The art of poverty is the first book in English to analyse depictions of beggars in sixteenth-century European art. Featuring works from Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, France and Italy, it discusses a diverse body of imagery in many different media, from crude woodcuts to monumental church altarpieces. It develops a striking thesis, arguing that these works largely conformed to two paradoxical, though mutually supportive, representational approaches. The earlier chapters follow the emergence of a trenchantly negative approach in Northern art, in which beggars are shown as vagabonds, whose idleness and thievery threatened the values of sixteenth-century society (especially its growing emphasis on the need to work). In the other predominant visual mode, beggars are exalted as examples of sacred purity. In many Italian religious paintings, beggars are morally exalted with reference to sacred texts, and made formally beautiful with reference to revered artistic models. Though these approaches reflect the impact of religious reform, it is shown that, by the end of the century, they happily co-existed within Protestant and Catholic cultures. The final part of the book is concerned with the issue of artistic style and with the growing tendency of the beggar image to mediate and dissolve the didactic traditions through which it had originally been defined. The art of poverty will be of special interest to scholars and students of Renaissance art history, and its progressive approach and cross-disciplinary theme and perspective will also make it vital reading for those concerned with the development of early modern European culture. -- .

Representing Renaissance art, c.1500-c.1600 is a study of change and continuity in the iconographies of art and the visual representation of artists during the sixteenth century, especially in Italy and the Netherlands. The issue of how, and how far, artists obtained higher status for their profession during the Renaissance is a key question for the study of the early modern period. This book considers the maintenance of well-established traditions for the visual representation of artists, and also examines the new iconographies that emerged in the sixteenth century. By highlighting art and architecture that artists designed for their personal use, including the decoration of their houses, this study provides insight into the tastes and 'ways of looking' specific to artists. By examining the visual evidence we see the opinions both of artists who expressed their views in literary texts, and additionally those of artists who did not publish their ideas in written form. -- .

When did drawing become an integral part of architecture? Among several architects and artists who brought about this change during the Renaissance, Francesco di Giorgio Martini's ideas on drawing recorded in his Trattati di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare (1475-1490) are significant. Francesco suggests that drawing is linked to the architect's imagination and central in conveying images and ideas to others. Starting with the broader edges of Francesco's written work and steadily penetrating into the fantastic world of his drawings, the book examines his singular formulation of the act of drawing and its significance in the context of the Renaissance. The book concludes with speculations on how Francesco's work is relevant to us at the onset of another major shift in architecture caused by the proliferation of digital media.

Using Pieter de Marees' Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602) as her main source material, author Elizabeth Sutton brings to bear approaches from the disciplines of art history and book history to explore the context in which De Marees' account was created. Since variations of the images and text were repeated in other European travel collections and decorated maps, Sutton is able to trace how the framing of text and image shaped the formation of knowledge that continued to be repeated and distilled in later European depictions of Africans. She reads the engravings in De Marees' account as a demonstration of the intertwining domains of the Dutch pictorial tradition, intellectual inquiry, and Dutch mercantilism. At the same time, by analyzing the marketing tactics of the publisher, Cornelis Claesz, this study illuminates how early modern epistemological processes were influenced by the commodification of knowledge. Sutton examines the book's construction and marketing to shed new light on the social milieus that shared interests in ethnography, trade, and travel. Exploring how the images and text function together, Sutton suggests that Dutch visual and intellectual traditions informed readers' choices for translating De Marees' text visually. Through the examination of early modern Dutch print culture, Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa expands the boundaries of our understanding of the European imperial enterprise.

Dwelling on the rich interconnections between parody and festivity in humanist thought and popular culture alike, the essays in this volume delve into the nature and the meanings of festive laughter as it was conceived of in early modern art. The concept of 'carnival' supplies the main thread connecting these essays. Bound as festivity often is to popular culture, not all the topics fit the canons of high art, and some of the art is distinctly low-brow and occasionally ephemeral; themes include grobianism and the grotesque, scatology, popular proverbs with ironic twists, and a wide range of comic reversals, some quite profound. Many hinge on ideas of the world upside down. Though the chapters most often deal with Northern Renaissance and Baroque art, they spill over into other countries, times, and cultures, while maintaining the carnivalesque air suggested by the book's title.

