In 'City Views in the Habsburg and Medici Courts', Ryan E. Gregg relates how Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany employed city view artists such as Anton van den Wyngaerde and Giovanni Stradano to aid in constructing authority. These artists produced a specific style of city view that shared affinity with Renaissance historiographic practice in its use of optical evidence and rhetorical techniques. History has tended to see city views as accurate recordings of built environments. Bringing together ancient and Renaissance texts, archival material, and fieldwork in the depicted locations, Gregg demonstrates that a close-knit school of city view artists instead manipulated settings to help persuade audiences of the truthfulness of their patrons’ official narratives.
Author(s): Ryan E. Gregg
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 294. Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 35
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 440
City: Leiden
Contents
Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1. Witnessing Sovereignty: Anton van den Wyngaerde’s City Views as Habsburg Courtly Propaganda
1. The Archival Material: Their Evidentiary Problems and Indications
2. Eyewitness to History: The Habsburg Use of City Views
3. Genoa: City View as History and as Impresa
4. Cantecroy, Mechelen, and the English Palaces: Claims of Dominion
5. Brussels and Utrecht: Demonstrations of Sovereignty
6. The Italian Views: Van den Wyngaerde in the Imperial Train
7. Ancona and Lyon
8. Conclusion
Chapter 2. The Antwerp School of City Views
1. Fertile Foundations
2. The Catalyst: Charles V’s Entry into Rome
3. Technique, Style, and Viewing Experiences
4. Coalition
5. Contemporary Recognition
6. Conclusion
Chapter 3. Vasari, Historiography, and the Rhetoric of City Views
1. History, Truthfulness, and Setting
2. The Tropes of Enargeia: Sieges, Ships, and City Views
3. Viewing City Towers: Vision, Cognition, and Simulacra
4. Nature or Artifice? The Mannerism of Antwerp School City Views
5. City Views as Analogy for Judgment
6. Enargeia and Eyewitnessing in Vasari’s Historiographic Practice
7. Vasari’s Description of City View Methodology: a Verbal Artist Figure
8. Borghini’s New Historiography and the City Views
9. Conclusion
Chapter 4. Defining Ducal Dominion: Giovanni Stradano’s City Views in the Apartment of Leo X
1. The Room of Giovanni delle Bande Nere
2. The Room of Clement VII
3. The Room of Cosimo I
4. Conclusion
Coda: Heirs to Dominion
1. Heirs to Patronage
Bibliography
Index
