Background
Hersey, George Leonard was born on August 30, 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Milton Leonard and Katharine (Page) Hersey.
(The great palace of Caserta, near Naples, probably the la...)
The great palace of Caserta, near Naples, probably the largest building erected in Europe in the eighteenth century, became an archetypal expression of absolute monarchy. It was begun in 1752 for Carlo di Borbone, King of the Two Sicilies, who worked closely with its chief architect, Luigi Vanvitelli. Although Vanvitelli was one of the most notable architects of his century, as Caserta was one of its major buildings, this study by a leading scholar of Baroque and Neapolitan architecture is the first book in English on the architect and his masterpiece. The book offers a new view of the palatial and megapalatial in architecture. Although the monarch for whom it was built never spent a night under its roof, Caserta was designed to provide the royal family and the court with a grand residence and more. It was also intended to house the offices of the government bureaucracy, barracks, a national library, a university, and a national theater - not only to symbolize but to contain the organs of a large modern state. Caserta influenced much that came after: plans by Boullée for a new Versailles to return pride of size to France, buildings in both Imperial and Soviet Russia, palaces of the later British Empire, even the Pentagon. As Hersey notes, "if Carlo di Borbone could return from the grave and rule the United States, he would move the seat of executive power from the White House to the Pentagon." The book also provides intriguing insights into the relationships between poetry - painted and sculptured allegories - and number - architectural planning that has become a geometrical game. It sketches the intellectual background of Carlo's conception, emphasizing the king's mythical forebears and his love of mathematical order. It shows that the Neapolitan poet and philosopher, Giambattista Vico, influenced the king to incorporate such mythic figures as Hercules and Aeneas into his genealogy and Vanvitelli to introduce their likenesses into Caserta's art, which is in turn integrated with the geometry of the palace's gardens and the numerical sequences of its rooms. George L. Hersey is Professor of Art History at Yale.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262081210/?tag=2022091-20
(The villas of Andrea Palladio have been among the most in...)
The villas of Andrea Palladio have been among the most influential buildings in history. Drawing on the architect's original published legacy of forty-odd designs, George Hersey and Richard Freedman reveal the rigorous geometric rules by which Palladio conceived these structures. Where most earlier attempts to analyze the villas are mere lists of numbers and ratios that ignore space distribution, the present rules produce actual designs. Using a computer, the authors test each rule in every possible application, establishing a degree of validity not possible in ad hoc analyses. Progressing from the architect's most obvious to his subtlest ideas, the computer ultimately creates villa plans and facades that are stylistically indistinguishable from those of Palladio himself. Possible Palladian Villas opens the way to similar analyses of other such "paradigmatic" designs, whether Chinese screens, Greek temples, baroque churches, or Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Houses. In fact a new approach to architectural history emerges: we can study designs that a given master might have produced but did not. Palladio's actual buildings, along with those of his generations of imitators, are set into the context not only of a new theory but of a new type of theory. Along with the Macintosh disk that runs the program, Possible Palladian Villas will fascinate the design community and students of architectural style, symmetry, and geometry. It will fill architectural historians with bracing dismay. George Hersey is Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. Richard Freedman, who designed the computer program, is a product marketer working on MS-DOS at the Microsoft Corporation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262581108/?tag=2022091-20
( The age of the Baroque—a time when great strides were m...)
