Word: mantua
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Professor of the History of Architecture Howard Burns of the Graduate School of Design (GSD) is directing a project based out of a museum in Mantua, Italy, designed to recontruct a full-scale model of an early Renaissance Italian architect's home. Using only 16th-century documents, a few drawings and analyses of Renaissance era houses still standing, Burns travelled to Mantua last summer with a "research cum-design cum-construction crew" of Harvard students to begin the project...
...construction of a model of the townhouse, which was torn down sometime before the 19th century, is part of an exhibition sponsored by the Palazzio Delte Museum in Mantua, featuring paintings, drawings and artifacts designed by Romano. Romano was one of the major Roman designers of townhouses, villas, silverware and tapestries during the 16th century...
Burns and a group of 13 GSD students and two Harvard fine arts graduate students were able to finish a 13-meter tall facade, and they will return to Mantua next June to complete the house, which is being built as an extension of the museum. The group is constructing the model on a wooden framework which Burns and his team covered with a plastic foam, painted to look like whitewashed stonework, Burns says...
Burns was first contacted to direct the project about a year ago, when the local government of Mantua asked GSD officials to recommend an architect to work on the reconstruction. Burns was chosen because he is an expert on the architects and building construction of the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century...
Even earlier, the lives of Mantua's rich and famous had grown so excessive that Cardinal Ercole, a Gonzaga, ordered controls. "His new rules," writes Simon, "called for severe restrictions in the consumption of peacocks, pheasants, and other game birds; only two kinds of roast and poultry were to be served at one time; no fish or oysters were to be offered with meats; dishes were not to be ornamented with figurines, fine inlays, bits of gold, as was the court custom." Women were limited to wearing "only one conspicuous gem" at a time...