Mining a rich, interdisciplinary mix of sources, including stoneware jugs, personal correspondence, paintings, inventories, and literature written for the dining room, this study offers a critical and entirely original examination of the function of early modern images for the people who owned and viewed them. The study explores the emergence, functions and material culture of the Antwerp dinner party during the heady days of the mid-sixteenth century, when Antwerp's art market was thriving and a new wealthy, non-noble class dominated the city. The author recontextualizes some of Bruegel's work within the cultural nexus of the dining room, where material culture and theatrical performance met humanist wit and the desire for professional advancement. The narrative also touches on the reception of Northern art in Lombardy, on intersections among painting, material culture, and theater, and on intellectual history.

According to Nico Muhly, the Coronation of the Virgin is "a panel of pure theatre and music". Painted in 1358 by the Venetian artist Paolo Veneziano (ca. 1295-1362), the apocryphal story of the Virgin's death is depicted in one of the artist's most thrilling and important works. Paolo Veneziano presents the Virgin and Christ in sumptuous garments and surrounded by a choir of angels playing portable organs, lutes, trumpets, tambourines, and other instruments. The angels symbolize the harmony of the universe; their instruments are the authentic components of a medieval orchestra, accurately depicted and correctly held and played. The decorative sparkle of the surface - with its brilliant, expensive colours, patterned textiles, and lavish gold leaf - reflects the Venetians' love of luxury, a taste that enriches much of 14th- and 15th-century architecture in Venice.

Presenting an inventive body of research that explores the connections between urban movements, space, and visual representation, this study offers the first sustained analysis of the vital interrelationship between printed images and urban life in early modern London. The study differs from all other books on early modern British print culture in that it seeks out printed forms that were active in shaping and negotiating the urban milieu-prints that troubled categories of high and low culture, images that emerged when the political became infused with the creative, as well as prints that bear traces of the roles they performed and the ways they were used in the city. It is distinguished by its close and sustained readings of individual prints, from the likes of such artists as Wenceslaus Hollar, Francis Barlow, and William Faithorne; and this visual analysis is complemented with a thorough examination of the dynamics of print production as a commercial exchange that takes place within a wider set of exchanges (of goods, people, ideas and money) across the city and the nation. This study challenges scholars to re-imagine the function of popular prints as a highly responsive form of cultural production, capable not only of 'recording' events, spaces and social actions, but profoundly shaping the way these entities are conceived in the moment and also recast within cultural memory. It offers historians of print culture and British art a sophisticated and innovative model of how to mobilize rigorous archival research in the service of a thoroughly historicized and theorized analysis of visual representation and its relationship to space and social identity.

In seeing printed reproductions as a form of response to Michelangelo's work, Bernadine Barnes focuses on the choices that printmakers and publishers made as they selected which works would be reproduced and how they would be presented to various audiences. Six essays set the reproductions in historical context, and consider the challenges presented by works in various media and with varying degrees of accessibility, while a seventh considers how published verbal descriptions competed with visual reproductions. Rather than concentrating on the intentions of the artist, Barnes treats the prints as important indicators of the use of, and public reaction to, Michelangelo's works. Emphasizing reception and the construction of history, her approach adds to the growing body of scholarship on print culture in the Renaissance. The volume includes a comprehensive checklist organized by the work reproduced.

Author Joni M. Hand sheds light on the reasons women of the Valois courts from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century commissioned devotional manuscripts. Visually interpreting the non-text elements-portraits, coats of arms, and marginalia-as well as the texts, Hand explores how the manuscripts were used to express the women's religious, political, and/or genealogical concerns. This study is arranged thematically according to the method in which the owner is represented. Recognizing the considerable influence these women had on the appearance of their books, Hand interrogates how the manuscripts became a means of self-expression beyond the realm of devotional practice. She reveals how noblewomen used their private devotional manuscripts as vehicles for self-definition, to reflect familial, political, and social concerns, and to preserve the devotional and cultural traditions of their families. Drawing on documentation of women's book collections that has been buried within the inventories of their fathers, husbands, or sons, Hand explores how these women contributed to the cultural and spiritual character of the courts, and played an integral role in the formation and evolution of the royal libraries in Northern Europe.

