Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy: art, science, and the career of Baldassarre Peruzzi

Huppert's reconstruction of Peruzzi's vernacular education, the legacy of Mariano di Jacopo (known as il Taccola), and the influence of his teacher Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who looked at images, mathematics and perspective as driving forces behind art and engineering, convincingly show the role of Peruzzi's early years in Siena in shaping his versatile approach to painting and sketching as 'encompassing figural arts, architecture, and engineering' (p 28).To better comprehend the architectural focus of Peruzzi's drawings, 'consisting especially of carefully measured details and displaying an attentiveness to material and structural issues' (p 60), Huppert also analyses the artist's rich sketchbook (taccuino dei viaggi), which contains drawings of ancient buildings situated in Rome and along the coast of southern Latium.[...]analysis of Peruzzi's work is located within the broader context of Rome's art scene where artists such as Raphael, despite emphasising the importance of precise measurements and drawing techniques in sketching Roman ancient monuments, produced, nonetheless, drawings that 'continued to use perspective, a representational method grounded in the figural arts' (p 58).[...]this book achieves its main goal - namely, to re-assess Baldassarre Peruzzi's role as a major artist of Renaissance Italy.