A plan of Lanci's new city at Terra del Sole. Its geometric layout was to prove an early example of modern town planning, later popularised during the Baroque period.

Baldassarre Lanci (1510-1571) was an Italian architect, inventor, theatrical set designer, and master of perspective of the rinascimento period. Born in Urbino, he spent most of his working life in Tuscany. Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens: dynamic figures spiral down around a void: draperies blow: a whirl of movement lit in a shaft of light, rendered in a free bravura handling of paint In arts, the Baroque (or baroque) is both a period and the style that dominated it. ... Events Conquest of Pskov by Grand Prince Vasili III of Muscovy. ... Events January 11 - Austrian nobility is granted Freedom of religion. ... Architect at his drawing board, 1893 An architect, also known as a building designer, is a person involved in the planning, designing and oversight of a buildings construction, whose role is to guide decisions affecting those building aspects that are of aesthetic, cultural or social concern. ... By Region: Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance *French Renaissance *German Renaissance *English Renaissance The Renaissance was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ... Panorama of Urbino with the cathedral and the palazzo ducale Urbino is a city in the Marche in Italy, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site with a great cultural history during the Renaissance as the seat of Federico da Montefeltro. ... Tuscany (Italian Toscana) is a region in central Italy, bordering on Latium to the south, Umbria to the east, Emilia-Romagna and Liguria to the north, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. ...

He began his career as a military engineer, and was for ten years following 1547 in the continual employment of the Republic of Lucca. His notability as a construction engineer earned him the commission to carry out a detailed survey of Rome's city walls and those of the bastions at Ancona, Civitavecchia. and Ostia, and for Pope Pius IV. The point of a bastion on a reconstructed French fort in Illinois. ... Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche, a region of northeastern Italy, population 100,507 (2001). ... Civitavecchia is a town and comune of the province of Rome in the central Italian region of Lazio, a sea port on the Tyrrhenian sea, 50 miles WNW of Rome, 42°06N 11°47E. According to the 2003 census, its population was 50,100. ... The Temple of the goddess Roma on the Forum of Ostia Ostia, an ancient town on the coast facing the Tyrrhenian Sea, in Latium, Italy, was the harbour of ancient Rome and perhaps its first colonia. ... Pius IV, né Giovanni Angelo Medici (March 31, 1499 - December 9, 1565), pope from 1559 to 1565, was born of humble parentage in Milan. ...

From 1557 he worked almost exclusively for Cosimo I de' Medici, for whom he supervised such projects as the fortification of Sienna and many other Tuscan towns. His urban works included the design of Terra del Sole a fortified new city for Cosimo I de' Medici in the Province of Forlì-Cesena. Lanci also designed the church of Santa Maria della Rosa in the spa town of Chianciano Terme in the Province of Siena; Santa Maria della Rosa was built on a central plan, and, even though it was never finished, it is notable for the sobriety and clean lines of its design, which culminates in an elegant dome. The church, however, was never fully completed. In 1585 building work stopped, fourteen years after Lanci's death. Events Spain is effectively bankrupt. ... Cosimo I de Medici in Armour by Agnolo Bronzino Cosimo I de Medici (June 12, 1519 – April 21, 1574) was the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, ruling from 1537 to 1574, during the waning days of the Renaissance. ... This page is not about Siena, Italy. ... Tuscany (Italian Toscana) is a region in central Italy, bordering on Latium to the south, Umbria to the east, Emilia-Romagna and Liguria to the north, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. ... Forlì-Cesena (It. ... see also SPA The term spa, derived from the Belgian town of Spa, is traditionally used to mean a place where water that is believed to have special health-giving properties occurs. ... Siena (It. ...

Cosimo I de' Medici Lanci's chief employer and patron

Lanci's most notable achievement was his invention in 1567 of a piece of surveying equipment to obtain perspectives with a visual field of 180°. The instrument, which he named a distanziometro, consisted of a circular bronze plate placed upon a horizontal tripod, the height of which could be adjusted. Semi-cylindrical paper was wound around its edge. A cylindrical eyepiece was placed in the centre with a retracting metal needle or pen underneath. The eyepiece was high enough to overlook the semicircle of paper and sight points of interest while the retracting needle scored on the paper to accurately plot the subject. It could also be used as a quadrant for measuring height, in much the same way as the orizzonte designed by the architect Alberti. Download high resolution version (801x983, 90 KB)Cosimo I de Medici in Armour by Agnolo Bronzino. ... Download high resolution version (801x983, 90 KB)Cosimo I de Medici in Armour by Agnolo Bronzino. ... Cosimo I de Medici in Armour by Agnolo Bronzino Cosimo I de Medici (June 12, 1519 – April 21, 1574) was the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, ruling from 1537 to 1574, during the waning days of the Renaissance. ... Events The Duke of Alva arrives in the Netherlands with Spanish forces to suppress unrest there. ... Perspective is the choice of a single point of view from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, typically for comparing with another. ... Bronze figurine, found at Öland Bronze is the traditional name for a broad range of alloys of copper. ... A tripod refers to any three-legged structure. ... Alberti was an illustrious Florentine family, rivals of the Medicis and the Albrizzi. ...

