The Department of Rare Books, Special Collections & Preservation, University of Rochester Library, invites you to attend a lecture on
"The Geometry of Humanism: Albrecht Durer and the Roman Capital Letter Form"
By David Pankow, Curator of the Melbert B. Cary, Jr., Graphic Arts
Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology
November 6, 2001 at 7:30 pm
Rare Books, Special Collections & Preservation Department
Rush Rhees Library
For more information or directions, call (716) 275-4477 or go to http://www.lib.rochester.edu/rbk/rarehome.htm
This is the same talk that Mr. Pankow gave during Bibliography Week in New York in January.
Albrecht Dürer is justly famous for his paintings, woodcuts and engravings. He was also deeply interested in the proportions of the human figure and in geometry, believing that it was, "in very truth, the foundation of the whole graphic art." A discerning artist, for example, could deduce an underlying geometric structure for Roman inscriptional lettering.
Inspired by what he had seen and heard during two trips to Venice, Dürer conducted an intense personal study of proportion and harmony, looking for what he came to call the "great secret," such that one or perhaps several unified geometric principles could be used to explain the forms of man, nature, and the universe. It was a subject that was to consume him for many years to come.
Toward the end of his life he wrote two important technical treatises: the famous Unterwessung der Messung, or Course in the Art of Measurement, published in 1525, and Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, or Four Books on Human Proportion, published posthumously in 1528.
This talk explores the Renaissance interest in geometry and Dürer's attempts to reconcile the notion of idealized beauty with a world in which both people and the letters of the alphabet elude mathematical
constraints.
The lecture is free and open to the public. RSVPs requested.
RSVP: rpeek@rcl.lib.rochester.edu
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