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.
