VULCAN'S FORGE IN VENUS' CITY: THE PRODUCTION OF BRONZE OBJECTS IN RENAISSANCE VENICE

在16世纪，威尼斯成为欧洲最重要的青铜生产中心，这座城市的高技能国家和私人创始人铸造了大量的功能性和装饰性物品(火炮、钟、雕像和文物)，供国内消费和出口。尽管如此，没有一本书讨论威尼斯文艺复兴时期青铜器的技术方面：这就是我写这本书的目的。在过去十年左右的时间里，威尼斯文艺复兴青铜器(以及其他中心生产的青铜器)受到了越来越多的艺术历史学家、科学理论和实践历史学家、物质文化历史学家、消费和奢侈品历史学家以及对收藏历史和陈列感兴趣的学者的密切关注。科学分析，即元素分析(通过合金样品和X射线荧光)和历史技术检查(使用各种放射技术、内窥镜和显微镜)，正在得到实验和经验重建分析以及深入的档案分析的补充。这些不同的方法揭示了大量关于作者、赞助人、年代、材料、制作、技术、功能、接受和后续历史的新信息。尽管有这些新的学科观点，传统的学术界限仍然存在，结果是这些不同的方法很少被一起考虑。此外，青铜器仍然倾向于根据类型(根据功能定义)进行分类，并在单独的类别中进行研究(美术；装饰艺术；枪；钟)/尽管它们往往是由同一人在同一铸造厂制造的。因此，许多关于威尼斯文艺复兴时期青铜器的文献都是高度专业化的，关注的范围很窄，没有跨学科。它也是广泛分散的，许多最基本和最令人兴奋的新研究只为相对较少的学者所知。少数将功能青铜器和装饰性青铜器结合在一起考虑的书籍是广泛的概述，具有很大的地理和/或时间限制，因此提供了非常笼统的结论，几乎没有阐明威尼斯的具体情况。通过将各种学术方法应用于整个作品范围，我的书旨在解决这种情况，并提供文艺复兴时期威尼斯青铜器行业的整体观点，并从主角、工作场所和工作实践方面绘制其发展图。

During the Sixteenth Century, Venice became the most important centre of bronze production in Europe, and the city's highly-skilled State and private founders cast vast quantities of functional and decorative objects (artillery, bells, statues and artefacts) for both domestic consumption and foreign export. Despite this, there is no book that deals with the technological side of Venetian Renaissance bronzes: and so this is the aim of my book.Over the last decade or so, Venetian Renaissance bronzes (as well as those produced in other centres) have come under increasingly close scrutiny from art-historians, historians of scientific theory and practice, historians of material culture, consumption and luxury and by scholars interested in collection history and display. Scientific analysis, namely elemental analyses (via alloy samples and x-ray fluorescence) and historical technology examination (using a variety of radiological techniques, endoscopy and microscopy), is being complemented by experimental and experiential reconstruction analysis and in-depth archival analysis. These diverse approaches are revealing a great deal of new information about authorship, patronage, dating, material, facture, technique, function, reception and subsequent history. Despite these new disciplinary perspectives, traditional academic boundaries still persist with the result that these diverse approaches are rarely considered together. Moreover, bronzes still tend to be classified according to type (as defined by function) and studied within isolated categories (fine art; decorative art; guns; bells) / despite the fact that they were often made by the same people in the same foundry. As a result, much of the literature on Venetian Renaissance bronzes is highly specialised, narrowly focused and not interdisciplinary. It is also widely scattered and a great deal of the most fundamental and exciting new research is known only to a relatively small circle of scholars. The few books that do consider functional and decorative bronzes together are broad overviews with large geographical and/or chronological limits and, as a result, present very general conclusions that shed little light on the specific situation in Venice.By applying a variety of scholarly approaches to the whole spectrum of pieces, my book aims to address this situation, and to provide a holistic view of the bronze industry in Renaissance Venice and to chart its development in terms of protagonists, work-places and working practice.