The age of the Baroque—a time when great strides were made in science and mathematics—witnessed the construction of some of the world's most magnificent buildings. What did the work of great architects such as Bernini, Blondel, Guarini, and Wren have to do with Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Desargues, and Newton? Here, George Hersey explores the ways in which Baroque architecture, with its dramatic shapes and playful experimentation with classical forms, reflects the scientific thinking of the time. He introduces us to a concept of geometry that encompassed much more than the science we know today, one that included geometrics (number and shape games), as well as the art of geomancy, or magic and prophecy using shapes and numbers. Hersey first concentrates on specific problems in geometry and architectural design. He then explores the affinities between musical chords and several types of architectural form. He turns to advances in optics, such as artificial lenses and magic lanterns, to show how architects incorporated light, a heavenly emanation, into their impressive domes. With ample illustrations and lucid, witty language, Hersey shows how abstract ideas were transformed into visual, tactile form—the epicycles of the cosmos, the sexual mystique surrounding the cube, and the imperfections of heavenly bodies. Some two centuries later, he finds that the geometric principles of the Baroque resonate, often unexpectedly, in the work of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. A discussion of these surprising links to the past rounds out this brilliant reexamination of some of the long-forgotten beliefs and practices that helped produce some of Europe's greatest masterpieces.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226327833/?tag=2022091-20
(The age of the baroque - a time of great strides in scien...)
The age of the baroque - a time of great strides in science and mathematics - also saw the construction of some of the world's most magnificent buildings. Hersey explores the interrelations of the two developments and how they cross-fertilised.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FDVN2D8/?tag=2022091-20
( Why do architects still use the classical orders? Why u...)
Why do architects still use the classical orders? Why use forms derived from ancient Greek temples when ancient Greek religion has been dead for centuries and when the way of life they expressed is extinct? And why decorate a contemporary courthouse with the bones, eggs, darts, claws, and garlands that an ancient Greek would recognize as the trappings of animal sacrifice?With these provocative questions George Hersey begins his recovery of the meaning of classical architecture. For the last four centuries, he shows, philology and formalism have drained architecture of its poetry. By analyzing this poetry -- the tropes founded on the Greek terms for ornamental detail -- he reconstructs a classical theory about the origin and meaning of the orders, one that links them to ancient sacrificial ritual and myth. In doing so, Hersey reinterprets key tales and taboos that were part of the cultural memory of the ancient Greeks. His touchstone is Vitruvius, author of the only surviving classical treatise on architecture, whose stories about Dorus, Ion, and the Corinthian maiden, and about the Caryaean women and Persian soldiers, describe the orders as records or remembrances of sacrifice. Hersey finds revivals of this consciousness in the Italian Renaissance and throws new light on the works of the architectural theorists Francesco di Giorgio and Ceasare Cesariano, and also on Raphael's Disputá, Michelangelo's tomb of Julius 11 and Medici Chapel, and Hugues Sambin's handbook on termini.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262580896/?tag=2022091-20
Hersey, George Leonard was born on August 30, 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Milton Leonard and Katharine (Page) Hersey.
Bachelor of Arts, Harvard University, 1951; Master of Fine Arts, Yale University, 1954; Master of Arts, Yale University, 1961; Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1964.
Instructor art, Bucknell U., Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1954-1955;
assistant professor, Bucknell U., 1955-1959;
acting chairman, Bucknell U., 1958-1959;
instructor, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1963-1965;
assistant professor, Yale, 1965-1968;
associate professor, Yale University, 1968-1974;
professor, Yale University, 1974-1998;
retired, Yale University, 1998. Member of advisory board Connecticut Preservation Trust, 1977-1979. Member Connecticut State Commission Capitol Restoration, 1977-1979.
Lecturer Princeton University, Columbia University, other universities, organizations.
( Why do architects still use the classical orders? Why u...)
(The great palace of Caserta, near Naples, probably the la...)
( The age of the Baroque—a time when great strides were m...)
(The age of the baroque - a time of great strides in scien...)
(The villas of Andrea Palladio have been among the most in...)
(City planning -- Italy -- Naples -- History. Art objects ...)
(Book by Hersey, Professor George L.)
(First Edition (US) F)
With United States Merchant Marine, 1945-1946, United States Army, 1946-1947. Member Society Architectural Historians (board directors 1971-1973), Renaissance Society American, Dunky Club honorary).
Married Jane Maddox Lancefield, September 2, 1953. Children: Donald, James.