In "The Vanishing" Christopher Pye combines psychoanalytic and cultural theory to advance an innovative interpretation of Renaissance history and subjectivity. Locating the emergence of the modern subject in the era's transition from feudalism to a modern societal state, Pye supports his argument with interpretations of diverse cultural and literary phenomena, including Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "King Lear, "witchcraft and demonism, anatomy theaters, and the paintings of Michelangelo.
Pye explores the emergence of the early modern subject in terms of a range of subjectivizing mechanisms tied to the birth of a modern conception of history, one that is structured around a spatial and temporal horizon--a vanishing point. He also discusses the distinctly economic character of early modern subjectivity and how this, too, is implicated in our own modern modes of historical understanding. After explaining how the aims of New Historicist and Foucauldian approaches to the Renaissance are inseparably linked to such a historical conception, Pye demonstrates how the early modern subject can be understood in terms of a Lacanian and Zizekian account of the emerging social sphere. By focusing on the Renaissance as a period of remarkable artistic and cultural production, he is able to illustrate his points with discussions of a number of uniquely fascinating topics--for instance, how demonism was intimately related to a significant shift in law and symbolic order and how there existed at the time a "demonic" preoccupation with certain erotic dimensions of the emergent social subject.
Highly sophisticated and elegantly crafted, "The Vanishing" will be of interest to students of Shakespeare and early modern culture, Renaissance visual art, and cultural and psychoanalytic theory.

For almost twenty years, new historicism has been a highly controversial and influential force in literary and cultural studies. In "Practicing the New Historicism, " two of its most distinguished practitioners reflect on its surprisingly disparate sources and far-reaching effects.
In lucid and jargon-free prose, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on five central aspects of new historicism: recurrent use of anecdotes, preoccupation with the nature of representations, fascination with the history of the body, sharp focus on neglected details, and skeptical analysis of ideology. Arguing that new historicism has always been more a passionately engaged practice of questioning and analysis than an abstract theory, Gallagher and Greenblatt demonstrate this practice in a series of characteristically dazzling readings of works ranging from paintings by Joos van Gent and Paolo Uccello to "Hamlet" and "Great Expectations."
By juxtaposing analyses of Renaissance and nineteenth-century topics, the authors uncover a number of unexpected contrasts and connections between the two periods. Are aspects of the dispute over the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist detectable in British political economists' hostility to the potato? How does Pip's isolation in "Great Expectations" shed light on Hamlet's doubt?
Offering not only an insider's view of new historicism, but also a lively dialogue between a Renaissance scholar and a Victorianist, "Practicing the New Historicism" is an illuminating and unpredictable performance by two of America's most respected literary scholars.
"Gallagher and Greenblatt offer a brilliant introduction to new historicism. In their hands, difficult ideas become coherent and accessible."--"Choice"
"A tour de force of new literary criticism. . . . Gallagher and Greenblatt's virtuoso readings of paintings, potatoes (yes, spuds), religious ritual, and novels--all 'texts'--as well as essays on criticism and the significance of anecdotes, are likely to take their place as model examples of the qualities of the new critical school that they lead. . . . A zesty work for those already initiated into the incestuous world of contemporary literary criticism-and for those who might like to see what all the fuss is about."--"Kirkus Reviews," starred review

Ascanio Condivi was a young pupil and assistant of Michelangelo's who gained the trust and confidence of the great artist. His biography of Michelangelo to a large extent is based on the artist's own words, tells the story of his life, his relationship with his patrons, his objectives as an artist, and his accomplishments, forming the basis of a biography that has been central to the study of Michelangelo for four centuries. The significance of Condivi's text was recognized early on. Within fifteen years of its publication in 1553, Vasari incorporated much of it to correct and revise his biography of Michelangelo in the second edition of his Lives of the Artists. But, although Vasari knew Michelangelo well, the sculptor never confided in him to the extent that he did in Condivi, making this the indispensable source for the life of Michelangelo.

First published in 1976, this translation is now available in paperback for the first time and includes a revised introduction based on new research, as well as an up-to-date bibliography and endnotes section.

An exploration of the ways in which Michelangelo created himself.

Die Untersuchung beschaftigt sich mit Entstehung, Entwicklung und Aufgaben plastisch-figurlicher Stuckdekoration in Rom. Die fruhesten Beispiele fur die im 17. Jahrhundert weit verbreiteten monumentalen Stuckfiguren finden sich bereits in der ersten Halfte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Als Geburtsstatte darf die Sala Regia im Vatikan angesehen werden. Hier entstand eine Fulle von Figuren unter direktem Einfluss von Michelangelos plastischem Schaffen. Anhand exemplarisch ausgewahlter Dekorationen werden die Entwicklungsschritte bis hin zu fruhbarocken Ausstattungen aufgezeigt, die eine wichtige Grundlage fur die Kunstauffassung Gianlorenzo Berninis bilden. So kann ein Bogen geschlagen werden von Michelangelo zu Bernini, der Aufschlusse uber die Genese der barocken Skulptur zulasst."