Sebastiano del Piombo (c.1485-1547) was a close associate and rival of the central artistic figures of the High Renaissance, notably Michelangelo and Raphael. After the death of Raphael and the departure of Michelangelo from Rome, Sebastiano became the dominant artistic personality in the city. Despite being one of most significant artistic figures of the period, he remains the last artist of major importance in the western canon about whom no recent work has been published in English. In this study, Piers Baker-Bates approaches Sebastiano's career through analysis of the patrons he attracted following his arrival at Rome. The first half of the book concentrates on Sebastiano's network of patrons, predominantly Italian, who had strong factional ties to the Imperial camp; the second half discusses Sebastiano's relationship with his principal Spanish patrons. Sebastiano is a leading example of a transcultural artist in the sixteenth century and his relationship with Spain was fundamental to the development of his career The author investigates the domination of Sebastiano's career by patrons who had geographically different origins, but who were all were members of a wider network of Imperial loyalties. Thus Baker-Bates removes Sebastiano from the shadow of his contemporaries, bringing him to life for the reader as an artistic personality in his own right. Baker-Bates' characterization of the Rome in which Sebastiano made his career differs from previous scholarly accounts, and he describes how Sebastiano was ideally suited to flourish in the environment he depicts. Sebastiano del Piombo and the World of Spanish Rome thus re-appraises not only Sebastiano's place in the canon of Renaissance art but, using him as a lens, also the cultural worlds of Early Modern Italy and Spain in which he operated.

Developed out of the aesthetic philosophy of cha-no-yu (the tea ceremony) in fifteenth-century Japan, wabi sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi sabi refers to an awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things that bear the mark of this impermanence. As much a state of mind--an awareness of the things around us and an acceptance of our surroundings--as it is a design style, wabi sabi begs us to appreciate the pure beauty of life--a chipped vase, a quiet rainy day, the impermanence of all things. Presenting itself as an alternative to today's fast-paced, mass-produced, neon-lighted world, wabi sabi reminds us to slow down and take comfort in the natural beauty around us. In addition to presenting the philosophy of wabi-sabi, this book includes how-to design advice--so that a transformation of body, mind, and home can emerge. Chapters include: History: The Development of Wabi Sabi Culture: Wabi Sabi and the Japanese Character Art: Defining Aesthetics Design: Creating Expressions with Wabi Sabi Materials Spirit: The Universal Spirit of Wabi Sabi

Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe examines the role of cultural objects in the lyric poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega, the premier poet of sixteenth-century Spain. As a pioneer of the "new poetry" of Renaissance Europe, aligned with the court, empire, and modernity, Garcilaso was fully attuned to the collection and circulation of luxury artefacts and other worldly goods. In his poems, a variety of objects, including tapestries, paintings, statues, urns, mirrors, and relics participate in lyric acts of discovery and self-revelation, reveal memory as contingent and unstable, expose knowledge of the self as deceptive, and show how history intersects with the ideology of empire.

Mary E. Barnard's study argues persuasively that the material culture of early sixteenth-century Europe embedded within Garcilaso's poems offers a key to understanding the interplay between objects and texts that make those works such vibrant inventions.

Louis XIV - the 'Sun King' - casts a long shadow over the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Yet while he has been the subject of numerous works, much of the scholarship remains firmly rooted within national frameworks and traditions. Thus in France Louis is still chiefly remembered for the splendid baroque culture his reign ushered in, and his political achievements in wielding together a strong centralised French state; whereas in England, the Netherlands and other protestant states, his memory is that of an aggressive military tyrant and persecutor of non-Catholics. In order to try to break free of such parochial strictures, this volume builds upon the approach of scholars such as Ragnhild Hatton who have attempted to situate Louis' legacy within broader, pan-European context. But where Hatton focused primarily on geo-political themes, Louis XIV Outside In introduces current interests in cultural history, integrating aspects of artistic, literary and musical themes. In particular it examines the formulation and use of images of Louis XIV abroad, concentrating on Louis' neighbours in north west Europe. This broad geographical coverage demonstrates how images of Louis XIV were moulded by the polemical needs of people far from Versailles, and distorted from any French originals by the particular political and cultural circumstances of diverse nations. Because the French regime's ability to control the public image of its leader was very limited, the collection highlights how - at least in the sphere of public presentation - his power was frequently denied, subverted, or appropriated to very different purposes, questioning the limits of his absolutism which has also been such a feature of recent work.

