Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy by William L MacDonald and John A Pinto

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Some foxing to top and tail foredges. Dust jacket has light creasing at edges and spine. Interior and binding are also very good.

The great Villa constructed by the Emperor Hadrian near Tivoli between AD 118 and the 130s is one of the most original monuments in the history of architecture and art. The inspiration for major developments in villa and landscape design from the Renaissance onward, it also influenced such eminent twentieth-century architects as Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn.

In this beautiful book, two distinguished architectural historians describe and interpret the Villa as it existed in Roman times and trace its extraordinary influence on architects and artists to the present day.

William L. MacDonald and John A. Pinto begin by evaluating the numerous buildings comprising the complex, and then describe the art, decorated surfaces, gardens, waterworks, and life at the Villa. The authors then turn to the ways in which the Villa has influenced writers, artists, architects, and landscape designers from the fifteenth century to the present. They discuss, for example, Piranesi's archaeological, architectural, and graphic Villa studies in the eighteenth century; connections between Hadrian's Villa and the English landscape garden; the array of European verbal and artistic depictions of the Villa; and architectural studies of the Villa by twentieth-century Americans.