This fascinating exploration of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work identifies what it was that made him so unique, and explains the phenomenon of the world's most celebrated artistic genius who, 500 years on, still grips and inspires us.
Martin Kemp offers us exceptional insights into what it was that made this Renaissance man so special, and the "real" meaning behind such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Tracing Leonardo's career in all its variety, we learn of his unfulfilled dreams, relationships with powerful patrons, and the truth about his views on God, humanity, and nature. The famous notebooks are the key to understanding the secret of Leonardo's success and genius, Kemp shows, as they clearly reveal the workings of his mind and display the truly innovative and investigative nature of his creative vision. In these notebooks, over 20,000 pages of drawings and notes detail his incredible discoveries and inventions--from the workings of the human eye to designs for flying machines and giant crossbows. Bringing the story up to the present day, Martin Kemp considers what he means to us today, investigates the "Leonardo industry," and speculates about what he would be doing if he were alive today.
This updated edition of Martin Kemp's best-seller is the first book on Leonardo to include two newly discovered works, the most important such discoveries in over a hundred years.

Arvey Foundation Book Award, Association for Latin American Art, 2019 Quito, Ecuador, was one of colonial South America’s most important artistic centers. Yet the literature on painting in colonial Quito largely ignores the first century of activity, reducing it to a “handful of names,� writes Susan Verdi Webster. In this major new work based on extensive and largely unpublished archival documentation, Webster identifies and traces the lives of more than fifty painters who plied their trade in the city between 1550 and 1650, revealing their mastery of languages and literacies and the circumstances in which they worked in early colonial Quito. Overturning many traditional assumptions about early Quiteño artists, Webster establishes that these artists—most of whom were Andean—functioned as visual intermediaries and multifaceted cultural translators who harnessed a wealth of specialized knowledge to shape graphic, pictorial worlds for colonial audiences. Operating in an urban mediascape of layered languages and empires—a colonial Spanish realm of alphabetic script and mimetic imagery and a colonial Andean world of discursive graphic, material, and chromatic forms—Quiteño painters dominated both the pen and the brush. Webster demonstrates that the Quiteño artists enjoyed fluency in several areas, ranging from alphabetic literacy and sophisticated scribal conventions to specialized knowledge of pictorial languages: the materials, technologies, and chemistry of painting, in addition to perspective, proportion, and iconography. This mastery enabled artists to deploy languages and literacies—alphabetic, pictorial, graphic, chromatic, and material—to obtain power and status in early colonial Quito.

Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices. Influences is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also perhaps even primarily functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican's Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays. An original and intellectually stimulating study, Influences adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.

In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture. "[A] delightful study. . . . [Eco's] remarkably lucid and readable essay is full of contemporary relevance and informed by the energies of a man in love with his subject." -Robert Taylor, Boston Globe "The book lays out so many exciting ideas and interesting facts that readers will find it gripping." -Washington Post Book World "A lively introduction to the subject." -Michael Camille, The Burlington Magazine "If you want to become acquainted with medieval aesthetics, you will not find a more scrupulously researched, better written (or better translated), intelligent and illuminating introduction than Eco's short volume." -D. C. Barrett, Art Monthly

The self-portrait has become a model of what art is: the artwork is the image of its maker, and understanding the work means recovering from it an original vision of the artist. In this ground-breaking work, Joseph Leo Koerner analyzes the historical origin of this model in the art of Albrecht Durer and Hans Baldung Grien, the first modern self-portraitist and his principal disciple. By doing so, he develops new approaches to the visual image and to its history in early modern European culture. Koerner establishes the character of German Renaissance art by considering how Durer's and Baldung's pictures register changes in the status of the self during the sixteenth century. He contends that Durer's self-portrait of 1500, modeled after icons of Christ, reinvented art for new conditions of piety, labor, patronage, and self-understanding at the eve of the Reformation. So foundational is this invention to modern aesthetics, Koerner argues, that interpreting it takes us to the limits of traditional art-historical method. Self-portraiture becomes legible less through a history leading up to it, or through a sum of contexts that occasion it, than through its historical sight-line to the present. After a thorough examination of Durer's startlingly new self-portraits, the author turns to the work of Baldung, Durer's most gifted pupil, and demonstrates how the apprentice willfully disfigured Durer's vision. Baldung replaced the master's self-portraits with some of the most obscene and bizarre pictures in the history of art. In images of nude witches, animated cadavers, and copulating horses, Baldung portrays the debased self of the viewer as the true subject of art. The Moment of Self-Portraiturethus unfolds as passages from teacher to student, artist to viewer, reception, all within a culture that at once deified and abhorred originality. Koerner writes a new, philosophical art history in which the visual image is both document of history and living vehicle of thought. He demonstrates the extent to which novel ideas about self and interpretation invented by Renaissance artists and Reformation thinkers informed modern hermeneutics and helped to found our deepest assumptions about art and its messages.