Covers approximately 250 sales of Old Masters since 1980, with an average of five listings from each sale. There are 2,700 signature examples of 1,700 artists. Three sections following the main body of this volume offer the researcher easy cross-referencing monograms and initials, symbols, and alternate names. The appendix includes supplemental signature information on additional artists whose actual signatures were not available, but whose importance could not be omitted.

Presents an exmination of printed representations of monstrous births in German-speaking Europe from the end of the fifteenth century and through the sixteenth century, beginning with a seminal series of broadsheets from the late 1490s by humanist Sebastian Brant, and including prints by Albrecht Durer and Hans Burgkmair.

The first specialized critical-aesthetic study to be published on the concept of hybridity in early Mughal painting, this book investigates the workings of the diverse creative forces that led to the formation of a unique Mughal pictorial language. Mughal pictoriality distinguishes itself from the Persianate models through the rationalization of the picture's conceptual structure and other visual modes of expression involving the aesthetic concept of mimesis. If the stylistic and iconographic results of this transformational process have been well identified and evidenced, their hermeneutic interpretation greatly suffers from the neglect of a methodologically updated investigation of the images' conceptual underpinning. Valerie Gonzalez addresses this lacuna by exploring the operations of cross-fertilization at the level of imagistic conceptualization resulting from the multifaceted encounter between the local legacy of Indo-Persianate book art, the freshly imported Persian models to Mughal India after 1555 and the influx of European art at the Mughal court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author's close examination of the visuality, metaphysical order and aesthetic language of Mughal imagery and portraiture sheds new light on this particular aspect of its aesthetic hybridity, which is usually approached monolithically as a historical phenomenon of cross-cultural interaction. That approach fails to consider specific parameters and features inherent to the artistic practice, such as the differences between doxis and praxis, conceptualization and realization, intentionality and what lies beyond it. By studying the distinct phases and principles of hybridization between the variegated pictorial sources at work in the Mughal creative process at the successive levels of the project/intention, the practice/realization and the result/product, the author deciphers the modalities of appropriation and manipulation of the heterogeneous elements. Her unique

First published in 1951 Arnold Hauser's commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the Film Age. Exploring the interaction between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the frameworks in which visual art is produced. This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general introduction to The Social History of Art, Jonathan Harris asseses the importance of the work for contemporary art history and visual culture. In addition, an introduction to each volume provides a synopsis of Hauser's narrative and serves as a critical guide to the text, identifying major themes, trends and arguments.

The first book-length study of household servants and slaves, exploring a visual history over 400 years and four continents The first book-length study of both images of ordinary household workers and their material culture, Household Servants and Slaves: A Visual History, 1300-1700 covers four hundred years and four continents, facilitating a better understanding of the changes in service that occurred as Europe developed a monetary economy, global trade, and colonialism. Diane Wolfthal presents new interpretations of artists including the Limbourg brothers, Albrecht Durer, Paolo Veronese, and Diego Velazquez, but also explores numerous long-neglected objects, including independent portraits of ordinary servants, servant dolls and their miniature cleaning utensils, and dummy boards, candlesticks, and tablestands in the form of servants and slaves. Wolfthal analyzes the intersection of class, race, and gender while also interrogating the ideology of service, investigating both the material conditions of household workers' lives and the immaterial qualities with which they were associated. If images repeatedly relegated servants to the background, then this book does the reverse: it foregrounds these figures in order to better understand the ideological and aesthetic functions that they served.

Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus and Medusa, one of Renaissance Italy's most complex sculptures, is the subject of this study, which proposes that the statue's androgynous appearance is paradoxical. Symbolizing the male ruler overcoming a female adversary, the Perseus legitimizes patriarchal power; but the physical similarity between Cellini's characters suggests the hero rose through female agency. Dr. Corretti argues that although not a surrogate for powerful Medici women, Cellini's Medusa may have reminded viewers that Cosimo I de' Medici's power stemmed in part from maternal influence. Drawing upon a vast body of art and literature, Dr. Corretti concludes that Cellini and his contemporaries knew the Gorgon as a version of the Earth Mother, whose image is found in art for Medici women.

