Architectural Drawings in the Renaissance.
Next week Prof Laura Moretti will be in Florence to participate in the study day, 'Architectural Drawings in the Renaissance: Anonymous Artists, Copyists, Architects', at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz.
Laura will be delivering her paper, "Layers of Provenance: Collecting Practices and the Myth of the ‘Original’ Drawing in the Uffizi’s Gaddi Legacy”, on Tuesday 9 June. You can view the full programme details on .
This event inaugurates an annual seminar series on architectural drawing named after Howard Burns (1939–2025), a leading scholar in the field. The initiative stems from a collaboration between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (KHI) and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio (CISAAP) and will be held annually around June 10, the date of Burns’ birth.
Each year, the Howard Burns Seminar will address the theme of architectural drawing as a constantly evolving field of study, considering different contexts, chronologies, and methodological approaches. The aim of the series is to periodically reflect on the state of research, pass on the wealth of philological knowledge within the field to new generations of scholars, and, at the same time, promote intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue.
One year after his passing, the first edition is dedicated to Renaissance drawing in Italy and is organized in collaboration with the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi (GDSU). It was here that Howard Burns conducted his early, seminal research, providing new insights into the drawings—and more broadly into the architecture and culture—of architects such as Baldassarre Peruzzi, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, and Giuliano da Sangallo, before moving on to the study of Michelangelo, Pirro Ligorio, and above all Andrea Palladio.