From the strictly regimented church bells to the freewheeling chatter of civic life, Renaissance Florence was a city built not just of stone but of sound as well. An evocative alternative to the dominant visual understanding of urban spaces, The Noisy Renaissance examines the premodern city as an acoustic phenomenon in which citizens used sound to navigate space and society. Analyzing a range of documentary and literary evidence, art and architectural historian Niall Atkinson creates an “acoustic topography� of Florence. The dissemination of official messages, the rhythm of prayer, and the murmur of rumor and gossip combined to form a soundscape that became a foundation in the creation and maintenance of the urban community just as much as the city’s physical buildings. Sound in this space triggered a wide variety of social behaviors and spatial relations: hierarchical, personal, communal, political, domestic, sexual, spiritual, and religious. By exploring these rarely studied soundscapes, Atkinson shows Florence to be both an exceptional and an exemplary case study of urban conditions in the early modern period.

This new publication constitutes Part Two of the multi-volume Cambridge Illuminations Research Project cataloguing all western illuminated manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. It covers manuscripts produced in Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, ranging from the early Gospels of St Augustine made in sixth-century Rome, through the carefully designed patristic texts from twelfth-century Tuscany and Lombardy, the great law books of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Bologna, the opulent Books of Hours, elegant Humanistic volumes and enormous Choir Books of the fifteenth century, and finally to the richly decorated and densely ornamented books of sixteenth-century Spain. In addition to the famous treasures, these catalogues include a considerable number of previously unpublished cuttings, among them new attributions to leading artists and exciting discoveries, all of which offer a stimulating source for further research. Every manuscript catalogued is also illustrated, frequently with several images, all reproduced in full colour. Entries for Italian manuscripts are arranged chronologically in the period up to 1200, while manuscripts produced after 1200 are catalogued by region of origin and within that division again by sequence of date. Manuscripts that cannot at present be allocated to a particular region are grouped in a special section, and Spanish books are again catalogued in chronological order.

In From Giotto to Botticelli, Julia Miller and Laurie Taylor-Mitchell explore the three-hundred-year rise and fall of the Humiliati (“Humbled Ones�), a religious order infamous for its attempt to assassinate Saint Carlo Borromeo and ultimately suppressed, by papal bull, in 1571. This book focuses on the order’s artistic patronage and considers the major works by artists such as Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, and Ghirlandaio that the Humiliati commissioned for the Church of the Ognissanti in Florence. Miller and Taylor-Mitchell reveal how the Humiliati promoted their public image through the visual arts and examine the themes and ideas in these works. The Humiliati have received remarkably little scholarly attention to date, in part because of their suppression and eradication by the Church. This is one of the first comprehensive historical studies of this important religious order and the central role the Humiliati played in the history of Italian art. From Giotto to Botticelli will appeal not only to art historians but also to scholars of history, religion, and cultural studies, as well as to members of the general public.

This title offers is a concise yet informative, stunningly illustrated virtual tour of the works of Rembrandt held in Southern California. This superbly illustrated volume takes readers on a visual tour of fourteen stunning Rembrandt paintings held in collections across Southern California. Not only does "Rembrandt in Southern California" provide detailed and informative biographical information about the Master artist, but it also look at how and why so many important works ended up in this one location. A virtual exhibition of the paintings and information about visiting the collections can be found at website.

Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices. "Influences" is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also--perhaps even primarily--functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican's Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays. An original and intellectually stimulating study, "Influences" adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.

Museum visitors today usually see pre-16th-century Italian painted altarpieces exhibited alone, as single paintings. Yet this beautiful catalogue shows that these works were once part of decorative, integrated schemes, and the original experience for viewers of the paintings was significantly different from our own. Focusing on Italian altarpieces from the second half of the 13th century to the very end of the 15th, the book investigates the original functions and locations of altarpieces as well as the circumstances of their dislocations, dismantlings, and reconstructions. Regional variations are also analyzed, and the author examines altarpieces' formal and typological development, taking into account the wealth of related scholarship undertaken in the past thirty years. Published by National Gallery Company / Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The National Gallery, London (07/6/11-10/02/11)

A leading art historian's plea for a more engaged reading of Italian Renaissance art Only Connect constructs a history of Renaissance paintings and sculptures that are by design completed outside themselves by the spectator, that draw the spectator into their narrative plot or aesthetic functioning, and that reposition the spectator imaginatively or in time and space. John Shearman's concern is mostly with anterior relationships with the viewer-that is, relationships conceived and constructed as part of a work's design, making, and positioning. He proposes unconventional ways in which works of art may be distinguished one from another, and in which spectators may be distinguished as well, and enlarges the accepted field of artistic invention. Only Connect challenges us to recognize the presuppositions of Renaissance artists about their viewers, shining a light on the process of discovery by some of the most inventive and visually intellectual artists of the period.

