Hans vredeman de vries biography books

In today’s world Hans Vredeman de Vries (Leeuwarden 1526 – Hamburg 1609) would probably be much in demand as an ‘in-designer’, but in his own day he enjoyed a more diverse reputation: as painter, draughtsman, engineer and architect. Like no other he appreciated the importance of disseminating his designs, illustrated books and print series. His most influential publication is undoubtedly the Perspective (Leiden, 1604-5), described by Carel van Mander in his biography of the artist as ‘a very beautiful book about architecture’; it deservedly earned its place in the libraries of scholars, architects, and artists such as Rubens. The book’s seventy-two imaginary and increasingly complex architectural designs for colonnades, courtyards and loggias account for Vredeman’s fame. Based on the principles of central perspective, his painted and drawn designs are accompanied by explanatory texts which make the perspectival complexities easier to understand. Vredeman was influenced by Serlio’s designs for theatrical stages and scenery, and received decisive impulses from Giorgio Ghisi’s engravings after Raphael’s School of Athens.

Vredeman changed the face of Renaissance architecture north of the Alps. For in addition to his studies on perspective, his model-books and prints of ornamental designs as sources for the decoration of interiors and façades, as well as those on jewellery, vases and gardens, played a vital role in forming taste in Europe and beyond; already in the sixteenth century his influence was felt in South America. That he worked in some of the most prosperous cultural and mercantile centres of Europe also helps explain his widespread artistic dominance. Religious persecution forced Vredeman to leave Antwerp for good in 1585. His numerous years in exile saw him active in many places, including Wolfenbüttel, Braunschweig, Prague, Gdansk

The Dutchman Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526-1609) is generally acknowledged as the ‘father of architectural painting’ or the progenitor of the art of perspective, a designer who utilized the tradition of Vitruvius and Serlio as raw material for architectural and ornamental inventions. The theme of this fascinating and experimental artistic biography is to capture more fully Vredeman’s own opinion on the nature and worth of his art. Heuer does not limit his inquiries to the life and works of the artist, but questions Vredeman’s project through the wisdom of the great cultural philosophers of the twentieth century: Benjamin, Adorno, Riegl, Panofsky, and others who thought deeply about art in the age of reproducible images and image-averse societies. But primacy is given to revealing statements by the artist, culled from such disparate sources as verses written for a Chamber of Rhetoric, self-referential statements in the front-matter of his print albums, autobiographical overtones in Karel van Mander’s biography, and, finally, the archival notice of his failed bit for a professorship at the University of Leiden – an event in 1604 that opens the book.

Long dismissed as a deviser of ornament, a growing consensus (tempered somewhat by Heuer, p. 213) sees the designer-painter, whose career also included engineering and urban planning, as a uomo universale, well versed in both the liberal and mechanical arts. The art of perspective was Vredeman’s expertise. But his genius lay in invention, the talent to turn architectural elements into a stream of visual novelties, and to use perspective for the creation of bunsettling images, which Heuer concludes ‘do not model architectural projects: they are the projects’ (p. 212).

Vredeman left posterity 27 illustrated volumes, containing 483 prints after his designs, as well as a not-yet-fully-catalogued oeuvre of easel paintings with architectural scenes. None of his larg

Dutch architect and painter

Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527 – c. 1607) was a Dutch Renaissance architect, painter, and engineer. Vredeman de Vries is known for his publication in 1583 on garden design and his books with many examples on ornaments (1565) and perspective (1604).

The Vredeman de Vries family included a number of artists and musicians.

Biography

Born in Leeuwarden and raised in Friesland, in 1546 Vredeman de Vries went to Amsterdam and Kampen. In 1549 he moved to Mechelen where the Superior Court was seating. Sebastian, his brother, was the organist in the local church. Vredeman de Vries designed ornaments for merry parades of Charles V and Philip II. Studying Vitruvius and Sebastiano Serlio, (translated by his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst), he became an internationally known specialist in perspective.

He continued his career in Antwerp, where he was appointed city architect and fortification engineer. After 1585 he fled the city because of the Spanish occupation by Alessandro Farnese. As a Protestant, he had to leave the city within two years. Vredeman de Vries moved to Frankfurt and worked in Wolfenbüttel, designing a fortification and a new lay-out of the city for Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. After his death the project was cancelled and Hans worked in Hamburg, Danzig (1592), Prague (1596) and Amsterdam (1600). On his trips Vredeman was accompanied by his son Paul and Hendrick Aerts, both painters. Vredeman de Vries tried to get an appointment at the University of Leiden in 1604.

Vredeman de Vries designed the Great Bed of Ware which is now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The bed is famously large, at around twice the size of a modern double-bed.

His son Salomon was also a painter; Jacob Vredeman de Vries a kapellmeister and composer. It is not known when and where Hans Vredeman de Vries died; however, it is recorded that his son Paul was living in Hamburg when he inheri

VREDEMAN de VRIES, Hans.Pictores, statuarii, architecti.

FIRST EDITION. Folio. Engraved t-p with interlacing ribbons, skulls, bones and shovels + 26 full-page engraved plates of tombs, sarcophagi and funerary monuments with pictorial and sculpted decoration. Edges a little dusty and slightly softened, largely uncut, couple of worm holes to blank margins, slight offsetting to blank verso of most plates, occasional thumb marks. A very good, wide margined copy, in fresh impression, in modern crushed half morocco over cloth boards, preserving c1800 blue wrapper, modern bookplates to front pastedown, autograph c1700 to fly.

A very good copy of the first edition of this important series of plates, here in fresh impression, produced by Hieronymus Cock, depicting major funerary monuments of royal, aristocratic and ecclesiastic personalities. Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-1604) was a Dutch architect, painter and engineer, renowned for his skilled knowledge of perspective and architectural ornament, as well as his building of fortifications for major European capitals. His biography was among those included in Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’, and probably written by Vredeman himself. First published in 1563, ‘Pictores’ was a ground-breaking architectural work anticipating the C17 Mannerist innovations of northern architects like Dietterlich. The 26 engravings of major funerary monuments abandon classical simplicity in favour of complex ornamentation and heavy stone drapery. Vredeman ‘gave western Europe the fantasy architecture of a haunted dream, delivered with a command of perspective that carried his plates through edition after edition from his “Pictores”…until well into the C17’ (‘Architecture Without Kings’, 75). Although some of the tombs portrayed are assigned to real people—Charles V, Queen Isabella and Andrea Doria—they do not represent the actual monuments, but fictional variations conceived by Vredema