Indra Kagis McEwen's Books

All the King’s Horses

Vitruvius in an Age of Princes

By: Indra Kagis McEwen

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All the King’s Horses

Vitruvius in an Age of Princes

By: Indra Kagis McEwen

How the Italian Renaissance reinvented the power of princes by rediscovering Vitruvius and his architecture—and justified their right to rule. In Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, Indra Kagis McEwen argued that Vitruvius’s first-century BC treatise De architectura was informed by imperial ideology, giving architecture a role in the imperial Roman project of world rule. In her sequel, All the King’s Horses, McEwen focuses on the early Renaissance reception of Vitruvius’s thought beginning with Petrarch—a political reception preoccupied with legitimating existing power structures. During this “age of princes” various signori took over Italian towns and cities, displacing independent communes and their avowed ideal of the common good. In turn, architects, taking up Vitruvius’s mantle, designed for these princes with the intent of making their power manifest—and celebrating “the rule of one.” Through meticulous descriptions of the work of architects and artists from Leon Battista Alberti to Leonardo, McEwen explains how architecture became an instrument of control in the early Italian Renaissance. She shows how architectural magnificence supported claims to power, a phenomenon best displayed in one of the era’s most prominent monumental themes: the equestrian statue of a prince, in which the horse became an emanation of the will of the rider, its strength the expression of his strength.

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383

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MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262047616

ISBN 13

9780262047616

Vitruvius

Writing the Body of Architecture

By: Indra Kagis McEwen

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Vitruvius

Writing the Body of Architecture

By: Indra Kagis McEwen

A historical study of Vitruvius's De architectura, showing that his purpose in writing "the whole body of architecture" was shaped by the imperial Roman project of world domination. Vitruvius's De architectura is the only major work on architecture to survive from classical antiquity, and until the eighteenth century it was the text to which all other architectural treatises referred. While European classicists have focused on the factual truth of the text itself, English-speaking architects and architectural theorists have viewed it as a timeless source of valuable metaphors. Departing from both perspectives, Indra Kagis McEwen examines the work's meaning and significance in its own time. Vitruvius dedicated De architectura to his patron Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, whose rise to power inspired its composition near the end of the first century B.C. McEwen argues that the imperial project of world dominion shaped Vitruvius's purpose in writing what he calls "the whole body of architecture." Specifically, Vitruvius's aim was to present his discipline as the means for making the emperor's body congruent with the imagined body of the world he would rule. Each of the book's four chapters treats a different Vitruvian "body." Chapter 1, "The Angelic Body," deals with the book as a book, in terms of contemporary events and thought, particularly Stoicism and Stoic theories of language. Chapter 2, "The Herculean Body," addresses the book's and its author's relation to Augustus, whose double Vitruvius means the architect to be. Chapter 3, "The Body Beautiful," discusses the relation of proportion and geometry to architectural beauty and the role of beauty in forging the new world order. Finally, Chapter 4, "The Body of the King," explores the nature and unprecedented extent of Augustan building programs. Included is an examination of the famous statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, sculpted soon after the appearance of De architectura.

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Page Count

516

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

026263306X

ISBN 13

9780262633062

All the King’s Horses

Vitruvius in an Age of Princes

By: Indra Kagis McEwen

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All the King’s Horses

Vitruvius in an Age of Princes

By: Indra Kagis McEwen

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Age

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383

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262047616

ISBN 13

9780262047616

De Ma Main À la Couleur / Hand to Colour

By: Jean McEwen,Indra Kagis McEwen,Laurier Lacroix,Judith Terry

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De Ma Main À la Couleur / Hand to Colour

By: Jean McEwen,Indra Kagis McEwen,Laurier Lacroix,Judith Terry

... A series of watercolours framed by poems written in their author's hand. They are meant to be understood as single works, whose principal conceit is that of the poet's "hand" addressing the painter's medium, colour." -- Preface.

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Publisher

Black Dog Press

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ISBN 10

1910433691

ISBN 13

9781910433690

Book's by Indra Kagis McEwen

All the King’s Horses

All the King’s Horses

Vitruvius

Vitruvius

All the King’s Horses

All the King’s Horses

De Ma Main À la Couleur / Hand to Colour

De Ma Main À la Couleur / Hand to Colour

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