Translating Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries


Book Description

Knowledge of nature may be common to all of humanity, yet it is written in many tongues. The story of the Tower of Babel is not only an etiology of the multitude of languages, it also suggests that a "confusion of tongues" confounds communication. However, as the contributors to this volume show, translation is always a transformation. This book examines how such transformations generate new knowledge and how translations helped to establish a new science. Situated at the border of the Germanic and Romance languages, home to a highly educated population, the Low Countries fostered multilingualism and became one of the chief sites for translation. (Series: Low Countries Studies on the Circulation of Natural Knowledge - Vol. 3)




Habsburg Madrid


Book Description

With its selection as the court of the Spanish Habsburgs, Madrid became the de facto capital of a global empire, a place from which momentous decisions were made whose implications were felt in all corners of a vast domain. By the seventeenth century, however, political theory produced in the Monarquía Hispánica dealt primarily with the concept of decline. In this book, Jesús Escobar argues that the buildings of Madrid tell a different story about the final years of the Habsburg dynasty. Madrid took on a grander public face over the course of the seventeenth century, creating a “court space” for residents and visitors alike. Drawing from the representation of the city’s architecture in prints, books, and paintings, as well as re-created plans standing in for lost documents, Escobar demonstrates how, through shared forms and building materials, the architecture of Madrid embodied the monarchy and promoted its chief political ideals of justice and good government. Habsburg Madrid explores palaces, public plazas, a town hall, a courthouse, and a prison, narrating the lived experience of architecture in a city where a wide roster of protagonists, from architects and builders to royal patrons, court bureaucrats, and private citizens, helped shape a modern capital. Richly illustrated, highly original, and written by a leading scholar in the field, this volume disrupts the traditional narrative about seventeenth-century Spanish decadencia. It will be welcomed by specialists in Habsburg Spain and by historians of art, architecture, culture, economics, and politics.




City and Society in the Low Countries, 1100–1600


Book Description

The Low Countries was collectively one of the earliest and most heavily urbanised societies in European history. Present-day Belgium and the Netherlands still share important common features, such as comparatively low income inequalities, high levels of per capita income, a balanced political structure, and a strong 'civil society'. This book traces the origins of this specific social model in medieval patterns of urbanisation, while also searching for explanations for the historical reproduction of social inequalities. Access to cheap inland river navigation and to the sea generated a 'river delta' urbanisation that explains the persistence of a decentralised urban economic network, marked by intensive cooperation and competition and by the absence of real metropolises. Internally as well, powerful checks and balances prevented money and power from being concentrated. Ultimately, however, the utmost defining characteristic of the Low Countries' urban cultures was located in their resilient middle classes.




Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585-1700


Book Description

02 This beautifully illustrated book provides a complete overview of the art of the Southern Netherlands from 1585 to 1700. The author examines the development of Flemish and specifically Antwerp painting, the work of Rubens and other leading masters, and the Antwerp tradition of specialization among painters as well as the sculpture and architecture of this period. “A major moment of artistic culture has been magisterially sketched by one of its leading authorities.”—Larry Silver, The Art Book“Consistently rewarding . . . a book that is going to transform how Flemish art is understood.”—Jeremy Wood, Apollo Magazine“As well as examining the output and influence of leading figures such as Rubens and Van Dyke, Vlieghe provides the historical, social and cultural context for the development of history painting and other specializations. . . . This book will attract both the informed and general reader.”—Alison Smith, Art Newspaper“Essential for current study of Belgian art.”—ChoiceHans Vlieghe is professor of art history at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain) and research director of the Belgian Nationaal Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek at the Rubenianum, Antwerp. This beautifully illustrated book provides a complete overview of the art of the Southern Netherlands from 1585 to 1700. The author examines the development of Flemish and specifically Antwerp painting, the work of Rubens and other leading masters, and the Antwerp tradition of specialization among painters as well as the sculpture and architecture of this period. “A major moment of artistic culture has been magisterially sketched by one of its leading authorities.”—Larry Silver, The Art Book“Consistently rewarding . . . a book that is going to transform how Flemish art is understood.”—Jeremy Wood, Apollo Magazine“As well as examining the output and influence of leading figures such as Rubens and Van Dyke, Vlieghe provides the historical, social and cultural context for the development of history painting and other specializations. . . . This book will attract both the informed and general reader.”—Alison Smith, Art Newspaper“Essential for current study of Belgian art.”—ChoiceHans Vlieghe is professor of art history at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain) and research director of the Belgian Nationaal Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek at the Rubenianum, Antwerp.







From the Colonial to the Contemporary


Book Description

From the Colonial to the Contemporary explores the representation of law, images and justice in the first three colonial high courts of India at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It is based upon ethnographic research work and data collected from interviews with judges, lawyers, court staff, press reporters and other persons associated with the courts. Observing the courts through the in vivo, in trial and practice, the book asks questions at different registers, including the impact of the architecture of the courts, the contestation around the renaming of the high courts, the debate over the use of English versus regional languages, forms of addressing the court, the dress worn by different court actors, rules on photography, video recording, live telecasting of court proceedings, use of CCTV cameras and the alternatives to courtroom sketching, and the ceremony and ritual that exists in daily court proceedings. The three colonial high courts studied in this book share a recurring historical tension between the Indian and British notions of justice. This tension is apparent in the semiotics of the legal spaces of these courts and is transmitted through oral history as narrated by those interviewed. The contemporary understandings of these court personnel are therefore seen to have deep historical roots. In this context, the architecture and judicial iconography of the high courts helps to constitute, preserve and reinforce the ambivalent relationship that the court shares with its own contested image.




Fenestration Practice and Theory in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

This book explores the transformation of the window during the Early Modern Period in Europe. Following the Italian Renaissance, new stylistic norms for modern ‘classical windows’ had to be invented. Building a new classical repertoire drew on existing traditions in fenestration as local builders throughout Europe struggled with the constraints of varying climatic conditions, customs and physical resources in pursuit of a broader vision of an international classical revival. With the Renaissance, the architectural emphasis shifted towards secular design and, as the classical revival gained momentum, a quest for a cultured lifestyle commensurate with the new architecture increased demand for sophisticated fenestration systems in civil architecture. The movement coincided with a period of dramatic climate change, the so-called Little Ice Age (c. 1450 – c.1850), adding urgency to the campaign for transforming fenestration practice. By the late seventeenth century, Northern European builders had developed appropriate indigenous ‘classical’ window forms for their respective societies – functional products sophisticated enough to form the basis of new architectural styles: northern classical traditions that rivalled (and in some respects, surpassed) those created in Italy. Their achievement was embodied in the two flagships of the movement: the Franco-Italian folding casement (the ‘French window’), and the English mechanical sliding window (the ‘sash window’).




American Architect


Book Description




Modern Architecture in Europe


Book Description