Studies of the Warburg Institute
The Kitāb al-manāẓir or Book of Optics of Ibn al-Haytham, composed in the second quarter of the 11th century AD, consists of seven books (or maqālas) which may be divided into two sections: the first is made up of books I-III and treats the rectilinear radiation of light and colour, and vision produced by rectilinear radiation; the second, consisting of books IV-VII, is a study of reflection and refraction of light and of vision produced by reflected and refracted rays. The present work comprises an English translation of and commentary on the first section, following Abdelhamid I. Sabra’s edition of...
Three extant volumes of drawings after the antique together with scattered leaves from yet another sketchbook, by the Bolognese artist, Amico Aspertini, give an unusual opportunity to students of the relations between Renaissance and classical art. One of the volumes dates from the beginning of the century, the other two from the 1530s and later. They make it possible to assess the antiquarian studies of a representative painter of the time in his progress from youth to maturity. They also throw much light on the specific nature of Renaissance use of the legacy of Antiquity.
In 1957 Phyllis Fray Bober’s Drawings after the Antique by Amicl Aspertini made available the relevant drawings from the two sketchbooks of...
This is the first reconstruction of the Hortus deliciarum, the unique manuscript of which was destroyed in 1870. The text was established from 19th-century transcripts (principally those made for Comte A. De Bastard), from printed sources, and from C. M. Engelhardt’s record of the German glosses as edited by E. Von Steinmeyer. The miniatures are reproduced from the best copies, some in versions previously unpublished. Variants are also included. All the painted copies are reproduced in colour. The reconstruction restores the original sequence of text and illustrations and is intended to replace the obsolete publication of Alexandre Straub and Gustave Keller (1879-99). The edition was prepared under the supervision of...
Girolamo da Carpi’s sketchbook, here assembled and catalogued by Professor Canedy, comprises the largest single graphic repertory extant of the antiquities known to a fifteenth-or sixteenth-century artist. More than a thousand sketches survive in the album belonging to the Philip H. and A. S. Rosenbach Foundation in Philadelphia and the portfolio in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin. A few more sheets are preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum. All the drawings are reproduced, with some comparative material.
Professor Canedy deals with the problems raised by the Sketchbook in a long Introduction. The corpus of Mannerist drawings after the antique and after other artists’ renderings of the antique...
