Early modern architecture in Germanic Europe has long been a stepchild of art history. Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, and other painters are foundational figures for the discipline, and the sculpture of their time and place has become an important part of the field, in part through the work of Michael Baxandall and Jeffrey Chipps Smith. Medieval architecture and eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century architecture in the Germanic world have firm (if niche) places in mainstream art history, but early modern architecture in this region has been largely overlooked in favor of its counterparts in Italy and France.

The large body of early literature interpreting Vitruvius and establishing principles of building is fundamental to the study of early modern architecture; this is an essential part of its link to the larger intellectual and literary movement called the Renaissance. Although much less known than the Italian literature, a substantial body of architectural theory was produced in Germanic Europe. This large book produced by Werner Oechslin (a master of the literature of architecture), Tobias Büchi, and Martin Pozsgai offers a rich presentation of these texts up to 1648. The introduction, written by Oechslin, does not focus on the material at hand, but rather contextualizes it within a wide-ranging discussion of themes extending from antiquity to the later twentieth century. Indeed, the ideas of the fifteenth-century humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the twentieth-century architect Le Corbusier are presented in one breath. Throughout, Oechslin skips easily from Aristotle to Hugh of St. Victor, and from Francis Bacon to the contemporary architect Peter Eisenman. The goal is to show that the architectural and intellectual concerns of early modern Germany were not particular to that time and place, but that they are local manifestations of universal interests.

The introduction is divided into five chapters. These take up humanistic questions about the nature of architecture, books, and reading; the relationship of architectural theory to other fields; the relationship of architecture to mathematics, which was especially strong in Germany; the Italian invasion of column books and other publications; and the rise of interest in defining a German architecture. The catalogue makes up the bulk of the volume, and rightly so. Most of the books presented in it are unfamiliar, and many receive an extended analysis, making the catalogue a bit like a series of focused essays. There are many illustrations throughout, giving the reader a sense of the material characteristics of the books as well.

The “German-speaking cultural area” of the title includes the Low Countries. This is necessary, for much of the standard literature in Germany proper was published in Antwerp and Amsterdam. However, this is not a catalogue of Germanic authors or of German-language texts; Vitruvius, Leon Battista Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio, Vignola, and others are present. Alberti was published in the original Latin in Strasbourg in 1541, with a number of variations both particular to it and inherited from the Paris edition from which it was derived. The catalogue gives a picture of architectural publishing in German- and Dutch-speaking lands. Both the introduction and the catalogue make clear that this was part of a much larger dialogue. It would be useful to know more about the availability in Germany of architecture books published in France or Italy, or of the availability elsewhere of the volumes described here. Did they contribute meaningfully to the discourse farther east in Central Europe, for instance? To what degree did these works define architecture for readers and builders in Germanic Europe, and to what degree were they used together with imported works? Andrea Palladio's Four Books (1570), not published in Germany until 1698 (and then only in part), is hardly present here, though it was certainly known in the region. While this large volume gives a rich review of the architectural literature published in Germanic Europe before 1648, this is not necessarily the same as the literature that was read in this region. This quibble aside, this volume is a very valuable resource for those interested in architectural history and the humanistic culture of Central Europe.