Published in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, this engrossing publication accompanies an exhibition the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Raphael and the Pope’s Librarian brings together for the first time one of the most fascinating works in the museum’s collection – the Gardner Museum’s portrait of papal librarian Tommaso Inghirami – and a painting from the Vatican Museums depicting an episode in this life. This book tells the story of the first Raphael in America and explores Inghirami’s fascinating career. Nearly five centuries after his death in 1520, Raphael’s fame remains undiminished. Crowned “prince of painters� by Giorgio Vasari, he inspired both artists of his own time and others for centuries afterward. According to the celebrated writer Henry James, Raphael’s work was “semi-sacred.� Gilded Age American collectors swooned over his iconic religious images and masterly brushwork, and James’s contemporaries feverishly tried and failed to acquire Raphael’s rare paintings in a market flooded with copies, and the occasional forgery. Isabella Stewart Gardner took up the challenge, determined to buy a magnificent Madonna by Raphael. Following her gripping hunt, Gardner was the first collector to bring a work by Raphael to America, where its unexpected subject led to a mixed reception and generated surprising rumors in the years to follow. Despite any hesitations over the painting’s beauty, Gardner named an entire gallery of her new Boston museum after the Renaissance master and installed many of her most celebrated works of art around his portrait of the rotund cleric Tommaso Inghirami. Described by Erasmus as “the Cicero of our era�, Inghirami was a celebrity in the high Renaissance esteemed for his profound erudition and theatrical abilities. His unparalleled knowledge and understanding of classics made him the ideal choice for Vatican Librarian under Pope Julius II. Yet he achieved a lasting fame on stage, playing a leading role in the revival of ancient theatre and acquiring the nickname “Fedra� after starring as the lovesick Queen Athens in Seneca’s Greek tragedy Hippolytus (Phaedra). Inghirami’s friend Raphael offered him another role, recasting the Renaissance humanist as the congenial philosopher Epicurius in his legendary School of Athens fresco before memorializing him in the more worldly painted portrait at the center of this exhibition. Raphael and the Pope’s Librarian is the latest in the Close Up series of books accompanying a Gardner exhibition series, each installment of which sheds new light on an outstanding work of art in the permanent collection.

The National Gallery in London houses one of the most important collections of early Italian paintings outside Italy, including works by Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto and the di Cione brothers. This completely updated catalogue of the collection is the first published since 1989, and it now includes four exceptional acquisitions from the intervening years: the 13th-century diptych now attributed to the Master of the Borgo Crucifix, The Virgin and Child by Cimabue, The Virgin and Child by the Clarisse Master, and The Coronation of the Virgin by Bernardo Daddi. For this volume, Dillian Gordon takes into account the substantial body of new research published over the past twenty years to review and in some cases reattribute the works. All but two paintings have been re-examined by the National Gallery's team of curators, conservators, and scientists. Through the use of infrared reflectography, much new information has been revealed regarding the significance of underdrawings and technique. Each work is illustrated in color, and many are accompanied by details and technical and comparative illustrations. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

This generously illustrated book presents highlights from the National Gallery's display of Italian Renaissance painting, one of the richest collections of its kind in the world. Duccio to Leonardo focuses on Italian masterpieces made between 1250 and 1500, including highlights such as Duccio's Annunciation, Botticelli's Venus and Mars, and Leonardo's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist. It begins with a short introduction on the formation of the collection, before discussing each of the chosen works. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

Everett Fahy's writings are of fundamental importance to the study of Tuscan Renaissance painting from the late 14th to the 16th century. An endeavour that lasted 50 years, starting with his 1965 essay on Piero di Cosimo and ending with his contributions for the 2015 Florentine exhibition on the same artist. In between Fahy wrote on some of the most acclaimed and loved artists (from Beato Angelico to Botticelli, from Ghirlandaio to the young Michelangelo), but also on lesser known masters such as Lorenzo di Nicolo, Spinello Aretino, the Master of the Campana panels, the Master of the Fiesole Adoration of the Magi, etc., and through his pioneering studies rediscovered minor artistic schools, such as the Lucca school. Fahy reconstruction of Fra Bartolomeo's early career is considered a classic of art historiography. The selected texts (vol. 1) are arranged in the order of appearance, while the plates (vol. 2), following chronological order, make up an atlas of two centuries of Tuscan painting. With texts in English (36), French (1), and Italian (10).

