The Klesch portrait by Titian of Guidobaldo II with his son Francesco Maria represents the duke of Urbino in his full power as supreme commander of papal troops, with his heir next to him. This rare, full-length double portrait has only recently been attributed to Titian after undergoing extensive analyses and restoration, revealing a beautiful painting in non finito manner, with bravura impasto passages entirely characteristic of the master, all of which is illustrated and explained in this new book. Titian provided portraits for the greatest men and women of Europe, Charles V and Philip II of Spain primary among them. For years the Klesch portrait was dismissed as a workshop product - partly because poor condition hid its true quality, but also because it was not believed that Titian could have deigned to create one for Guidobaldo, whose father Guidobaldo della Rovere (1514-1574) and family had a long history of patronizing the artist. Recent research, however, has thrown Guidobaldo's geopolitical significance into relief. He was supreme commander of Venice, the Papal States and then Spain. He sent thousands of soldiers to the major conflicts of his day, particularly the defense of Malta (1565) and the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and his engineers were sought throughout Europe for their ingenuity. In this volume full of new research, Ian Verstegen reveals that Guidobaldo was not peripheral but central to Italian politics and was regarded at several points in history as a key figure who could bring peace or who could influence major conflicts on the Italian peninsula, particularly the War of Siena, and then Pope Paul IV's offensive war against Spain. Anne-Marie Eze gives the first comprehensive examination of the painting's provenance, outlining the portrait's vicissitudes and reception at different moments in its near 500-year history, reexamining received wisdom about its past ownership, and presenting new documentary evidence to expand on and fill gaps in our knowledge of its whereabouts. Finally, Matthew Hayes and Ian Kennedy reflect on the technique, date, recent conservation, and authorship of the painting, proving it to be a masterpiece that only the great Titian could have created.

This stunning catalogue presents The Courtauld's outstanding collection of works by Renaissance artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540). This catalogue accompanies a display of works by Parmigianino at The Courtauld, including his famous and enigmatic painting of the Virgin and Child, as well as drawn studies for his most ambitious projects such as the Madonna of the Long Neck and the frescoes of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. The latter was the last and most important commission of his life and would have been his triumphal homecoming. Instead, Parmigianino became entangled in his experimental processes and failed to complete it, leading to his brief imprisonment for breach of contract. Fundamentally a draftsman at heart, Parmigianino drew relentlessly during his relatively short life, and around a thousand of his drawings have survived. The Courtauld's collection comprises twenty-four sheets. In preparation for the catalogue, new photography and technical examinations have been carried out on all the works revealing two new drawings that were previously unknown, hidden underneath their historic mounts. They have also helped to better identify connections between some of the drawings and the finished paintings for which they were conceived. The catalogue illustrates the whole Courtauld collection, which also includes two paintings and more than ten prints. As a printmaker, Parmigianino is considered to have been the first to experiment with etching in Italy and was a pioneer of the chiaroscuro woodcut technique. His refined and graceful compositions were much appreciated by his contemporaries and exalted by the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-74). This catalogue and display have been curated by Gottardo and Rebecchini in collaboration with former and current research students at The Courtauld, and technical research has been conducted by members of The Courtauld Conservation Institute. A truly collaborative project, the catalogue sheds light on an artist who approached every technique with unprecedented freedom and produced innovative works which were studied and admired by artists and collectors for many years to come.

This rich collection of over twenty fully illustrated essays covers an array of medieval topics, with a particular emphasis on sculpture. The contributors, all friends and colleagues of the dedicatee, are prominent experts in their different fields, from the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. The wide range of subjects covered includes ivories, wood carvings, alabaster, architectural sculpture, caskets, reliquaries, and questions of imagery and iconography. With a full scholarly apparatus, A Reservoir of Ideals is an invaluable work of reference. The volume celebrates the museum career and scholarship of Paul Williamson, a scholar and curator whose outstanding contribution to art history continues to expand and inspire the study of sculpture in general and medieval art in particular. Williamson joined the V&Ain 1979 as one of the youngest curators ever appointed. He took over as Chief Curator in 1989, and he was Director of the Collections from 2004-07, and Acting Deputy Director in 2013. During his 36-year career at the V&Ahe wrote 17 books and over 150 articles. Williamson's profound experience and expertise as a curator at the V&Ahave both enhanced his own well-deserved reputation as the leading expert in the study of European sculpture, and simultaneously enriched the standing and holdings of the collections themselves. The works acquired during his time at the V&A, and the gallery displays that he either oversaw or curated himself, amply demonstrate his tremendous range of knowledge and appreciation of art. Despite his wide-ranging expertise and enthusiasm for the art of all periods, it seems fitting that this volume is devoted to medieval art, and primarily to sculpture - the works of art that undoubtedly lie closest to his heart. It is a testament to his standing at the pinnacle of medieval studies that so many leading experts have eagerly contributed to this exceptional collection.

