The Architectural Drawings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and His Circle, Vol. 2: Churches, Villas, the Pantheon, Tombs, and Ancient Inscriptions (Architectural History Foundation Book)

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Summary: Seeing an important Renaissance architect at work
Review: Antonio da Sangallo the Younger was one of the most important architects of the Renaissance during the first half of the 16th century in Italy. A few of his buildings belong to the guiding examples of public and private architecture. Overshadowed by better known artists like Bramante or Michelangelo, his reputation among his contemporaries was as least as high as that of those. But he is also the one architect by whom survived more drawings than of any other one of that time (and even of later times). The long-prepaired edition of these drawings - from the collection of the Florentine Uffizi - is a milestone not only in architectural history, but also in editing important art historical material at all. A group of famous and highly-skilled architectural historians made this work available with a lot of deep-going contributions to the analysis of the drawings. So, reading comments about fortresses, machines and other buildings normally not thought of to be of great interest at all, lets one understand how an architect with great skill and experience (and a large group of collaborators) managed "his job". In fact, Sangallo seems to be the first architect in European history, who organized his work in a way very close to the one still used today: the architect gives ideas to further development to his collaborators, corrects their contributions and organizes the whole work of the "studio" rather than doing everything himself - as others did at the same time. I think, one can not only learn a lot about a special architect in a special time from this book, but also, how architectural invention and execution was organized in the renaissance (and from then on). The detailed analytic descriptions of the drawings sometimes even read like a step-by-step solution of complicated riddles, and it's interesting to follow the discussion of such a complicated matter. If you are interested in architecture or art history, this book is a must!