Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Modern scholarship on Renaissance drawing has focused overwhelmingly on works on paper. This ‘medium specific’ conception of draftsmanship, however, overlooks the reality that designs for early modern buildings and other artworks were executed in a vast range of media, contexts, and dimensions. Architectural drawings were regularly incised or traced in full scale with chalk on walls and floors. Ground plans and elevations were composed, often directly on the construction site, out of rope and string. Renaissance writings abounded with stories of young artists who doodled on the ground and on rock faces, or who invented new imagery by gazing at the veins of marble revetment and the splotches on dirt-stained walls. This lecture explores the symbolic and experiential implications of this expanded understanding of graphic creation.

Morgan Ng, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Renaissance Art and Architecture at Yale University. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. He is currently a David and Julie Tobey Fellow at Villa I Tatti and has previously held a Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College, University of Cambridge.

His publications include the monograph Form and Fortification: The Art of Military Architecture in Renaissance Italy (2025), as well as articles in edited volumes and journals including Art History, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes, I Tatti Studies, Word & Image, and Achademia Leonardi Vinci.

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PARTICIPATION: Participation is free of charge.
The event will be broadcast simultaneously via Zoom. You can join the Zoom meeting at the following link: [tba]. Recording the event—or any parts thereof—as well as taking screenshots is not permitted. By participating, you accept these terms of use.