His diverse works also included many aquatic projects such as the improvement of Livorno harbour (1566-1567), and the Sovana aqueduct, earning him fame as an earlyhydraulic engineer. Water (from the Old English word wæter; c. ... Livorno, sometimes in English Leghorn, (population 170,000) is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. ... Pont du Gard, France, a Roman era aqueduct circa 19 BC, it is one of Frances top tourist attractions at over 1. ... Hydraulics is a branch of science and engineering concerned with the use of liquids to perform mechanical tasks. ...

As an architect his engineering skills were firmly to the forefront, rather than an interpretation of the finer and more sophisticated points of rinascimento architecture. Impregnable fortresses such as the Fortezza Medicea at Siena, and bastide towns, and bridges are his trade mark, rather than elegant palazzi. This is not to say Lanci was a man lacking in sophistication. One of his more surprising talents was designing some of the sets for the lavish theatrical and dramatical performances for which the Medici court was famed. As with his architecture, though, it was even here his engineering skills which dominated. This page is about Siena, Italy. ... Bastides are fortified towns built in medieval France starting around 1229, the date of the first recorded bastide. ... The Bass Red Triangle, was the first trademark registered in Britain in 1876. ... The quintessential medieval European palace: Palais de la Cité, in Paris, the royal palace of France. ...

Drawing by Lanzi of a perspective view of Firenza (Palazzo Vecchio and Brunelleschi's dome of Santa Maria del Fiore) The precise perspective was obtained using the surveying equipment he invented himself. The image suggests Lanci's secondary career as a set designer.

Long before the Restoration spectaculars of the 17th century, Lanci was designing elaborate and complicated theatre sets, using pivoted scenery, with up to three different scenes painted on boards, thus allowing the mood of the production to be altered in an instant. One of the earliest examples of this form of scenic change was recorded in 1568 for a performance of Il Fabii produced to celebrate the baptism of a daughter of Francesco de' Medici. One of Lanci's most opulent productions was for a performance of Giovan Battista Cini's La Vedova (The Widow), staged in Firenza in 1569, with amazingly extravagant costumes by Bernardo Buontalenti. The event was recorded by the mathematician Egnatio Danti, who was so impressed by Lanci's theatrical engineering that he included a drawing of his periactoi stage. The periactoi stage setting was basically a series of three sided revolving triangular boards, each side with a different scene. Each triangular board was connected, hence there would be one or two flanking the stage, in the wings, and a further section suspended between them on which would be painted skies, cloudy, sunny, dawn or dusk. The entire series of revolving boards were linked to each other by a series of pulleys and machinery, thus allowing scene changes to be almost instantaneous. While Lanci did not invent this mechanism himself (indeed Vitruvius had described these three-sided revolving units in the Roman era), he was instrumental in its further development, often producing the settings of the plays himself, in order to include a greater variety of scenery. What in fact Lanci realised and promoted was that a false perspective coupled with a deliberately created illusionary architectural area was the perfect theatrical setting. Florence (Italian, Firenze) is a city in the center of Tuscany, in central Italy, on the Arno River, with a population of around 400,000, plus a suburban population in excess of 200,000. ... Filippo Brunelleschi, 1377 - 1446, was the first great Florentine architect of the Italian Renaissance. ... This naval battle was one of the sets for Elkanah Settles Empress of Morocco (1673) at the theatre in Dorset Garden. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... Events March 23 - Peace of Longjumeau ends the Second War of Religion in France. ... Francesco I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (25 March 1541 – 19 October 1587) was the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, ruling from 1574 to 1587. ... Bernardo Buontalenti was an architect in the Italian Renaissance who designed the crypt of the Basilica di San Lorenzo for the Medici family. ... Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He was the author of De Architectura, known today as The Ten Books of Architecture, a treatise in Latin on architecture, and perhaps the first work about this discipline. ... Ancient Rome was a civilization that existed in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East between 753 BC and its downfall in AD 476. ... A diorama is a partially three dimensional model of a landscape typically showing historical events, nature scenes, cityscapes, etc. ...

References

• Lucia Nuti, Ritratti di città. Visione e memoria tra Medievo e Settecento. 1996. Venezia, Marsilio.