|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
Palaces of Reason traces the fascinating history of three royal
residences built outside of Naples in the eighteenth century at
Capodimonte, Portici, and Caserta. Commissioned by King Charles of
Bourbon and Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony, who reigned over the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, these buildings were far more than
residences for the monarchs. They were designed to help reshape the
economic and cultural fortunes of the realm. The palaces at
Capodimonte, Portici, and Caserta are among the most complex
architectural commissions of the eighteenth century. Considering
the architecture and decoration of these complexes within their
political, cultural, and economic contexts, Robin L. Thomas argues
that Enlightenment ideas spurred their construction and influenced
their decoration. These modes of thinking saw the palaces as more
than just centers of royal pleasure or muscular assertions of the
crown’s power. Indeed, writers and royal ministers viewed them as
active agents in improving the cultural, political, social, and
economic health of the kingdom. By casting the palaces within this
narrative, Thomas counters the assumption that they were imitations
of Versailles and the swan songs of absolutism, while expanding our
understanding of the eighteenth-century European palace more
broadly. Original and convincing, Thomas’s book will be of
interest to historians of art and architectural history and
eighteenth-century studies.
The eighteenth century was a golden age of public building.
Governments constructed theaters, museums, hospices, asylums, and
marketplaces to forge a new type of city, one that is recognizably
modern. Yet the dawn of this urban development remains obscure. In
Architecture and Statecraft, Robin Thomas seeks to explain the
origins of the modern capital by examining one of the earliest of
these transformed cities. In 1737 King Charles Bourbon of Spain
embarked upon the most extensive architectural and urban program of
the entire century. A comprehensive study of these Neapolitan
buildings does not exist, and thus Caroline contributions to this
new type of city remain undervalued. This book fills an important
gap in the scholarship and connects Charles’s urban improvements
to his consolidation of the monarchy. By intertwining architecture
and sovereignty, Thomas provides a framework for understanding how
politics created the eighteenth-century capital.
|
You may like...
Poor Things
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, …
DVD
R449
R329
Discovery Miles 3 290
|