Construction Techniques and Writings on Architecture in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, edited by Caterina Cardamone, Pieter Martens.

The 2020 issue of the journal Opus Incertum aims to examine, through selected case studies, the complex relationship between construction practices and architectural writings in early modern Europe. 

Although the literature on architectural treatises is vast, the complicated connections between the written page on the one hand and the building site on the other have received comparatively little attention. Situated at the crossroads of several disciplines (architectural history, history of science and technology, history of literature), the subject can be approached from different perspectives.

05/01/2019: deadline for submission of abstract of your proposal (max 1000 words)

20/01/2019: notification of acceptance of pre-selected contributions

20/05/2019: deadline for submission of your paper (max 8,000 words)

Send your proposal to the following e-mail address, specifying in the object “CfP Opus Incertum 2020 – Paper proposal” to our Editor in Chief: Gianluca Belli: gianluca.belli@unifi.it

Please click here for more detail: English

Please click here for Guidelines: Instructions for Authors

The Renaissance of Grottoes. Nature, Art and Architecture in 16th-Century Italy and France, edited by Emanuela Ferretti, Marco Mozzo, Sabine Frommel, Alessandra Giannotti 

The 2019 issue of Opus Incertum brings together the papers presented at the conference that was held on 22 February 2018, with a fruitful exchange between Italian and French scholars. The issue is also open to new contributions, bearing in mind the chronological framework (1530-1630) and the main geographical focus, Italy and France, with inroads into the German world. The epistemological perspective adopted is a highly interdisciplinary one: it ranges from architecture to sculpture, from the decorative arts to iconology, and from compositional aspects to building techniques.

The “Humanistic villa” in Italy, edited by Alessandro Rinaldi

In the issue of Opus Incertum dedicated to the “medieval villas” (N.S., I, 2015) we decided to select a number of buildings between the 13th and 15th century which, according to each specific geopolitical area, reveal strong personality and dignity, matching forms and contents related to the ideas of defence, comfort, representativeness.

In the present issue we are working at, which will be dedicated to the “humanistic villas”, the focus will go towards significant buildings that show a contamination of this rich architectural tradition with more or less consistent elements migrated from Antiquity. The outcome will be a series of buildings where classical elements coexist or conflict with medieval ones, where “all’antica” parts interact with the traditional architectural schemes, as precious Latinisms, sometimes appropriately, some other times not. Such intersections and combinations do not seem to be the result of a fallback, a misunderstanding or a more general conservative attitude that prevents from adopting the new trend, but rather appear as that specific form through which the classical language will manifest inside the consolidated genre of the villa.

The historical-geographical context will extend from the 15th to the 16th century, covering the hole Italian territory, giving special attention to Rome and the central-southern areas.

The deadline for sending the abstracts (1000-1500 characters long) is 30th November 2017.

Three main keywords are requested together with the abstract.

Please click here for Guidelines: Instructions for Authors