The Italian Renaissance of Machines: (The Bernard Berenson lectures on the Italian Renaissance)

The Renaissance was a rebirth of art and literature—and of machines. In this lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period featuring Taccola’s and da Vinci’s fusion of artistry and engineering and new concepts of learning that enabled Galileo’s revolutionary mathematical science of mechanics.

Table of Contents:
Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Preface 1. The Sienese Machines 2. Leonardo versus the “Ancient Philosophers” 3. Immaterial Machines Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

Review :
Galluzzi's project in this erudite and beautifully illustrated book is to consider Renaissance humanism from the relatively unfamiliar perspective of machine design...Leonardo's projects, like Taccola's, combined philosophy, art, experimental science, performance, politics, diplomacy, and fantasy. It's not that these engineer-humanists did many different things, but that they regarded all things as one. -- Jessica Riskin New York Review of Books Galluzzi has long been one of the premier scholars of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history of technology and science. But most of his scholarship is not available in English and is thus inaccessible to those who do not read Italian. This beautifully written book will bring his scholarship to the general reader, while promising to be of great use to specialists. -- Pamela O. Long, author of Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome In a period of economic development, profound urbanization, and constant warfare, artist-engineers offered Renaissance society creative solutions to technical problems, new ways of imagining and understanding the world, and empirical methodologies that laid the groundwork for the new sciences. Galluzzi's richly illustrated book therefore does well to demonstrate how artist-engineers revolutionized the conceptualization and production of textual and visual content, and, consequently, produced radical innovations in graphic representations that reflect the ever-fascinating world that is the Italian Renaissance. -- Jennifer Strtak Renaissance and Reformation Galluzzi, director of the Museo Galileo since 1982, is eminently qualified to synthesize this vast body of work...His observations display a freshness, immediacy, and acuity...Anyone who studies or teaches the renaissance of arts and letters will benefit from this more inclusive view of the period. -- Michael Kucher Technology and Culture Galluzzi is the doyen of Leonardo da Vinci scholars today...This is apt to become a canonical text in its field. -- Bert Hall Renaissance and Reformation