Practices of Copying in Early Modern European Architecture (1400–1700)

De Raedt, Nele (ed.)
Merrill, Elizabeth (ed.)

This book explores copying in early modern European architecture with a specific focus on documented processes that took place at different instances in the theorisation, study, design and construction of architecture. The nine essays are deliberately diverse, spanning from fifteenth-century Italy to eighteenth-century England, from a humanistic tract dedicated to a Spanish noblewoman, to terracotta models for Milanese palace façades. But the contributions are united in their focus on the copy, and more fundamentally, in their common understanding of architecture as an iterative process, the contours of which extend far beyond the building site. In this framework, the authority granted to the architect is mitigated by the recognised involvement of a broad cast of characters: patrons, publishers, designers, craftsmen, workshop assistants and labourers. The studies assembled here elevate the copy from something secondary, derivative to an unrivalled tool for understanding the complex and often uncodified systems by which early modern architecture was realized. The copy is examined as an index of architectural practice, of techniques and activities that were often routine and direct, driven by needs of economy, efficiency, and scale. The very survival of the copy (and often of copies), confirms the heterogeneous and collaborative nature of the period’s architecture. Rarely, if ever, did building design begin from the metaphorical blank slate. Rather, as this book demonstrates, early modern architecture flourished thanks to the ties forged by direct copying and replication.