Robert Payne, author of some of the most widely read biographies of our day, now brings us a new and fascinating portrayal of Leonardo da Vinci. This is the third volume of our recently released Robert Payne Library series.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Il Riposo ... Raffaello Borghini Societa tipografica de'Classici italiani, 1807 Painters; Painting; Sculptors, Italian; Sculpture

Le Moulin et la Croix, de Michael Francis Gibson plonge le lecteur dans un surprenant tableau de Pierre Breugel l'Aine - Le Portement de Crois - une uvre ambigue qui illustre a la fois la passion du Christ et l'execution d'un predicateur de la Reforme a l'epoque de Bruegel lui-meme. Ce livre qui, selon le New York Times, est aussi lisible et fascinant qu'un roman d'espionnage de premier ordre, inspira le film de Lech Majewski, Bruegel - le Moulin et la Croix, lance au Louvre en avril 2011 avec Charlotte Rampling, Michael York et Rutger Hauer (www.themillandthecross.com). Cette nouvelle edition du livre s'appuie sur de nouvelles photos detaillees qui permettent au lecteur de decouvrir des details etonnants et jamais encore vus. Ces details, dit Philippe de Montebello, Directeur Emerite du Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York, a notre emerveillement, rehaussent encore d'un cran l'admiration que nous vouons a Pierre Bruegel l'Aine. Pour plus de renseignements sur le livre voir www.the-university-of-levana-press.com.

Books of Hours are probably the most famous of all medieval illuminated manuscripts. Presented here are 12 Books of Hours that date from the origins of the genre in the 13th century to its eclipse in the 16th century. Examples come from France, Italy and the Southern and Northern Netherlands and are by many notable artists, including Pietro da Pavia, Belbello da Pavia, the Masters of Zweder van Culenburg, the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, Willem Vrelant, Guillaume tile Roy and Jean Poyer. Some are richly illustrated; others are more modest. Each manuscript is wholly unique, offering a captivating glimpse into the lives and preoccupations of their owners, the concerns and contributions of their illuminators. The introduction by Christopher de Hamel, Donnelley Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, underscores the intimacy'of Books of Hours as a genre. A team of distinguished scholars have contributed to the essays, bringing up-to-date research to the project that helps situate each manuscript in the most recent scholarship. Comparative photographs of manuscripts in institutions place these twelve Horae in their broader artistic and cultural contexts. Accompanying an exhibition held at Les Enluminures, New York, 2-25 May 2012

Santa Maria di Firenze, an ancient, venerable Benedictine abbey (called the Badia) located in the heart of Florence, is the subject of Anne Leader s new book. In 1418, 17 Benedictine monks journeyed to Florence from Padua to save one of their order's oldest houses from ruin. Realizing that reformed spiritual practice alone would not save the Badia, Abbott Gomezio di Giovanni commissioned the creation of a new cloister, to be decorated with vivid and engaging frescoes designed to motivate its residents. Leader s richly illustrated, interdisciplinary study examines the Badia during this crucial period of reform and rebirth. It reveals the renovated Badia as integral to the spiritual, political, and social life of early Renaissance Florence, as well as to the broader program of expanding Benedictine Observance throughout Italy."

Skira Mini ARTbooks is a pocket-sized series, conveniently priced, very practical and with lots of images dedicated to single international artists, artistic movements and painting genres. Andrea Mantegna, the painter who was able to rise above earth and create heavenly forms which are still real (W. Goethe). He was a protagonist of the renewal of the figurative language in northern Italy. This is an introduction to the life of the artist, with his masterpieces.

Around 1542, descendants of the Aztec rulers of Mexico created accounts of the pre-Hispanic history of the city of Tetzcoco, Mexico, one of the imperial capitals of the Aztec Empire. Painted in iconic script ("picture writing"), the Codex Xolotl, the Quinatzin Map, and the Tlohtzin Map appear to retain and emphasize both pre-Hispanic content and also pre-Hispanic form, despite being produced almost a generation after the Aztecs surrendered to Hernan Cortes in 1521. Yet, as this pioneering study makes plain, the reality is far more complex.

Eduardo de J. Douglas offers a detailed critical analysis and historical contextualization of the manuscripts to argue that colonial economic, political, and social concerns affected both the content of the three Tetzcocan pictorial histories and their archaizing pictorial form. As documents composed by indigenous people to assert their standing as legitimate heirs of the Aztec rulers as well as loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown and good Catholics, the Tetzcocan manuscripts qualify as subtle yet shrewd negotiations between indigenous and Spanish systems of signification and between indigenous and Spanish concepts of real property and political rights. By reading the Tetzcocan manuscripts as calculated responses to the changes and challenges posed by Spanish colonization and Christian evangelization, Douglas's study significantly contributes to and expands upon the scholarship on central Mexican manuscript painting and recent critical investigations of art and political ideology in colonial Latin America.

This title provides a view of the development of the literature on art in Italy during the Cinquecento. The selections bring out the close relationship between art theories and the actuality of art and chart a trend from a humanistic orientation to a more technical and professorial one. Together, the documents and the commentary reveal the effects that humanistic circles, the courts, and the Church (during the High Renaissance as well as the Counter-Reformation) had on the way people thought and wrote about art in that splendid century.

