Seminar Leaders:
Joel A. Klein, Huntington Library
Daniela Bleichmar, USC
2025-2026 Events
Cristiano Zanetti, Caltech, in partnership with The Huntington
Friday, November 7, 2025
“Unveiling the Building of the Renaissance Architect”
Huntington Library
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino
Seaver 1 & 2
2:00 pm Lecture (open to the public)
3:00 pm Show and Tell (limited seating)
Renaissance architecture influenced the construction of buildings and cities for centuries across the Western world and its spheres of influence—from St. Peter’s in Rome to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, from the Kremlin in Moscow and the city of St. Petersburg in Russia, to Monticello and the Capitol buildings in the United States. When considering this legacy, one automatically thinks of Renaissance architects. But who were the architects of the Renaissance, really? And why does there seem to be no clear distinction between the terms architect and engineer during this period?
Throughout the 15th century and much of the 16th, architecture remained a profession without a formal curriculum. This presentation explores the role of the architect in its Renaissance context, revealing how the definition of “architect” differed radically from the one shaped by our modern linguistic and professional frameworks. (Consider, for example, the standard dictionary definition: “a person who designs buildings and advises in their construction.”)
Through the classical models of Archimedes, Vitruvius, and Hero of Alexandria—and by examining both well-known and lesser-known Renaissance architects (from Filippo Brunelleschi to Leonardo da Vinci, from Vannoccio Biringuccio to Janello Torriani and Giovanni Battista Aleotti)—we will see that masonry construction was only one among many competencies associated with the architect of the time. Their expertise extended to hydraulic machines, ships, cranes, fireworks, musical instruments, war machines, clocks, mathematical instruments, and automata.
Following the lecture, a show-and-tell with special collections from the Huntington Library will help us navigate and map the fluid and multifaceted identity of the Renaissance architect.
Friday, April 3, 2026
“Making their Mark: Manuscripts and Medical Authority in Later Medieval and Early Modern England.”
Huntington Library
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino
Roger’s Classroom
2:00 pm Lecture (open to the public)
3:30 pm Show and Tell (limited seating)
Registration for the Show and Tell is required.
Between 1400 and 1600, the number of medical and scientific books available to English readers increased exponentially. First came vernacular manuscript collections, presenting knowledge that had once circulated among the learned in Latin; then came inexpensive printed books, which mined earlier vernacular collections for texts that would appeal to English consumers. Even after the advent of print, however, medieval manuscripts remained important sources of knowledge for English readers, who continued to leave notes and additions in books that were by then decades—if not centuries—old. This talk surveys two centuries of scribal additions to Middle English medical manuscripts, from the solemn declarations of medieval monastic scribes to the cramped additions of nearly illiterate readers, to the ill-informed appraisals of early modern antiquarians. Tracing the changing style and substance of these marks reveals how ordinary English people grew comfortable asserting their own expertise right alongside the authority of the ancients.
Image: Domenico Fontana, Della transportatione dell’Obelisco vaticano, 1604. © Courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
