In this book, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers the first systematic study of Pythagoras and his influence on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, religion, medicine, music, the occult, and social life as well as on architecture and art in the late medieval and early modern eras. Following the threads of admiration for this ancient Greek sage from the fourteenth century to Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth, this book demonstrates that Pythagoras s influence in intellectual circles Christian, Jewish, and Arab was more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. Joost-Gaugier shows that during this period Pythagoras was respected by many intellectuals in different areas of Europe. She also shows how this admiration was reflected in ideas that were applied to the visual arts by a number of well known architects and artists who sought, through the use of a visual language inspired by the memory of Pythagoras, to obtain perfect harmony in their creations. Among these were Alberti, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Thus did, she suggests, some of the greatest art works in the Western world owe their modernity to an inspirational force that, paradoxically, had been conceived in the distant past."

Originally published in 1940, this book charts the origins and evolution of academies of art from the sixteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Pevsner expertly explains the political, religious and mercantile forces affecting the education of artists in various countries in Western Europe, and the growing 'academisation' of artistic training that he saw is his own day. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the various historical schools of art instruction and the history of art more generally.

Michelangelo s extant correspondence is the most abundant of any artist. Spanning 67 years, it comprises roughly 1,400 letters, of which 500 were written by Michelangelo himself. Biographers and art historians have combed the letters for insight into Michelangelo s views on art, his contractual obligations, and his relationships. Literary scholars have explored parallels between the letters and Michelangelo s poetry. Nevertheless, this is the first book to study the letters for their intrinsically literary qualities. In this volume, Deborah Parker examines Michelangelo s use of language as a means of understanding the creative process of this extraordinary artist. His letters often revel in witticisms, rhetorical flourishes, and linguistic ingenuity. Close study of his mastery of words and modes of self-presentation shows Michelangelo to be a consummate artist who deploys the resources of language to considerable effect."

This beautiful book brings you the very best of art throughout history - using a truly innovative timeline-led approach. Savour iconic paintings such as Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and Monet's Waterlilies, and discover less well-known artists, styles, and movements the world over - from Indigenous Australian art to the works of Ming-era China. And explore recurring themes, such as love and religion, and important genres from Romanesque to Conceptual art, along the way. Timelines of Art provides detailed analysis of the works of key artists, showing details of their technique - such as Leonardo's use of light and shade. It tells the story of avant-garde works like Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Lunch on the Grass), which scandalised society, and it traces how certain artists, genres or movements informed the works of others - showing how the Impressionists were inspired by Gustave Courbet, for example, or how Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese prints. Comprehensive, accessible, and lavishly illustrated throughout, Timelines of Art is an essential guide to the pantheon of world art, so dive straight into discover: - An overview of each movement, including the social and cultural background of the period, grounds the works of art in the spirit of their times. - Turning-point paintings that triggered or epitomised each artistic movement are identified and explained, against a backdrop of influences - the technical advances, admired techniques of an earlier artist, and changes in society that enabled new directions in art. - Glossary of technical terms and comprehensive index help make this an indispensable work of reference for any art-lover. Timelines of Art is the perfect art history book for students of art and/or history, proving ideal for families, schools and libraries and doubling up as a great gift for the art lover in your life.

Bosch lived and worked over 500 hundred years ago in the Netherlands' town of 's Hertogenbosch, from which he takes his name. He is best known for his fantastical, wondrous art full of strange creatures both grotesque and heavenly. The work he has left behind still defies the imagination. Taking account of the latest research, Hieronymus Bosch: Masterpieces of Art gives an overview of what is known of this elusive painter and draughtsman, and reproduces his (and some of his followers') impressive work, from traditional Biblical stories with a Boschian twist, such as the Adoration of the Magi, to his apocalyptic Four Visions of the Hereafter. His diptychs and triptychs, such as the famously complex Garden of Earthly Delights are covered as well as his stunning line drawings, such as The Wood Has Ears, The Field Has Eyes.

