Upcoming
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E-book now available globally; hardback version now available in the UK and EU; hardback version available in the US in Feburary 2025
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​Praise for The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: ​
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“In this immensely learned and beautifully illustrated book, Elizabeth J. Petcu reveals the vast ambitions and stunning virtuosity of Wendel Dietterlin’s architectural images. Petcu illuminates the protean nature of Dietterlin’s work as he strove to realize for architecture the prestige and potential of artistic and natural philosophical inquiry. Working in the creative hothouse of Strasbourg with its unfettered experimentation by artisans and printers, Dietterlin raised architectural image-making to new epistemic status. The book is also a demonstration of Petcu’s own virtuosity and the remarkable versatility of her scholarship – crossing languages, fields, and vast realms of scholarship with ease. Like its protagonist, her book is endlessly inventive.”
-Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University
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“This important and elegant book transforms our understanding of the relationship between architectural culture and empirical science. Through Petcu’s exacting scholarship, Dietterlin’s corpus has been revealed as a crucible of fertile invention, where design, observation, and fantasy meet. With its remarkable disciplinary and geographical breadth, transporting the reader from Vitruvian architects in Northern Europe to Inca sculptors of colonial Latin America, it should be essential reading for scholars of early modern art and science.”
-Alexander Marr FSA, Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Art, University of Cambridge
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Upcoming book talks include:​​
Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, London and online - 30 Jan 2025,
18:00 UK
To be held at the Senate House in London. You can register for this hybrid event here.
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Bard Graduate Center, New York - March 19, 2025
To be held at the Bard Graduate Center. Registration information will be available shortly.
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"Toward an Ecocritical History of Early Modern Art"
An article co-authored with Maurice Saß will appear in the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte in 2025.
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"Ecocriticsm &: Art Historical Methods in Conversation"
A double session at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting in Boston, Friday 21 March 2025, 1:30 - 5 PM
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Recent
Current Research Seminar, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich - 13 Nov 2024
I presented The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation in a Current Research Seminar for the Zentralinsitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich.
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Book Talk, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh and online - 1 Oct 2024
​​I delivered a talk related to The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation for the Architectural History and Theory Seminar Series of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh.
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Graham Foundation Grant for The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science - May 2024
The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation has been awarded a grant by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts. You can read more here.
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​“Renaissance Architectural Culture and Geological Inquiry” - April 2024
My article, “Renaissance Architectural Culture and Geological Inquiry,” appeared in the edited volume Synagonism in the Fine Arts, edited by Joris van Gastel, Markus Rath, and Yannis Hadjinicolaou, and was published by Brill in April 2024.
Catalogue Essays for Strasbourg 1560-1600. Le renouveau des arts - February 2024
I have authored two essays for the catalogue from a major exhibition of art in Strasbourg during the late Renaissance, “Strasbourg 1560-1600. Le renouveau des arts”, which will be staged at the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg, France, from 2 February to 18 May 2024:
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“Wendel Dietterlin et l'Architectura” addresses the intermedial and interdisciplinary dimensions of the most significant architectural treatise of the sixteenth century published in the German-speaking lands, as well as the global legacy of its enigmatic author, Wendel Dietterlin. Read an English-language version on my website here.
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“La salle de la « Loge des maçons et tailleurs de pierre » de la maison de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame et son décor peint” explores Strasbourg’s most important cycle grotesque wall paintings and their connections to sixteenth-century botanical and zoological research. An English-language version will be made available on my website soon.
​“The Grotesque Mathematics of Dürer’s Victoria” - 27 September 2023
I presented a paper, “The Grotesque Mathematics of Dürer’s Victoria,” at the Itineraries of the Grotesque Across Early Modern Texts and Images workshop at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
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Special Issue of The Journal of Architecture: Un-making Architecture - June 2023
Together with Jason E. Nguyen (University of Toronto), I am a co-editor of the upcoming special issue of The Journal of Architecture, “Un-Making Architecture,” a global and diachronic collection of articles on dynamics of destruction as crucial forces in architectural history, theory, and practice. Our co-authored editorial for the issue is “Un-making architecture: an introduction to a critical framework”, which is available on an open access basis at this link.
2023 Renaissance Architecture and Theory Scholars (RATS) Conference - 24 March 2023
With Caspar Pearson (Warburg Institute) and Fabrizio Nevola (University of Exeter), I co-hosted the 2023 Renaissance Architecture and Theory Scholars (RATS) Conference at the University of Edinburgh. The conference featured eleven presenters (link to line-up) and enjoyed over 3x the registrants and attendees of the previous conference, thanks to the co-convenors efforts to make the event more global, inclusive, and accessible.
Special Lecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning - 21 February 2023
I delivered a talk for the History, Theory and Criticism (HTC) community of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled, “Between Potosí and Saxony: Visualizing Architectural Systems of Colonial Resource Extraction.” I thank the MIT scholars who attended for the invigorating and constructive conversation that ensued.
Paper presented at 2023 College Art Associate (CAA) Annual Conference - 16 February 2023
I presented a portion of my forthcoming book, The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation, at the 111th College Art Association Annual Conference in New York City. The paper, “Architectural Drawing, Information Management, and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin Drafts the Architectura (1593-8)", joined the “Drawing (New) Stories,” session, sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians. My trip was generously funded by the University of Edinburgh and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.