In "The Painter's Practice," James Cahill reveals the intricacies of the painter's life with respect to payment and patronage--an approach that is still largely absent from the study of East Asian art. Drawing upon such unofficial archival sources as diaries and letters, Cahill challenges the traditional image of the disinterested amateur scholar-artist, unconcerned with material rewards, that has been developed by China's literati, perpetuated in conventional biographies, and abetted by the artists themselves. His work fills in the hitherto unexplored social and economic contexts in which painters worked, revealing the details of how painters in China actually made their living from the sixteenth century onward. Considering the marketplace as well as the studio, Cahill reviews the practices and working conditions of artists outside the Imperial Court such as the employment of assistants and the use of sketchbooks and prints by earlier artists for sources of motifs. As loose, flamboyant brushwork came into vogue, Cahill argues, these highly imitable styles ironically facilitated the forger's task, flooding the market with copies, sometimes commissioned and signed by the artists themselves. In tracing the great shift from seeing the painting as a picture to a concentration on the painter's hand, Cahill challenges the archetype of the scholar-artist and provides an enlightened perspective that profoundly changes the way we interpret familiar paintings.

Johan Gregor van der Schardt

An analysis of how visual variety and grandeur are intrinsic and artistically well-conceived elements of the work of Rabelais, and that they develop naturally from the Renaissance outlook on the world.

Giambologna (1529 - 1606) is regarded as the most important European sculptor between Michelangelo and Bernini. How did he achieve this status? This volume investigates this question and examines above all Giambologna's study of Michelangelo, his all-powerful role model, and how he successfully prevailed. The young Flemish artist Giambologna most probably embarked on his study trip to Rome in 1550. On his way home he visited Florence, decided to stay and became the star at the Medici court. They sent his sculptures to the princely courts of Europe, where they became sought-after gifts. Although we know a great deal about his success, we know little of his early years in Italy, because he first appeared on the scene as a sculptor from about 1560. The alabaster figures after Michelangelo's "Times of Day" in Dresden, hitherto largely ignored, seem to be early works by the master sculptor. An examination of these sculptures promises to shed fresh light on the development of a genius.

At the end of the fourteenth and into the first half of the fifteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and John Lydgate translated and revised stories with long pedigrees in Latin, Italian, and French. Royals and gentry alike commissioned lavish manuscript copies of these works, copies whose images were integral to the rising prestige of English as a literary language. Yet despite the significance of these images, manuscript illuminators are seldom discussed in the major narratives of the development of English literary culture. The newly enlarged scale of English manuscript production generated a problem: namely, a need for new images. Not only did these images need to accompany narratives that often had no tradition of illustration, they also had to express novel concepts, including ones as foundational as the identity and suitable representation of an English poet. In devising this new corpus, manuscript artists harnessed visual allusion as a method to articulate central questions and provide at times conflicting answers regarding both literary and cultural authority. Sonja Drimmer traces how, just as the poets embraced intertexuality as a means of invention, so did illuminators devise new images through referential techniques—assembling, adapting, and combining images from a range of sources in order to answer the need for a new body of pictorial matter. Featuring more than one hundred illustrations, twenty-seven of them in color, The Art of Allusion is the first book devoted to the emergence of England's literary canon as a visual as well as a linguistic event.

The historic textile collections belonging to the Diocese of Novara and preserved within the ancient sacristies of its many churches, have inspired the volume Caravaggio: Fashion and Fabrics. Caravaggio's ability to capture in paint such precious garments, with their shimmering weaves, arabesque-like patterns and decorative motifs informs a new narrative, exploring how clothing may indicate much more than a mere fashion choice. Using Caravaggio's The Cardsharps as the focus, we may understand how the three figures depicted are set in contrast: by social class, age and appearance. These differences are underpinned by the clothing that they wear, and on closer examination, it is apparent that the fabrics described in paint are directly comparable to those of the historic collections of Novara. In their insightful and detailed analysis, the authors of this volume present a comprehensive overview of the development of fashion and fabrics, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, when Italy's textile industry was at its peak. Text in English and Italian.

