Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe

In this book Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers the first systematic study of Pythagoras and his influence on mathematics astronomy philosophy religion medicine music the occult and social life--as well as on architecture and art--in the late medieval and early modern eras. Following the threads of admiration for this ancient Greek sage from the fourteenth century to Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth this book demonstrates that Pythagoras's influence in intellectual circles--Christian Jewish and Arab--was more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. Joost-Gaugier shows that during this period Pythagoras was respected by many intellectuals in different areas of Europe. She also shows how this admiration was reflected in ideas that were applied to the visual arts by a number of well known architects and artists who sought through the use of a visual language inspired by the memory of Pythagoras to obtain perfect harmony in their creations. Among these were Alberti Bramante Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo and Raphael. Thus did she suggests some of the greatest art works in the Western world owe their modernity to an inspirational force that paradoxically had been conceived in the distant past.