” Orthodox faith after the fall—actual and theological—of Rome and Constantinople. As time progressed, however, the nuances of religious polemic once captured by the trope were lost. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the image of Moscow as the third Rome took on a more unequivocally imperialist tone. Nonetheless, it would be easy to overstate the significance of allusions to Moscow as the third Rome to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly. Not only was the trope rare and by no means the only imperial comparison to be found in Muscovite literature, it was also ignored by secular authorities and banned by clerics.


Author(s):  
James M. Bromley

This chapter examines how Thomas Middleton’s Michaelmas Term positions the cloth trade as pivotal to the construction of sexuality and sexual relations in the city. Circulating with cloth in the play is queer urban sexual knowledge. Antitheatricalists feared that the theater was a site of sexual pedagogy and initiation in the early modern period. Michaelmas Term subtly embraces that role for the city comedy, and the chapter draws on queer theories of materiality to demonstrate that the play’s relentless focus on the materiality of selfhood is pertinent in querying the limits of biological determinism and essentialism that characterize mainstream politics around sexuality today. The play can prompt us to consider how alternate forms of queer ontogenesis derived from the past have affordances for the production of queer culture in the present.


2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Eli Rubin

The essays in this special issue all focus on the city of Berlin, in particular, its relationship with its margins and borders over thelongue dureé. The authors—Kristin Poling, Marion Gray, Barry Jackisch, and Eli Rubin—all consider the history of Berlin over the last two centuries, with special emphasis on how Berlin expanded over this time and how it encountered the open spaces surrounding it and within it—the “green fields” (grüne Wiesen) referred to in the theme title. Each of them explores a different period in Berlin's history, and so together, the essays form a long dureé history of Berlin, although each of the essays in its own way explores the roots of Berlin's history in deeper time scales, from the early modern period, to the Middle Ages, and even to the very end of the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago.


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