Focusing on the prolific trade, transport and consumption of Chinese silk and porcelain, and Japanese lacquer abroad between 1500 and 1644, this groundbreaking book will show how the material cultures of late Ming China and Momoyama/Early Edo Japan on one side of the globe, and Western Europe and the New World on the other, became linked for the first time, through an exchange of luxury Asian manufactured goods for currency. It offers new insight into these multi-layered long-distance commercial networks, which resulted in an unprecedented creation of material culture that reflected influences of both East and West. New research reveals evidence of the trade of these three Asian manufactured goods, first by Portugal and Spain, and later by the trading companies formed by the Northern Netherlands/Dutch Republic and England. Important documentary information is brought to light concerning, for example, the use of Chinese porcelain in Western Europe, and the objects made to order in European shapes for the Dutch and English trading companies in Japan and China. The study also sheds light on both the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific commercial trading networks through which these Asian goods circulated, as well as the way in which these goods were acquired, used and appreciated by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English societies in Western Europe and the multi-ethnic societies of the European colonies in the New World and Asia. 400 illustrations of extant examples of Chinese silks and porcelains, along with Japanese lacquers of the period, complement the information gleaned from archival and textual material. In the case of Chinese porcelain, a large number of the examples illustrated are provided by archaeological finds from European shipwrecks, survival campsites, colonial settlements in Asia, the New World and the Caribbean, and their respective mother countries in Western Europe. Breaking new ground in its comparative study of the impact these European trading empires or companies had on the material cultures of China and Japan, this book shows the influence that the European merchants and missionaries exerted on the goods made specifically to order for them in both China and Japan. It also traces the worldwide circulation of these luxury objects, which were intended for secular and religious use in European settlements in Asia, and their respective mother countries in Western Europe and colonies in the New World. More importantly, this book shows that these specific orders led to the creation of a wide variety of hybrid manufactured goods in both China and Japan, which combined elements from very different and distant cultures, reflecting the fascinating and complex East-West cultural exchanges that occurred in the early modern period.

A never-before-seen presentation of art and architecture from the Renaissance era, in elegant, informative, and engaging three-dimensional form. Accompanied by stunning art and ingenious pop engineering, Renaissance Art Pop-Up Book presents the talent and imagination of some of the most influential artists in history. Ranging from the influences of Gothic art on the early Renaissance to the culmination of High Renaissance, this book follows the appearance of new forms in religious and secular painting and the burgeoning use of groundbreaking techniques, such as perspective and narrative in painting; new innovations in architecture; and the unique genius of artists from all over Europe. The book features the most outstanding artists, art, and architecture of the period, including the frescoes of Giotto, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and the works of Caravaggio, Botticelli, Titian, Durer, and Massacio, to name only a few. Innovative pop-ups include a working camera obscura; da Vinci's -flying machine-; Piero della Francesca's View of the Ideal City, with removable perspective lines; Brunelleschi's majestic Duomo in Florence; and a fold-out timeline of the Renaissance. Showcasing the artistic innovations of the era in interactive format, this book gives the reader a fresh perspective, thereby teaching the principles and history of the Renaissance in a new and unique way. Renaissance Art Pop-Up Book is a superb tour of the greatest achievements of the world's early masters, and is the perfect educational gift for art lovers of all ages.