Raffaello Borghini's Il Riposo (1584) is the most widely known Florentine document on the subject of the Counter-Reformation content of religious paintings. Despite its reputation as an art-historical text, this is the first English-language translation of Il Riposo to be published. A distillation of the art gossip that was a feature of the Medici Grand Ducal court, Borghini's treatise puts forth simple criteria for judging the quality of a work of art. Published sixteen years after the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's Vite, the text that set the standard for art-historical writing during the period, Il Riposo focuses on important issues that Vasari avoided, ignored, or was oblivious to. Picking up where Vasari left off, Borghini deals with artists who came after Michaelangelo and provides more comprehensive descriptions of artists who Vasari only touched upon such as Tintoretto, Veronese, Barocci, and the artists of Francesco I's Studiolo. This text is also invaluable as a description of the mid-sixteenth century reaction against the style of the 'maniera,' which stressed the representation of self-consciously convoluted figures in complicated works of art.The first art treatise specifically directed toward non-practitioners, Il Riposo gives unique insight into the early stages of art history as a discipline, late Renaissance art and theory, and the Counter-Reformation in Italy.

The brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was unprecedented in his own lifetime and has never been exceeded. The universality of his genius is extraordinary: he was a painter, sculptor, musician, architect, engineer, inventor, scientist, anatomist and mathematician. Even today he is rarely out of the news, and fascination with this Renaissance master and his work has never been greater. Leonardo famously left behind only a very small number of completed projects, but his surviving drawings, sketches and notebooks give an extraordinary insight into the workings of his mind and the enormous scope of his interests. Through drawing Leonardo attempted to record and understand the world around him, transmitting knowledge more accurately and concisely with images than would be possible with words. Beginning with an introduction to the life of the artist, this beautifully illustrated gift book presents a chronological selection of priceless drawings by Leonardo along with other beautiful works thought to be by his students and other members of his circle. These demonstrate his astonishing mastery of technique and how he communicated this to the artists who followed him. Leonardo's working methods and his wide range of interests are also explored, leading credence to the notion that the true nature of Leonardo's intentions can only be known through his remarkable drawings.

Rubens: The Two Great Landscapes is a handsomely illustrated monograph that examines in depth Rubens's two greatest landscape paintings: A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning and The Rainbow Landscape. Painted as pendants, the pair have been in London since 1803, when they were separated, the former eventually entering the collection of the National Gallery and the latter that of the Wallace Collection. The book puts the creation of these two landscapes into the full context of Rubens's later life and his semi-retirement. It demonstrates how they are the zenith of his achievements as a landscape painter and explores how he drew skilfully on Flemish influences, including Bruegel, in creating two highly original compositions. Written to engage and appeal to the non-specialist reader and academic alike, the book makes an important contribution to scholarship in the field, including original technical research and new photography that show how these complex compositions evolved iteratively as the panels onto which they were painted were expanded. It also presents an updated and almost complete history of the provenance of the two paintings describing their passage through eminent collections from the time of Rubens's death until they reached their respective collections in London, separated by less than a mile.

" A]n impressive and original work of synthetic scholarship that one hopes will be emulated by others." Phillip B. Wagoner, Wesleyan University

" A]n excellent and important work... with] a wonderful sophistication of method." Padma Kaimal, Colgate University

The patrons and artists of Bijapur, an Islamic kingdom that flourished in the Deccan region of India in the 16th and 17th centuries, produced lush paintings and elaborately carved architecture, evidence of a highly cosmopolitan Indo-Islamic culture. Bijapur s most celebrated monument, the Ibrahim Rauza tomb complex, is carved with elegant calligraphy and lotus flowers and was once dubbed "the Taj Mahal of the South." This stunningly illustrated study traces the development of Bijapuri art and courtly identity through detailed examination of selected paintings and architecture, many of which have never before been published. They deserve our attention for their aesthetic qualities as well as for the ways they expand our understanding of the rich synthesis of cultures and religions in South Asian and Islamic art."

Dosso Dossi has long been considered one of Renaissance Italy's most intriguing artists. Although a wealth of documents chronicles his life, he remains, in many ways, an enigma, and his art continues to be as elusive as it is compelling. In Dosso's Fate, leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines examine the social, intellectual, and historical contexts of his art, focusing on the development of new genres of painting, questions of style and chronology, the influence of courtly culture, and the work of his collaborators, as well as his visual and literary sources and his painting technique. The result is an important and original contribution not only to literature on Dosso Dossi but also to the study of cultural history in early modern Italy.

"In "Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson makes it abundantly clear that laughter is a key feature in many of Bruegel's works. He examines witty and humorous elements in Bruegel's paintings, prints, and drawings and creates a context for understanding them as part of sixteenth-century culture. The material Gibson brings to bear on Bruegel will be new to many. This book will appeal to art historians and anyone interested in sixteenth-century thought and culture."--John Oliver Hand, Curator of Northern Renaissance Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington
"This book offers a much needed, and long overdue alternative to the primarily moralizing approach to Northern Renaissance and Baroque art and the works of Pieter Bruegel. Walter Gibson goes way beyond what art history has offered to date, giving a new, more balanced reading of Bruegel's art."--Alison Stewart, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"In "Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson offers a marvelously engaging antidote to the hermetic readings that have plagued the interpretation of Bruegel's works for far too long. The book provides an abundance of evidence for the importance of laughter in the responses these works were intended to provoke, illuminating not only the paintings and prints of this much misunderstood artist, but also the role of laughter in sixteenth-century culture as a whole."--David Freedberg, Professor of Art History at Columbia University