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR AN OBSERVER BEST ART BOOK OF 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022 'This is a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world' Patti Smith 'Everything Philip Hoare writes is bewitching' Olivia Laing An illuminating exploration of the intersection between life, art and the sea from the award-winning author of Leviathan. Albrecht Durer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse - the first works mass produced by any artist - to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it also foresaw our future. It is a vision that remains startlingly powerful and seductive, even now. In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Durer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Durer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us? With its wild and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert & the Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze.

Painted in 1468, Saint Michael Triumphant over the Devil is the first documented work by Bartolome Bermejo (c. 1440-c. 1501), a 15th-century Spanish artist by whom only about 20 paintings are known. Acquired by the National Gallery in 1995, the painting depicts the Archangel Michael defeating Satan, in the form of a hybrid monster, with Antoni Joan, feudal lord of Tous, kneeling nearby. The work is remarkable for its mastery of the oil-painting technique, influenced by Netherlandish painting and unrivaled by Bermejo's contemporaries in Spain. Following the painting's detailed technical examination and restoration, the authors provide a fascinating account of this rare work, accompanied by high quality new photography and placing the painting in the broader context of Bermejo's career in 15th-century Aragon.

Superb reproduction of most popular 16th-century lace design book by Queen of France's favorite patterner. Contains all of the nearly 100 original patterns for point coupe, reticella and guipure; the second part describes square netting and embroidery on cloth. 83 full-page plates.

A provocative account of the philosophical problem of 'difference' in art history, Tintoretto's Difference offers a new reading of this pioneering 16th century painter, drawing upon the work of the 20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Bringing together philosophical, art historical, art theoretical and art historiographical analysis, it is the first book-length study in English of Tintoretto for nearly two decades and the first in-depth exploration of the implications of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy for the understanding of early modern art and for the discipline of art history. With a focus on Deleuze's important concept of the diagram, Tintoretto's Difference positions the artist's work within a critical study of both art history's methods, concepts and modes of thought, and some of the fundamental dimensions of its scholarly practice: context, tradition, influence, and fact. Indicating potentials of the diagrammatic for art historical thinking across the registers of semiotics, aesthetics, and time, Tintoretto's Difference offers at once an innovative study of this seminal artist, an elaboration of Deleuze's philosophy of the diagram, and a new avenue for a philosophical art history.

This book explores key themes in the making of Renaissance painting, sculpture, architecture, and prints: the use of specific techniques and materials, theory and practice, change and continuity in artistic procedures, conventions and values. It also reconsiders the importance of mathematical perspective, the assimilation of the antique revival, and the illusion of life.
Embracing the full significance of Renaissance art requires understanding how it was made. As manifestations of technical expertise and tradition as much as innovation, artworks of this period reveal highly complex creative processes--allowing us an inside view on the vexed issue of the notion of a renaissance.

The cross-cultural exchange of ideas that flourished in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries profoundly affected European and Islamic society. Gardens of Renaissance Europe and the Islamic Empires considers the role and place of gardens and landscapes in the broader context of the information sharing that took place among Europeans and Islamic empires in Turkey, Persia, and India. In illustrating commonalities in the design, development, and people’s perceptions of gardens and nature in both regions, this volume substantiates important parallels in the revolutionary advancements in landscape architecture that took place during the era. The contributors explain how the exchange of gardeners as well as horticultural and irrigation techniques influenced design traditions in the two cultures; examine concurrent shifts in garden and urban landscape design, such as the move toward more public functionality; and explore the mutually influential effects of politics, economics, and culture on composed outdoor space. In doing so, they shed light on the complexity of cultures and politics during the Renaissance. A thoughtfully composed look at the effects of cross-cultural exchange on garden design during a pivotal time in world history, this thought-provoking book points to new areas in inquiry about the influences, confluences, and connections between European and Islamic garden traditions. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Cristina Castel-Branco, Paula Henderson, Simone M. Kaiser, Ebba Koch, Christopher Pastore, Laurent Paya, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Jill Sinclair, and Anatole Tchikine.