The Renaissance woman, whether privileged or of the artisan or the middle class, was trained in the expressive arts of needlework and painting, which were often given precedence over writing. "Pens and Needles" is the first book to examine all these forms as interrelated products of self-fashioning and communication.Because early modern people saw verbal and visual texts as closely related, Susan Frye discusses the connections between the many forms of women's textualities, including notes in samplers, alphabets both stitched and penned, initials, ciphers, and extensive texts like needlework pictures, self-portraits, poetry, and pamphlets, as well as commissioned artwork, architecture, and interior design. She examines works on paper and cloth by such famous figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bess of Hardwick, as well as the output of journeywomen needleworkers and miniaturists Levina Teerlinc and Esther Inglis, and their lesser-known sisters in the English colonies of the New World. Frye shows how traditional women's work was a way for women to communicate with one another and to shape their own identities within familial, intellectual, religious, and historical traditions. "Pens and Needles" offers insights into women's lives and into such literary texts as Shakespeare's "Othello" and "Cymbeline" and Mary Sidney Wroth's "Urania."

Representations of political power play an important role in Western art history from the late Middle Ages up to modern times. This volume by leading experts is a wide-ranging survey of significant trends in the development of political imagery.

Titian (c. 1488-1576) was recognised very early on as the leading painter of his generation in Venice. Starting in the studio of the aged Giovanni Bellini, Titian, with his contemporary Giorgione, almost immediately started to expand the range of what was possible in painting, converting Bellini's statuesque style into something far more impressionistic and romantic. This restless spirit of innovation and improvisation never left him, and during his long life he experimented with a number of different styles, the brushwork of his last great paintings showing a mysterious poetry that has never been equalled. This volume in the series Lives of the Artists collects the major writings about Titian by his contemporaries and near contemporaries. The centrepiece is the biography by Vasari, who as a Florentine found Titian's very Venetian sense of colour and transient forms a challenge to his concept of art as design. The poet Ariosto and sparkling letter writer Aretino had a more nuanced view of their friend's work, and Priscianese's account of a dinner party with Titian, and the contributions by Speroni and Dolce, and the slightly later Tuscan critic Borghini, round out the picture of this hugely thoughtful, intellectual artist, whose paintings remain some of the most sensual and affecting in all of Western art. Mostly unavailable in any form for many years, these writings have been newly edited for this edition. They are introduced by the scholar Carlo Corsato, who places each in its artistic and literary context. Approximately 50 pages of colour illustrations cover the full range of Titian's great oeuvre.

In this compelling book Nigel Saul opens up the world of medieval gentry families, using the magnificent brasses and monuments of the Cobham family as a window on to the social and religious culture of the middle ages.

The Hamburg banker's son Aby Warburg (1866-1929) was one of the most influential art historians and cultural theorists of the 20th century. His life's work was devoted to tracing antique formulas of representation in the depiction of human passions in Renaissance art. For this epoch-spanning relationship, he developed the term 'pathos formula' (Pathosformel). In a lecture given in 1905 in the Konzerthaus in Hamburg, focusing on the young Albrecht Durer's Death of Orpheus, Warburg outlined his thoughts in front of the original drawing, which he had borrowed from the rich holdings of the Kunsthalle in order to better illustrate his idea. This drawing, pivotal in the young artist's development as an ambitious response to classical antiquity, was displayed during the lecture alongside a group of engravings and woodcuts which included not only some of Durer's own seminal later prints, such as Melencolia I, but also engravings by Andrea Mantegna which Durer copied in 1494, the same year he drew the Death of Orpheus. Warburg's 'pop-up exhibition' of eleven works has here been reconstructed and analyzed, using his fascinating lecture notes, sketches and slide lists. First developed by the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2011, subsequently on view in Cologne in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and now at The Courtauld Gallery, each institution has interpreted the material slightly differently, while retaining the core Warburg group. Aby Warburg aimed at unlocking the meaning of an art work by excavating its roots in its cultural context. By restaging his legendary display of 1905 with Durer's Death of Orpheus at its heart, the exhibition and accompanying book present some of the most skillful and ambitious works on paper ever produced and also seek to introduce into Warburg's rich intellectual universe to a broader public, hoping thereby to offer both sheer enjoyment and food for thought.

Tramelli considers three main areas of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's studies: color, perspective and anatomy, investigating the types of theoretical and practical knowledge on these subjects conveyed in the Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura and how the context of Milan at the end of the sixteenth century shaped the material gathered in Lomazzo's books.

Andrea Fulvio's Illustrium imagines and the Beginnings of Classical Archaeology is a study of the book recognized by contemporaries as the first attempt (1517) to publish artifacts from Classical Antiquity in the form of a chronology of portraits appearing on coins. By studying correspondences between the illustrated coins and genuine, ancient coins, Madigan parses Fulvio's methodology, showing how he attempted to exploit coins as historical documents. Situated within humanist literary and historical studies of ancient Rome, his numismatic project required visual artists closely to study and assimilate the conventions of ancient portraiture. The Illustrium imagines exemplifies the range and complexity of early modern responses to ancient artifacts.

