'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 '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, Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Art, University of Cambridge
