The "Catena" View of Florence

Writing in Book II, ‘Di prospettiva’ (‘On perspective’), of his treatise on architecture (first published 1545), the Bolognese painter and architect Sebastiano Serlio is describing here the first of three main types of stage-set design for classical theatre: comic, tragic and satyric (or...

City views, by definition, require a city, or, at the very least, a town. More importantly, they require what Richard Morse once defined as the “idea of the city,” the belief that the city possessed special qualities and therefore constituted a subject worthy of artistic representation.Richard M. Morse,...

The important men of a major clan gather in a piazza. They are accompanied by their supporters and clients (pls. 3, 4). Grouped around an altar, they discuss and ponder a sacred event. Some turn to greet newcomers. All are grave and dignified. The square is bright and well ordered. It is ornamented with stately architecture, sculpture, and multi-colored marbles. It is a fiction – a painted history on a chapel wall. It is also a fact – a willed and commissioned fact of family honor. It is …