For women at the early modern courts, clothing and jewellery were essential elements in their political arsenal, enabling them to signal their dynastic value, to promote loyalty to their marital court and to advance political agendas. This is the first collection of essays to examine how elite women in early modern Europe marshalled clothing and jewellery for political ends. With essays encompassing women who traversed courts in Denmark, England, France, Germany, Habsburg Austria, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, the contributions cover a broad range of elite women from different courts and religious backgrounds as well as varying noble ranks.

Combining strikingly new scholarship by art historians, historians, and ethnomusicologists, this interdisciplinary volume illuminates trade ties within East Asia, and from East Asia outwards, in the years 1550 to 1800. While not encyclopedic, the selected topics greatly advance our sense of this trade picture. Throughout the book, multi-part trade structures are excavated; the presence of European powers within the Asian trade nexus features as part of this narrative. Visual goods are highlighted, including lacquerwares, paintings, prints, musical instruments, textiles, ivory sculptures, unfired ceramic portrait figurines, and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian ceramic vessels. These essays underscore the significance of Asian industries producing multiples, and the rhetorical charge of these goods, shifting in meaning as they move. Everyday commodities are treated as well; for example, the trans-Pacific trade in contraband mercury, used in silver refinement, is spelled out in detail. Building reverberations between merchant networks, trade goods, and the look of the objects themselves, this richly-illustrated book brings to light the Asian trade engine powering the early modern visual cultures of East and Southeast Asia, the American colonies, and Europe.

Over the course of his career, Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) created altarpieces rich in theological complexity, elegant in formal execution, and dazzlingly brilliant in chromatic impact. This book investigates the spiritual dimensions of those works, focusing on six highly-significant panels. According to Steven J. Cody, the beauty and splendor of Andrea's paintings speak to a profound engagement with Christian theories of spiritual renewal-an engagement that only intensified as Andrea matured into one of the most admired artists of his time. From this perspective, Andrea del Sarto - Splendor and Renewal in the Renaissance Altarpiece not only shines new light on a painter who has long deserved more scholarly attention; it also offers up fresh insights regarding the Renaissance altarpiece itself.

In his own day, Godefridus Schalcken (1643-1706) was an internationally renowned Dutch painter, but little is known about the four years that he spent in London. Using newly discovered documents, this book provides the first comprehensive examination of Schalcken's activities there. The author analyses Schalcken's strategic appropriations of English styles, his attempts to exploit gaps in the art market, and his impact on tastes in London's milieu. Five chapters survey his art during these years, concluding with a critical catalogue of all his London-period work.

In the fifteenth century, the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, a fledgling community of religious women in Rome, commissioned an impressive array of artwork for their newly acquired living quarters, the Tor de'Specchi. The imagery focused overwhelmingly on the sensual, corporeal nature of contemporary spirituality, populating the walls of the monastery with a highly naturalistic assortment of earthly, divine, and demonic figures. This book draws on art history, anthropology, and gender studies to explore the disciplinary and didactic role of the images, as well as their relationship to important papal projects at the Vatican.

Winner of the 2011 Bainton Prize for Reference Works A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, is a unique multidisciplinary study offering innovative analyses of a wide range of topics. The 30 chapters critique past and recent scholarship and identify new avenues for research.

The Gouda Windows (1552-1572): Art and Catholic Renewal on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt offers the first complete analysis of the cycle of monumental Renaissance stained-glass windows donated to the Sint Janskerk in Gouda, after a fire gutted it in 1552. Central among the donors were King Philip II of Spain and Joris van Egmond, Bishop of Utrecht, who worked together to reform the Church. The inventor of the iconographic program, a close associate to the bishop as well as the king, strove to renew Catholic art by taking the words of Jesus as a starting point. Defining Catholic religion based on widely accepted biblical truths, the ensemble shows that the Mother Church can accommodate all true Christians.

