The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance

Vitruvius' Ten Books of Architecture was the fountainhead of architectural theory in the Italian Renaissance. Offering theoretical and practical solutions to a wide variety of architectural issues, this treatise did not, however, address all of the questions that were of concern to early modern architects. This study examines the Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to negotiate between imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400-1600, Alina Payne identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused.

"Payne's book will richly reward anyone concerned with the goals of architechture today." Architecture Magazine

"Paired with a meticulous exegesis of content and careful inclusion of the Latin and Italian originals throughout, such sensitivity makes Payne's study stand out among the flood of recent publications devoted to paper architecture...[the book] will be valuable chiefly to specialists in the history of aesthetics, rhetoric, or philosophy, as well as art and architecture in Italy. Its most original contribution...remains its engagement with the historiography of Renaissance architecture." Renaissance and Reformation

"...useful far beyond the more narrow study of Renaissance architecture. This is an important book." The Art Book