Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-282) and index.
1. The Forked Road to Modernity: Ambiguities of the Renaissance Facade -- 2. Domestic Architecture and Boccaccian Drama: Court and City in Florentine Culture -- 3. Between Opacity and Rhetoric: The Facade in Trecento Florence -- 4. The Facade in Question: Brunelleschi -- 5. The Bones of Grammar and the Rhetoric of Flesh -- 6. Setting and Subject: The City of Presences and the Street as Stage -- 7. Bramante and the Emblematic Facade -- 8. Facades on Parade: Architecture between Court and City -- 9. From Street to Territory: Projections of the Urban Facade.
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In this book, Charles Burroughs tracks the emergence of the facade in late-medieval Florence and then follows the sharply diverging reactions of Renaissance architects to new demands and possibilities for representation in both residential and governmental contexts. Understanding the facade as an assemblage of elements of diverse character and origin, Burroughs explores the wide range of formal solutions available to architects and patrons. In the absence of explicit reflection on the facade in Renaissance architectural discourse, Burroughs notes the theoretical implications of certain celebrated designs, implying meditation on the nature of architecture itself and the society it serves and represents, as well as on the relationship between nature and culture. He also explores the resonance between shifts in architectural form and social space, and the ideas articulated in the literary production of the period.