Venetian artistic giants of the sixteenth century, such as Giorgione, Vittore Carpaccio, Titian, Jacopo Sansovino, Jacopo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and their contemporaries, continued to shape artistic development, tastes in collecting, and modes of display long after their own practices ended. The robust reverberation of the Venetian Renaissance spread far beyond the borders of the lagoon to inform and influence artists, authors, and collectors who spent very little or even no time in Venice proper. The Enduring Legacy of Venetian Renaissance Art investigates the historical resonance of Venetian sixteenth-century art and explores its afterlife and its reinvention by artists working in its shadow. Despite being a frequently acknowledged truism, the pervasive legacy of Venetian sixteenth-century art has not received comprehensive treatment in recent publication history. The broad scope of the topics covered in these essays, from Titian's profound influence on the development of landscape painting to the effects of Carpaccio's historical paintings on early twentieth-century fashion, illustrates the persistence and adaptability of the Venetian Renaissance's legacy. In addition to analyzing the effects of individual artists on each other, this volume offers insight into the shifting characterizations and reception of Venice as a center for artistic innovation and inspiration throughout the early modern period, providing a nuanced and multifaceted view of the singular lagoon city and its indelible imprint on the history of art.

Compiled by members of the Bosch Research and Conservation Project and published on the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch's death, this is the definitive new catalogue of all of Bosch's extant paintings and drawings. His mastery and genius have been redefined as a result of six years of research on the iconography, techniques, pedigree, and conservation history of his paintings and on his life. This stunning volume includes all new photography, as well as up-to-date research on the individual works. For the first time, the incredible creativity of this late medieval artist, expressed in countless details, is reproduced and discussed in this book. Special attention is being paid to Bosch as an image maker, a skilled draughtsman, and a brutal painter, changing the game of painting around 1500 by his innovative way of working. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

This fascinating study considers the poetic and mythological artworks made for elite female monastic communities in Renaissance Italy. Nuns from the patrician class, who often disregarded obligations of austerity and poverty, commissioned sensually appealing, richly made artifacts inspired by contemporary courtly culture. The works of art transformed monastic parlors, abbatial apartments, and nuns' cells into ornate settings, thereby enriching and complicating the opposition of religious and worldly spheres. This unconventional monastic and yet courtly decoration was a new form of art in the way it entangled the sacred and the profane. The artwork was intended to edify both intellectually and spiritually, as well as to delight and seduce the viewer. Based on extensive new research into primary sources, this generously illustrated book introduces a thriving female monastic visual culture that ecclesiastical authorities endeavored to suppress. It shows how this art taught its viewers to use their eyes to gain insights about the secular world beyond the convent walls.

Providing a fresh evaluation of Alberti's text On Painting (1435), along with comparisons to various works of Nicholas Cusanus - particularly his Vision of God (1450) - this study reveals a shared epistemology of vision. And, the author argues, it is one that reflects a more deeply Christian Neoplatonic ideal than is typically accorded Alberti. Whether regarding his purpose in teaching the use of a geometric single point perspective system, or more broadly in rendering forms naturalistically, the emphasis leans toward the ideal of Renaissance art as highly rational. There remains the impression that the principle aim of the painter is to create objective, even illusionistic images. A close reading of Alberti's text, however, including some adjustments in translation, points rather towards an emphasis on discerning the spiritual in the material. Alberti's use of the tropes Minerva and Narcissus, for example, indicates the opposing characteristics of wisdom and sense certainty that function dialectically to foster the traditional importance of seeing with the eye of the intellect rather than merely with physical eyes. In this sense these figures also set the context for his, and, as the author explains, Brunelleschi's earlier invention of this perspective system that posits not so much an objective seeing as an opposition of finite and infinite seeing, which, moreover, approximates Cusanus's famous notion of a coincidence of opposites. Together with Alberti's and Cusanus's ideals of vision, extensive analysis of art works discloses a ubiquitous commitment to stimulating an intellectual perception of divine, essential, and unseen realities that enliven the visible material world.

Bernhard von Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Journey to the Holy Land), first published in 1486, is one of the seminal books of early printing and is especially renowned for the originality of its woodcuts. In Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book, Elizabeth Ross considers the Peregrinatio from a variety of perspectives to explain its value for the cultural history of the period. Breydenbach, a high-ranking cleric in Mainz, recruited the painter Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht for a religious and artistic adventure in a political hot spot--a pilgrimage to research the peoples, places, plants, and animals of the Levant. The book they published after their return ambitiously engaged with the potential of the new print medium to give an account of their experience.

The Peregrinatio also aspired to rouse readers to a new crusade against Islam by depicting a contest in the Mediterranean between the Christian bastion of the city of Venice and the region's Muslim empires. This crusading rhetoric fit neatly with the state of the printing industry in Mainz, which largely subsisted as a tool for bishops' consolidation of authority, including selling the pope's plans to combat the Ottoman Empire.

Taking an artist on such an enterprise was unprecedented. Reuwich set a new benchmark for technical achievement with his woodcuts, notably a panorama of Venice that folds out to 1.62 meters in length and a foldout map that stretches from Damascus to Sudan around the first topographically accurate view of Jerusalem. The conception and execution of the Peregrinatio show how and why early printed books constructed new means of visual representation from existing ones--and how the form of a printed book emerged out of the interaction of eyewitness experience and medieval scholarship, real travel and spiritual pilgrimage, curiosity and fixed belief, texts and images.

