Mussolini’s bold claims upon the monuments and rhetoric of ancient Rome have been the subject of a number of recent books. D. Medina Lasansky shows us a much less familiar side of the cultural politics of Italian Fascism, tracing its wide-ranging efforts to adapt the nation’s medieval and Renaissance heritage to satisfy the regime’s programs of national regeneration. Anyone acquainted with the beauties of Tuscany will be surprised to learn that architects, planners, and administrators working within Fascist programs fabricated much of what today’s tourists admire as authentic. Public squares, town halls, palaces, gardens, and civic rituals (including the famed Palio of Siena) were all “restored” to suit a vision of the past shaped by Fascist notions of virile power, social order, and national achievement in the arts. Ultimately, Lasansky forces readers to question long-standing assumptions about the Renaissance even as she expands the parameters of what constitutes Fascist culture. The arguments in The Renaissance Perfected are based in fresh archival evidence and a rich collection of illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, ranging from photographs and architectural drawings to tourist posters and film stills. Lasansky’s groundbreaking book will be essential reading for students of medieval, Renaissance, and twentieth-century Italy as well as all those concerned with visual culture, architectural preservation, heritage studies, and tourism studies.

The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies)

Arts & Photography

Lasansky, D. Medina

History & Criticism

Penn State University Press

Mussolini’s bold claims upon the monuments and rhetoric of ancient Rome have been the subject of a number of recent books. D. Medina Lasansky shows us a much less familiar side of the cultural politics of Italian Fascism, tracing its wide-ranging efforts to adapt the nation’s medieval and Renaissance heritage to satisfy the regime’s programs of national regeneration. Anyone acquainted with the beauties of Tuscany will be surprised to learn that architects, planners, and administrators working within Fascist programs fabricated much of what today’s tourists admire as authentic. Public squares, town halls, palaces, gardens, and civic rituals (including the famed Palio of Siena) were all “restored” to suit a vision of the past shaped by Fascist notions of virile power, social order, and national achievement in the arts. Ultimately, Lasansky forces readers to question long-standing assumptions about the Renaissance even as she expands the parameters of what constitutes Fascist culture. 
The arguments in The Renaissance Perfected are based in fresh archival evidence and a rich collection of illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, ranging from photographs and architectural drawings to tourist posters and film stills. Lasansky’s groundbreaking book will be essential reading for students of medieval, Renaissance, and twentieth-century Italy as well as all those concerned with visual culture, architectural preservation, heritage studies, and tourism studies.

Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies)

Literature & Fiction

How have architecture and design been represented in popular culture? How do these fictional reflections feed back into and influence 'the real world'? Archi.Pop: Architecture and Design in Popular Culture offers the first contemporary critical overview of this diverse and intriguing relationship in cultural forms including television, cinema, iconic buildings and everyday interiors, music and magazines.Bringing the study of architecture and culture firmly to the contemporary world, Archi.Pop offers a unique critical investigation into how this dynamic relationship has shaped the way we live and the way we interact with the constructed world around us.

Archi.Pop: Mediating Architecture in Popular Culture

Humor & Entertainment

Pop Culture

Bloomsbury Academic

How have architecture and design been represented in popular culture? How do these fictional reflections feed back into and influence 'the real world'? Archi.Pop: Architecture and Design in Popular Culture offers the first contemporary critical overview of this diverse and intriguing relationship in cultural forms including television, cinema, iconic buildings and everyday interiors, music and magazines.
Bringing the study of architecture and culture firmly to the contemporary world, Archi.Pop offers a unique critical investigation into how this dynamic relationship has shaped the way we live and the way we interact with the constructed world around us.

This book shows how and why the Italian Renaissance gained 5-star ranking in popular culture around the world. The change began in the late 1800s when trains made travel to Italy affordable for a middle class eager to experience masterpieces from the age of the Medici. Today planes transport millions of people to Italy’s art capitals, and the Renaissance has a mass market. The Da Vinci Code is one of the best-selling books of all time. The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus, and other icons are replicated in thousands of commodities, most cheap and ephemeral, the reverse of the art they reproduce. To the authors of this book, all such adaptations, however ill-informed or vulgar, are significant. Markers in a reciprocal exchange between the past and the present, they provide invaluable insights into the spectrum of facts, myths, and ideals that have defined the Renaissance since the 19th-century. This rich history is surveyed in the book’s introduction, which takes readers from the Grand Tour to the video game Assassin’s Creed. Essays, often illustrated with contemporary art, divide the book into 9 sections on major themes, ranging from “sex matters” to racism and slavery. Each theme is then developed in several essays on particular topics, from the “discovery” of Michelangelo’s homosexuality to the Renaissance origins of the McMansion, the Jewish ghetto, and “slave portraits.” Many illustrations have explanatory captions so that mere browsing allows the reader to engage with the book’s reassessment of the Renaissance heritage. A team of experts in art, architecture, history, and literature collaborated on this volume, which was planned from the outset as an alternative textbook on the Renaissance. Except for James M. Saslow’s little-known piece on Michelangelo, nothing in it has been previously published. This book is also noteworthy because it proposes new ways of understanding the give-and-take between the Renaissance and its modern admirers. With lively writing and unusual photographs, this book will appeal to all those interested in Italian culture as well as to undergraduate and graduate students in courses on the Renaissance or cultural studies.

The Renaissance: Revised Expanded Unexpurgated

Periscope

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lasansky, D. Medina. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lasansky, D. Medina

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lasansky, D. Medina. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies)

Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies)

Archi.Pop: Mediating Architecture in Popular Culture

Archi.Pop: Mediating Architecture in Popular Culture

The Renaissance: Revised Expanded Unexpurgated