Main entry:

McGowan, Margaret M.

Title & Author:

The vision of Rome in late Renaissance France / Margaret M. McGowan.

Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2000.

Description:

xiii, 461 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 425-450) and index.
Voyages. The genre : récit de voyage ; Impaired vision of Rome ; Nicolas Audebert's record -- The guidebook. Preparation for Rome ; The nature of the guidebook ; Rome interpreted and reconstructed ; Montaigne's guide to Rome ; The multi-angled view -- Appropriation and transformation. The collecting craze ; Exports from Rome to France ; Coins and medal collections ; Guillaume du Choul : writer and collector ; The treasures of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc ; The twelve Caesars -- The transporters. New images and a new vocabulary ; Sebastiano Serlio ; Gabriel Symeoni ; Blaise de Vigenère ; Justus Lipsius -- Visions transported : the creative power of ruins -- French artists' response. The enigmatic power of ruins ; Colonna's enthusiasm for ruins ; French artists in Rome ; Inspiration from engravings ; The work of two French artists : Antoine Caron and Jacques Androuet du Cerceau -- Reshaping and reconstruction. Petrarch's vision of ancient Rome ; The urge to reconstruct and the role of conjecture ; The process of reconstitution in Andrea Palladio and Etienne du Pérac ; Ancient models recreated : the country retreat ; L'histoire de la reine Arthemise -- Fragments and wholes -- Du Bellay. Du Bellay's appropriation of ancient Rome ; Reconstructions : Scaliger's successful conjectures ; Du Bellay's imaginative reconstructions of Rome ; Du Bellay's heritage ; The reverberations of Vitalis' Roma prisca and Roma instaurata -- Montaigne. The ruins of Rome, ambiguous signs ; Reading and writing, à pièces descousues ; The shadow of the whole ; The reader's share ; Return to Rome -- Negative responses and reverse appropriation. Civil war and hostility to Rome ; Ruins in France ; France and Rome : parallel conditions ; The influence of Lucan ; Attack upon Rome, the work of Jacques Grévin ; Garnier's dramatization of Rome.
Two distilled models of Rome -- Caesar. Self-fashioning in Roman writers ; The lives of the Caesars ; Caesar's Commentaries ; Parallels between French princes and Caesar ; Hostility to Caesar and the contest between him and Pompey ; Montaigne's view of Caesar ; Caesar conquers Rome, his triumph -- The triumph. Familiarity with triumphal forms ; The nature of the triumph ; The triumphal arch ; Petrarch and the concept of triumph ; Triumphs in France ; The entry into Lyon ; A Roman triumph at Rouen ; Henri IV, a new dynasty and the triumph fossilized.

Summary:

"The extraordinary richness of ancient Rome was a recurring inspiration to writers, artists, scholars and architects in sixteenth-century France. This book explores the ways in which the perception of Rome as a physical and symbolic entity stimulated intellectual endeavour across the disciplines."
"The French vision of Rome was initially determined by travel journals, guide books and a rapidly developing trade in antiquities. Against this background, Margaret McGowan examines work by writers such as Du Bellay, Grevin, Montaigne and Garnier, and by architects and artists such as Philibert de L'Orme and Jean Cousin, showing how they drew upon classical ruins and reconstructions not only to re-enact past meanings and achievements but also, more dynamically, to interpret the present. She explains how Renaissance Rome, enhanced by the presence of so many signs of ancient grandeur, provided a fertile source of artistic creativity.
Study of the fragments of the past tempted writers to an imaginative reconstruction of whole forms, while the new structures they created in France revealed the artistic potency of the incomplete and the fragmentary. McGowan carries the underlying themes of the book - perception, impediments to seeing, and artistic transformation - to the end of the sixteenth century when they culminated in the transfer to France of the grandeur that was Rome."--Jacket.

ISBN:

0300085354 (cloth)
9780300085358 (cloth)

Subject:

Renaissance France.
Civilization Roman influences.
Classical antiquities.
Renaissance.
Romeinse oudheid.
Receptie.
Beeldvorming.
France Antiquities, Roman.
France Civilization 1328-1600 Roman influences.
France Antiquités romaines.
France Civilisation 1328-1600 Influence romaine.
France.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 214274
Call No.: DC33.3 .M39 2000
Status: Available