This book is the first major essay volume in over a decade to focus on Tudor and Jacobean painting. Its interdisciplinary approach reflects the dynamic state of research in the field, utilising a range of methodologies in order to answer key art historical questions about the production and consumption of art in Britain in the 16th and early 17th century. The introduction sets the tone for the interdisciplinary approach that is taken throughout the volume .It brings together a discussion of the context for the production of painted images in Tudor and Jacobean England with a selection of technical images of twenty paintings that span the period and demonstrate the information that can be gained from material analysis of paintings. In further chapters, leading exponents of painting conservation and conservation science discuss the material practices of the period, using and explaining a range of analytical techniques, such as infrared reflectography and dendochronology. Questions of authorship and aspects of workshop practice are also discussed. As well as looking at specific artists and their studios, the authors take a broader view in order to capture information about the range of artistic production during the period, stretching from the production of medieval rood screens to the position of heraldic painters. The final section of the book addresses artistic patronage, from the commissioning of works by kings and courtiers, to the regional networks that developed during the period and the influence of a developing antiquarianism on the market for paintings. The book is lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, with reproductions of whole paintings and many details selected to amplify the text. It will be an essential source for those working in the fields of art history, conservation and material science, and of interest to lovers of British Tudor and Stuart painting.

Images of crosses, the Virgin Mary, and Christ, among other devotional objects, pervaded nearly every aspect of public and private life in early modern Spain, but they were also a point of contention between Christian and Muslim cultures. Writers of narrative fiction, theatre, and poetry were attuned to these debates, and religious imagery played an important role in how early modern writers chose to portray relations between Christians and Muslims. Drawing on a wide variety of literary genres as well as other textual and visual sources - including historical chronicles, travel memoirs, captives' testimonies, and paintings - Catherine Infante traces the references to religious visual culture and the responses they incited in cross-confessional negotiations. She reveals some of the anxieties about what it meant to belong to different ethnic or religious communities and how these communities interacted with each other within the fluid boundaries of the Mediterranean world. Focusing on the religious image as a point of contact between individuals of diverse beliefs and practices, The Arts of Encounter presents an original and necessary perspective on how Christian-Muslim relations were perceived and conveyed in print.

The Medieval Stained Glass of West Yorkshire is the first complete catalogue of the glass in the county predating the Gothic Revival. The book presents important and well-known glazing schemes, such as those at Thornhill (adjudged by some the best and most important in any church outside York), Elland, and Normanton, alongside glazing that was previously very little known, such as that at Methley and Ripponden. It draws on dispersed information to give accounts of lost and excavated glass, and offers the first overview of stained glass in the region, placing the schemes in the contexts of donors, makers, and post-installation histories. The volume is complemented with an account of some post-medieval glass-painters whose work is found in the county.

Intermediality, figurability, iconotext, visual exegesis: these are some of the many new ways in which the relationship between text and image has been explored in recent decades. Scholars have benefited from theoretical work in the fields of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and semiotics, alongside more traditional fields such as literature, art history and cultural history. Focusing on religious texts and images between 1400 and 1700, the essays gathered in this volume contribute to these developments by grounding their case studies in methodology. In considering various relations between the visual and the verbal, the editors have adopted the broadest position possible, emphasizing the phenomenological point of view from which the objects under discussion are examined. Contributors to this volume: Ralph Dekoninck, Anna Dlabacova, Gregory Ems, Ingrid Falque, Agnes Guiderdoni, Walter S. Melion, Kees Schepers, Paul J. Smith, and Elliott D. Wise.

Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 offers a fresh perspective on the art of Venice and the Veneto. The volume brings together the contributions of scholars and curators specialist on a wide variety of artists and art forms including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture. Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 takes disegno as its central theme, that in its plurality of meaning allows for a consideration of the conceptual role of design and the act of drawing. The relationship between disegno and Renaissance Venetian art has historically been a problematic one, with emphasis instead being placed on the Venetian predilection for colore. This volume is reflective of an ongoing challenge to this perspective and draws attention to the importance of Venetian disegno and the study of drawings for understanding various art forms. The book commences with a critical study of what constitutes disegno in Venetian art. It does so through questioning the historiography of Venetian artistic scholarship and the restrictive framework and preconceptions that have emerged before setting out the merits of a broader, more inclusive approach. Disegno is applied in its multifaceted nature to address the physical act of drawing, the tangible drawn object and the role of design in artistic practice. The term ‘Venetian’ is taken to encompass both Venice and its mainland territories not least because of the mobility of artists across and beyond the region. Contributions are divided into five thematic sections. The first, entitled ‘Peripheries’, frames the art of Venice within a wider discourse on the movement of ideas across and beyond the Veneto in locations including Padua, Verona and Rome. A section on Media considers the origins and innovations that took place in the use of materials such as blue paper, oil and coloured chalks. In another, the theories that have developed on Venetian notions of disegno are brought under scrutiny, addressing topics such as the long upheld perspective that Venetian artists did not draw, the role of sculpture in Tintoretto’s drawing practice and the interrelation between the written and drawn line in Palma Giovane’s draftsmanship. The section on Invention reflects on the technical innovations that were facilitated through the uptake of printmaking and the intellectual freedom granted by humanist patrons. Finally, Function gets to the heart of the practical purpose of disegno. Contributions focus on the workshops of the Bellini family and Titian to consider the diverse ways they used drawing within their artistic practices with an emphasis on technical analysis. These sections are all preceded by introductions that provide an overview on each theme while the volume is bookended by two reflections on the state of research into Venetian disegno and the potential for further progress. Sumptuously illustrated with over 100 images with a comprehensive bibliography, Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 represents a significant contribution to scholarship on the art of Venice, Renaissance workshops and drawing studies.

This absorbing book explores the crown jewel of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's collection of rare books and manuscripts: Jean Bourdichon's Boston Hours. As court artist to King Francois I of France, Bourdichon produced paintings, books and even parade floats for the sovereign and his entourage. This publication accompanies the museum's first ever exhibition dedicated to this spectacular illuminated manuscript. Painter to two kings, Jean Bourdichon remains today one of the most celebrated artists of the French Renaissance. By age twenty-four, he was already serving as "peintre du roy," a title which Bourdichon held for the rest of his life. His illustrious career at the French royal court led to a wide range of commissions - from portraits to wall maps to stained glass - but he is remembered principally for astonishing illuminated manuscripts. The peerless Grandes Heures for Queen Anne of Brittany remains the touchstone of this group which includes some of the most lavishly painted books of hours ever produced. One of these masterpieces - Bourdichon's Boston Hours - in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is the subject of this book. Bourdichon's only intact book of hours in the United States was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1890 and became the crown jewel of her collection of rare books and manuscripts. Leading scholars Nicholas Herman and Anne-Marie Eze explore its history in depth, shedding new light on the book's patronage and provenance - from the shelves of a wealthy Catholic landowner in Lincolnshire to the shop of a Venetian art and antiques dealer. This book is the latest in the Gardner's Close Up series, each installment focusing on an individual, outstanding work of art in the collection. This publication is the first dedicated to this rare treasure, and precedes an exhibition opening in summer 2022.

Since antiquity, artists have visualized the known world through the female (sometimes male) body. In the age of exploration, America was added to figures of Europe, Asia, and Africa who would come to inhabit the borders of geographical visual imagery. In the abundance of personifications in print, painting, ceramics, tapestry, and sculpture, do portrayals vary between hierarchy and global human dignity? Are we witnessing the emergence of ethnography or of racism? Yet, as this volume shows, depictions of bodies as places betray the complexity of human claims and desires. Bodies and Maps: Early Modern Personifications of the Continents opens up questions about early modern politics, travel literature, sexualities, gender, processes of making, and the mobility of forms and motifs. Contributors are: Louise Arizzoli, Elisa Daniele, Hilary Haakenson, Elizabeth Horodowich, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Ann Rosalind Jones, Paul H. D. Kaplan, Marion Romberg, Mark Rosen, Benjamin Schmidt, Chet Van Duzer, Bronwen Wilson, and Michael Wintle.