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.

Lange Zeit galt Genrekunst als Abbild der Wirklichkeit und der Prozess zunehmender Sakularisierung schien die Ursache ihrer Entstehung. Heute herrschen Erklarungen vor, welche die Genrekunst im Sinne gemalter Ethik und Lasterdarstellungen als Beitrag eines christlich-didaktischen Programms werten. Der vorliegende Band erweitert diese Perspektiven. Denn die Genremalerei stellt sich politischen, theologischen wie kunsttheoretischen Fragen und erweist sich als Medium einer im Aufbruch begriffenen Welt. So ist es kein Zufall, dass sich die Anfange der Genrekunst im 15. Jahrhundert in druckgraphischen Werken - im fortschrittlichsten Reproduktionsmedium jener Zeit - finden. Dabei adressiert sie ein stadtisches Publikum, das im Alltag immer wieder dem Problem christlicher Lebensfuhrung gegenubersteht. Die Publikation versammelt Beitrage mit Interpretationen exemplarischer Genrebilder von Albrecht Durer, Hieronymus Bosch, Petrus Christus oder Jan Sanders van Hemessen und regt zu einer Neubewertung der Gattung an, um sie als selbstreflexive, konfliktoffene Kunstform sichtbar zu machen.

Leonardo's writings on painting-among the most remarkable from any era-were never edited by Leonardo himself into a single coherent book. In this anthology the authors have edited material not only from his so-called Treatise on Painting but also from his surviving manuscripts and from other primary sources, some of which were here translated for the first time. The resulting volume is an invaluable reference work for art historians as well as for anyone interested in the mind and methods of one of the world's greatest creative geniuses. "Highly readable. . . . Also included are documentary sources and letters illuminating Leonardo's career; the manuscript sources for all of Leonardo's statements are fully cited in the notes. The volume is skillfully translated and is illustrated with appropriate examples of drawings and paintings by the artist."-Choice "Certainly easier to read and . . . more convenient than previous compilations." -Charles Hope, New York Review of Books "A chaotic assemblage of Leonardo da Vinci's writings appeared in 1651 as Treatise on Painting. . . . [Kemp] successfully applies . . . order to the chaos."-ArtNews

The Galleria Borghese brings together an extraordinary collection of ancient and modern sculpture within a beautifully decorated villa. This volume, dedicated to modern sculpture (Late Renaissance to Baroque to Neoclassical), marks the start of a new general catalogue of the collection. The introduction narrates the history of the collection, from its creation by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 17th century to its sale to the Italian Republic at the end of the 19th century. The entries are full of chronological details, new attributions, information on restorations and account for the different historical settings thanks to an accurate study of the inventory records of the villa. They include world-famous masterpieces by Algardi, Bernini and Canova among others. The sale to Napoleon of many of its Antique works of art (now in the Louvre) was key to the Borghese's commission works of ancient inspiration, the analysis of which animates the pages of another section, based on the concepts of copy and remake. The catalogue closes with a section on restoration, that gives an account of the fundamental role of 16- to 18th-century sculptors in the maintenance and transformation of the archaeological collection in relation to the villa's display requirements. Text in Italian.

In their ongoing search for divinity, Western European Christians followed many different paths to a personal connection with the eternal, including the intimacies of private prayer, the spectacle of the Mass, and the veneration of saintly relics. Along the way, art objects and artifacts served as companions, guides, and comforts. The essays in this catalogue consider the central role objects and images played in these spiritual journeys. They investigate imagery's critical role in the development of personal devotions, in the organization of liturgical worship, and in practices surrounding the institution of the Eucharist and the cult of saints.

Hans Baldung Grien, the most famous apprentice and close friend of German artist Albrecht Dürer, was known for his unique and highly eroticised images of witches. In paintings and woodcut prints, he gave powerful visual expression to late medieval tropes and stereotypes, such as the poison maiden, venomous virgin, the Fall of Man, ‘death and the maiden’ and other motifs and eschatological themes, which mingled abject and erotic qualities in the female body. Yvonne Owens reads these images against the humanist intellectual milieu of Renaissance Germany, showing how classical and medieval medicine and natural philosophy interpreted female anatomy as toxic, defective and dangerously beguiling. She reveals how Hans Baldung exploited this radical polarity to create moralising and titillating portrayals of how monstrous female sexuality victimised men and brought them low. Furthermore, these images issued from—and contributed to—the contemporary understanding of witchcraft as a heresy that stemmed from natural ‘feminine defect,’ a concept derived from Aristotle. Offering new and provocative interpretations of Hans Baldung’s iconic witchcraft imagery, this book is essential reading for historians of art, culture and gender relations in the late medieval and early modern periods.