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Natural hazards punctuate the history of European towns, moulding their shape and identity: this book is devoted to the artistic representation of those calamities, from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. It contains nine case studies which discuss, among others, the relationship between biblical imagery and the realistic depiction of urban disasters; the religious, political and ritual meanings of "destruction subjects" in early modern painting; the image of fire in Renaissance treatises on architecture; the first photographic campaigns documenting earthquakes' damages; the role of contemporary art in the elaboration of a cultural memory of urban destructions. Thus, this book intends to address one of the main issues of Western civilization: the relationship of European towns with their own past and its discontinuities.
Contributors are Alessandro Del Puppo, Isabella di Lenardo, Marco Folin, Sophie Goetzmann, Emanuela Guidoboni, Philippe Malgouyres, Olga Medvedkova, Fabrizio Nevola, Monica Preti and Tiziana Serena.
About the author
Marco Folin, Ph.D. (2001), Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, is Professor of History of Architecture at the University of Genoa. He has published several studies on Italian urban culture and the relationship between art and politics in the Renaissance.
Monica Preti, Ph.D. (2004), European University Institute of Florence, is Head of Academic Programs at the Auditorium of Louvre Museum. She has published studies on the history of collecting (18th-19th centuries) and on the relationship between arts and literature in the Renaissance.
