The Polyhedrists: Art and Geometry in the Long Sixteenth Century

In The Polyhedrists, Noam Andrews unfolds a history of the relationship between art and geometry in early modern Europe, told largely through a collective of ground-breaking artisan-artists (among them, Luca Pacioli, Albrecht Dürer, Wenzel Jamnitzer, and Lorentz Stöer) and by detailed analysis of a rich visual panoply of their work, featuring paintings, prints, decorative arts, cabinetry, and lavishly illustrated treatises. But this is also an art history of the polyhedra themselves, emblems of an evolving artistic intelligence, which include a varied set of geometrical figures—both Platonic, or regular, like the simple tetrahedron, and Archimedean, or irregular, like the complex yet beguiling rhombicosidodecahedron. A history of the relationship between art and geometry in the early modern period.