A Renaissance without Order

Research Article| December 01 2012 A Renaissance without Order: Ornament, Single-sheet Engravings, and the Mutability of Architectural Prints Michael J. Waters Michael J. Waters 1Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2012) 71 (4): 488–523. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2012.71.4.488 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures A Renaissance without Order: Ornament, Single-sheet Engravings, and the Mutability of Architectural Prints. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 December 2012; 71 (4): 488–523. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2012.71.4.488 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search Keywords: single-sheet engravings, Renaissance drawings and treatises, architectural orders, Sebastiano Serlio This study proposes a critical revision of a recent trend in Renaissance scholarship.1 Over the last thirty years, scholars have increasingly argued that the rise of printing and the illustrated printed treatise was a transformative development in the history of architecture. Specifically, Mario Carpo has influentially asserted that mechanical reproduction created stable, authoritatively identical reproductions that removed the creative drift inherent in a system of drawn copies. In doing so, the printed treatise, in particular that of Sebastiano Serlio, codified a new canon of easily reproducible, standardized orders and marginalized a fluid sketchbook tradition built on the practice of copying drawings, especially those of antiquity. The printed treatise by extension framed a series of formal models within a work of architectural theory defined by rules of composition and authorial agency. In sum, according to this paradigm, print was an agent of change that at its most basic level... You do not currently have access to this content.