The contributions include Arnold Victor Coonin, Preface and Acknowledgments; Debra Pincus, "Like a Good Shepherd" A Tribute to Sarah Blake McHam; Amy R. Bloch, Perspective and Narrative in the Jacob and Esau Panel of Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise"; David Boffa, Sculptors' Signatures and the Construction of Identity in the Italian Renaissance; Meghan Callahan, Bronzino, Giambologna & Adriaen de Vries: Influence, Innovation and the "Paragone"; Arnold Victor Coonin, "The Spirit of Water" Reconsidering the "Putto Mictans" Sculpture in Renaissance Florence; Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, From Medalist to Sculptor: Leone Leoni's Bronze Bust of Charles V; Phillip Earenfight, "Civitas Florenti a]e" The New Jerusalem and the "Allegory of Divine Misericordia"; Gabriela Jasin, God's Oddities and Man's Marvels: Two Sculptures of Medici Dwarfs; Linda A. Koch, Medici Continuity, Imperial Tradition and Florentine History: Piero de' Medici's "Tabernacle of the Crucifix" at S. Miniato al Monte; Heather R. Nolin, A New Interpretation of Paolo Veronese's "Saint Barnabas Healing the Sick"; Katherine Poole, Medici Power and Tuscan Unity: The Cavalieri di Santo Stefano and Public Sculpture in Pisa and Livorno under Ferdinando I; Lilian H. Zirpolo, Embellishing the Queen's Residence: Queen Christina of Sweden's Patronage of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Members of His Circle of Sculptors; Sarah Blake McHam's List of Publications. 1st printing. 338 pages. 117 illustrations. Preface, bibliography, index.

Nicholas Hilliard has helped form our ideas of the appearance of Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Francis Drake and James I among others. His painted works open a remarkable window onto the highest levels of English/British society in the later years of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century, the Elizabethan and Jacobeans ages. In this book Karen Hearn gives us an intimate portrait of Nicholas Hilliard, his life, his work and the techniques he used to produce his exquisite miniatures. Karen Hearn is curator of Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Art at the Tate Britain. She has written on Marcus Gheeraerts II, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630 and In Celebration: The Art of the Country House.

In Tracing the Visual Language of Raphael's Circle to 1527, Alexis Culotta examines how the Renaissance master's style - one infused with borrowed visual quotations from other artists both past and present - proved influential in his relationship with associate Baldassare Peruzzi and in the development of the artists within his thriving workshop. Shedding new light on the important, yet often-overshadowed, figures within this network, this book calls upon key case studies to convincingly illustrate how this visual language and its recombination evolved during Raphael's Roman career and subsequently served as a springboard for artistic innovation for these close associates as they collaborated in the years following Raphael's death.

Bodies mangled, limbs broken, skin flayed, blood spilled: from paintings to prints to small sculptures, the art of the late Middle Ages and early modern period gave rise to disturbing scenes of violence. Many of these torture scenes recall Christ's Passion and its aftermath, but the martyrdoms of saints, stories of justice visited on the wicked, and broadsheet reports of the atrocities of war provided fertile ground for scenes of the body's desecration. Contributors to this volume interpret pain, suffering, and the desecration of the human form not simply as the passing fancies of a cadre of proto-sadists, but also as serving larger social functions within European society. Taking advantage of the frameworks established by scholars such as Samuel Edgerton, Mitchell Merback, and Elaine Scarry (to name but a few), Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 provides an intriguing set of lenses through which to view such imagery and locate it within its wider social, political, and devotional contexts. Though the art works discussed are centuries old, the topics of the essays resonate today as twenty-first-century Western society is still absorbed in thorny debates about the ethics and consequences of the use of force, coercion (including torture), and execution, and about whether it is ever fully acceptable to write social norms on the bodies of those who will not conform.

The Ashmolean collection of miniatures was begun in the 17th century by the Tradescants, father and son, gardeners to Charles I and Henrietta Maria. Among its most generous benefactors was the Reverend Bentinck Hawkins, chaplain to the Dukes of Cambridge and an insatiable 19th-century collector. The miniatures, mostly of very high quality, range from the Tudor and Stuart era to Victorian times, and include specially distinguished works by Isaac Oliver, Cooper, Zincke, Smart, Cosway and Engleheart.

'Never was a painter more nobly joyous, never did an artist take a greater delight in life, seeing it all as a kind of breezy festival and feeling it through the medium of perpetual success...He was the happiest of painters.' Henry James on Veronese, 1909 Collected here for the first time, these fascinating early biographies (one of which has never been translated before) describe and celebrate the astonishingly fertile art of Paolo Veronese. Most of what we know about Veronese comes from these three essays. 'I have known this Paolino and I have seen his beautiful works. He deserves to have a great volume written in praise of him, for his pictures prove that he is second to no other painter', wrote Veronese's contemporary Annibale Carracci in the margins to his copy of Vasari's writings, continuing 'and this fool passes over him in four lines. And just because he was not Florentine.' It was indeed a measure of his fame that Vasari, whose Life of Veronese is reprinted here, should have overcome his pro-Tuscan prejudices to write about his great Venetian contemporary; and he was followed in this by another Florentine, the theorist Raffaele Borghini. But the most striking record of the impact of Veronese's art on his countrymen is the extensive biography by his fellow Venetian, Carlo Ridolfi. Entirely original in the seriousness and passion with which he approached his subject, Ridolfi permanently changed the course of writing about art. This is the first translation of his work into English. Translated and introduced by Xavier F. Salomon, curator of Veronese: Renaissance Magnificence at the National Gallery, London. Fifty pages of colour illustrations cover the span of Veronese's breath-taking career.