Mining the rich documentary sources housed in Tuscan archives and taking advantage of the breadth and depth of scholarship produced in recent years, the seventeen essays in this Companion to Cosimo I de' Medici provide a fresh and systematic overview of the life and career of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, with special emphasis on Cosimo I's education and intellectual interests, cultural policies, political vision, institutional reforms, diplomatic relations, religious beliefs, military entrepreneurship, and dynastic concerns. Contributors: Maurizio Arfaioli, Alessio Assonitis, Nicholas Scott Baker, Sheila Barker, Stefano Calonaci, Brendan Dooley, Daniele Edigati, Sheila ffolliott, Catherine Fletcher, Andrea Galdy, Fernando Loffredo, Piergabriele Mancuso, Jessica Maratsos, Carmen Menchini, Oscar Schiavone, Marcello Simonetta, and Henk Th. van Veen.

This volume explores early modern recreations of myths from Ovid's immensely popular Metamorphoses, focusing on the creative ingenium of artists and writers and on the peculiarities of the various media that were applied. The contributors try to tease out what (pictorial) devices, perspectives, and interpretative markers were used that do not occur in the original text of the Metamorphoses, what aspects were brought to the fore or emphasized, and how these are to be explained. Expounding the whatabouts of these differences, the contributors discuss the underlying literary and artistic problems, challenges, principles and techniques, the requirements of the various literary and artistic media, and the role of the cultural, ideological, religious, and gendered contexts in which these recreations were produced. Contributors are: Noam Andrews, Claudia Cieri Via, Daniel Dornhofer, Leonie Drees-Drylie, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Daniel Fulco, Barbara Hryszko, Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich, Jan L. de Jong, Andrea Lozano-Vasquez, Sabine Lutkemeyer, Morgan J. Macey, Kerstin Maria Pahl, Susanne Scholz, Robert Seidel, and Patricia Zalamea.

The interplay between nature, science, and art in antiquity and the early modern period differs significantly from late modern expectations. In this book scholars from ancient studies as well as early modern studies, art history, literary criticism, philosophy, and the history of science, explore that interplay in several influential ancient texts and their reception in the Renaissance. The Natural History of Pliny, De Architectura of Vitruvius, De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, Automata of Hero, and Timaios of Plato among other texts reveal how fields of inquiry now considered distinct were originally understood as closely interrelated. In our choice of texts, we focus on materialistic theories of nature, knowledge, and art that remain underappreciated in ancient and early modern studies even today.

The sixteenth-century glazing from Herkenrode Abbey in Belgium constitutes the most significant body of Flemish stained glass in the world. In the early nineteenth century, an English aristocrat took advantage of the secularization of the monasteries on the Continent to purchase the abbey church's glazing; glass from the abbess's private chapel was acquired by another English aristocrat. This account of the glazing, the result of a unique and fruitful collaboration between the Corpus Vitrearum in Great Britain and Belgium, has sections on the three locations in England where the glass is now located - Lichfield, Shrewsbury, and Ashtead - prefaced by a historical introduction on Herkenrode Abbey. It benefits from extensive research into artistic practice in the Low Countries (for art-historical context), draws on the rich documentation in the Lichfield Cathedral archives (for the glass's reception in England), and presents the insights gained during recent conservation of the glass at Lichfield Cathedral (for the glazing's execution and condition).

The Kunstkammer was a programmatic display of art and oddities amassed by wealthy Europeans during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. These nascent museums reflected the ambitions of such thinkers as Descartes, Locke, and Kepler to unite the forces of nature with art and technology. Bredekamp advances a radical view that the baroque Kunstkammer is also the nucleus of modern cyberspace.

In Gardens of Love and the Limits of Morality in Early Netherlandish Art, Andrea Pearson charts the moralization of human bodies in late medieval and early modern visual culture, through paintings by Jan van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch, devotional prints and illustrated books, and the celebrated enclosed gardens of Mechelen among other works. Drawing on new archival evidence and innovative visual analysis to reframe familiar religious discourses, she demonstrates that depicted topographies advanced and sometimes resisted bodily critiques expressed in scripture, conduct literature, and even legislation. Governing many of these redemptive greenscapes were the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, archetypes of purity whose spiritual authority was impossible to ignore, yet whose mysteries posed innumerable moral challenges. The study reveals that bodily status was the fundamental problem of human salvation, in which artists, patrons, and viewers alike had an interpretive stake.