The Path of Humility: Caravaggio and Carlo Borromeo establishes a fundamental relationship between the Franciscan humility of Archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo and the Roman sacred works of Caravaggio. This is the first book to consider and focus entirely upon these two seemingly anomalous personalities of the Counter-Reformation. The import of Caravaggio's Lombard artistic heritage has long been seen as pivotal to the development of his sacred style, but it was not his only source of inspiration. This book seeks to enlarge the discourse surrounding Caravaggio's style by placing him firmly in the environment of Borromean Milan, a city whose urban fabric was transformed into a metaphorical Via Crucis. This book departs from the prevailing preoccupation - the artist's experience in Rome as fundamental to his formulation of sacred style - and toward his formative years in Borromeo's Milan, where humility reigned supreme. This book is intended for a broad, yet specialized readership interested in Counter-Reformation art and devotion. It serves as a critical text for undergraduate and graduate art history courses on Baroque art, Caravaggio, and Counter-Reformation art.

In 1992, the Comite International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA) held its 28th Congress in re-unified Berlin under the theme Kunstlerischer Austausch - Artistic Exchange. The subject fed a strain of idealism and optimism relating the history of art to the life of our times. Change was palpable to all the participants. A wall that had seemed everlasting had fallen, a cold war that had lasted a lifetime was now history. The shifting borders and a revised sense of periodization inspired new views of the past as well as the present, of art as well as nationhood and society. One generation later, the contributions to Artistic Innovations and Cultural Zones show how art history has responded to our newly broadened vision of the artistic heritage of Europe. In this volume, the previously unquestioned practice of labelling artists with a period and a place is challenged at an empirical as well as a fundamental level. Artistic Innovations and Cultural Zones revisits the constellation of questions posed at CIHA 1992 at a moment when European history is again being rewritten. It offers new art-historical insights for our time on what it means to be a European.

When did drawing become an integral part of architecture? Among several architects and artists who brought about this change during the Renaissance, Francesco di Giorgio Martini's ideas on drawing recorded in his Trattati di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare (1475-1490) are significant. Francesco suggests that drawing is linked to the architect's imagination and central in conveying images and ideas to others. Starting with the broader edges of Francesco's written work and steadily penetrating into the fantastic world of his drawings, the book examines his singular formulation of the act of drawing and its significance in the context of the Renaissance. The book concludes with speculations on how Francesco's work is relevant to us at the onset of another major shift in architecture caused by the proliferation of digital media.

The sixteenth century was a critical period both for Spain's formation and for the imperial dominance of her Crown. Spanish monarchs ruled far and wide, spreading agents and culture across Europe and the wider world. Yet in Italy they encountered another culture whose achievements were even prouder and whose aspirations often even grander than their own. Italians, the nominally subaltern group, did not readily accept Spanish dominance and exercised considerable agency over how imperial Spanish identity developed within their borders. In the end Italians' views sometimes even shaped how their Spanish colonizers eventually came to see themselves. The essays collected here evaluate the broad range of contexts in which Spaniards were present in early modern Italy. They consider diplomacy, sanctity, art, politics and even popular verse. Each essay excavates how Italians who came into contact with the Spanish crown's power perceived and interacted with the wider range of identities brought amongst them by its servants and subjects. Together they demonstrate what influenced and what determined Italians' responses to Spain; they show Spanish Italy in its full transcultural glory and how its inhabitants projected its culture - throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.

Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex is an interdisciplinary study of a county at the forefront of religious, political and artistic developments in early-modern England. Ranging from the schism of Reformation to the outbreak of Civil War, the volume brings together scholars from the fields of art history, religious and intellectual history and English literature to offer new perspectives on early-modern Sussex. Essays discuss a wide variety of topics: the coherence of a county divided between East and West and Catholic and Protestant; the art and literary collections of Chichester cathedral; communities of Catholic gentry; Protestant martyrdom; aristocratic education; writing, preaching and exile; local funerary monuments; and the progresses of Elizabeth I. Contributors include Michael Questier; Nigel Llewellyn; Caroline Adams; Karen Coke; and Andrew Foster. The collection concludes with an Afterword by Duncan Salkeld (University of Chichester). This volume extends work done in the 1960s and 70s on early-modern Sussex, drawing on new work on county and religious identities, and setting it into a broad national context. The result is a book that not only tells us much about Sussex, but which also has a great deal to offer all scholars working in the field of local and regional history, and religious change in England as a whole.