Renaissance City
Plate 3
Architects of the Renaissance first developed the concept of urban planning. This View of an Ideal City, probably created by Luciano Laurana, reflects the classical styles of ancient Greece and Rome with its use of columns and its combination of squares and circles, two shapes viewed as ideal. The painting is based on sketches by artist Piero della Francesca from his work On Perspective in Painting, written in the late 1460s.
Plate 5
The city-state of Naples changed hands several times during the Renaissance. It came under the control of the Spanish house of Aragon in 1442, but in the 1490s it fell to the French. However, Spanish forces led by Ferdinand of Aragon recaptured Naples in 1503. The new Spanish rulers made the city a strategic center in Italy. This painting by Francesco Pagano shows Ferdinand's fleet in Naples harbor.
Plate 7
The painting View of Perugia, Italy dates from the early 1400s. Perugia was the leading city-state in the central Italian region of Umbria in the mid-1300s. Over the next 200 years, it gradually lost its political independence. However, it remained a thriving center of the arts and learning, home to the celebrated painter Perugino and a university.
Plate 9
The largest city in Renaissance England, London had around 200,000 residents in 1600. Francis Hogenberg created this view of London in 1576 to illustrate the work Cities of the World. The painting shows part of the city walls, the great bulk of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Thames River off to the right.
Plate 11
The port of Amsterdam, shown in this engraving by artist D.G. Hucquier, was the key transfer point between northeastern and western Europe. Amsterdam's trade declined sharply when the northern part of the Netherlands broke away from Spanish rule and became a separate nation. But in 1578 Amsterdam joined the new Dutch nation. The city quickly became the home base of the Dutch commercial empire in Asia and the Americas and a major European financial center.
Plate 13
Madrid became the capital of Spain in 1561. The Renaissance arrived late in the city and never took firm root, but the dramatic Baroque styles of art and architecture blossomed there in the 1600s. These buildings in the public square called the Plaza Mayor were constructed in 1620. The statue at left, by Italian artists Giambologna and Pietro Tacca, portrays Philip III, who ruled Spain from 1598 to 1621.
Plate 15
Renaissance culture thrived in Prague, the capital of the kingdom of Bohemia. Rudolf II, who ruled Bohemia from 1575 to 1612, hired stonemasons and other workers from Italy to transform Prague Castle into a magnificent Renaissance palace. His example inspired many of the nobles to build splendid homes. This view of the modern city shows both Prague Castle and Hradcany (Hrad Castle), now the home of the president of the Czech Republic.