A gifted yet controversial anatomical teacher, Robert Knox (1791-1862) published this remarkable study in 1852. It explores the influence of anatomy on evolutionary theories and fine art respectively. The first part of the work discusses the lives and scientific insights of the eminent French naturalists Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844). Rejecting the explanations offered by natural theology, Knox maintains that descriptive anatomy can give answers to questions surrounding the origin and development of life in the natural world. The latter part of the book is concerned with the relation that anatomy bears to fine art, specifically the painting and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. Entering the debate about the importance of anatomical knowledge in art, Knox focuses on 'the immortal trio' of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Henry Lonsdale's sympathetic biography of Knox has also been reissued in this series.

Cupid became a popular figure in the literary and visual culture of post-Reformation England. He served to articulate and debate the new Protestant theory of desire, inspiring a dark version of love tragedy in which Cupid kills. But he was also implicated in other controversies, as the object of idolatrous, Catholic worship and as an adversary to female rule: Elizabeth I's encounters with Cupid were a crucial feature of her image-construction and changed subtly throughout her reign. Covering a wide variety of material such as paintings, emblems and jewellery, but focusing mainly on poetry and drama, including works by Sidney, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Spenser, Kingsley-Smith illuminates the Protestant struggle to categorise and control desire and the ways in which Cupid disrupted this process. An original perspective on early modern desire, the book will appeal to anyone interested in the literature, drama, gender politics and art history of the English Renaissance.

The book explores the subject of Russian icons and their changes as well as the discussion on art that unfolded in Russia in the 15th and 16th centuries. Taking the representation of the Old Testament Trinity, attributed to Andrei Rublev, as its point of departure, it discusses and analyses the key issues of the iconography of the Holy Trinity and the process of the emergence and the dissemination of the imagery of God the Father and the New Testament Trinity in Russia. These issues are framed in the context of the debate that took place at the time within the Muscovite Orthodoxy, which concerned heresy, the relations with other denominations, the identity of the Russian Orthodox Church and the place of the icons in the existing canon.

Originally published in 1922, and first delivered in a slightly altered form as lectures at the University of London in 1911, this book gives a general review of 'the Church-Building Arts of England' from the Roman occupation until 1540. Prior studies the effects of major political and social events on English church art and architecture, and the ways in which art, particularly art located in churches and cathedrals, served as 'the vehicle of medieval civilization'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English medieval art and history.

In this study, first published in 2006, Henk Th. van Veen reassesses how Cosimo de' Medici represented himself in images during the course of his rule. Traditionally, Cosimo is seen to be posing as a republican prince in the images made of him during the early years of his reign; as his power grew, he represented himself as a proud dynastic and territorial ruler. By contrast, van Veen argues that Cosimo represented himself as a lofty ruler in the initial phase of his regime, but that from 1559 onwards he posed as a citizen-prince. Analyzing all of Cosimo's major commissions, both art and architecture, to support his argument, van Veen also examines historiographical and literary evidence, as well as the civic traditions, rites, and customs that Cosimo promoted in sixteenth-century Florence.

Leonardo da Vinci lived an itinerant life. Throughout his career - from its beginnings in the creative maelstrom of fifteenth-century Florence to his role as genius in residence at the court of the king of France - Leonardo created a kind of private universe for himself and his work. Leonardo also spent a great deal of time away from his easel, pursuing his interest in engineering, natural science, sculpture, poetry, fables, music and anatomy. In the time that another artist would finish a series of paintings, he would work on one. Sometimes a painting would take decades, accompanying him on his travels as he worked on other commissions. Leonardo's private world was both vibrant and active. It sometimes did and at other times did not interact with the wider world. But what emerged from it has established Leonardo as the definition of the Renaissance Man.

This book was first published in 2000. Antiquity and its Interpreters examines how the physical and textual remains of the ancient Romans were viewed and received by writers, artists, architects, and cultural makers of early modern Italy. The importance of antiquity in the Renaissance has long been acknowledged, but this volume reconsiders the complex relationship between the two cultures in light of recent scholarship in the field and a new appreciation and awareness of the act of history writing itself. The case studies analyze specific texts, the archaeological projects that made 'antiquity' available, the revival of art history and theory, the appropriation of antiquities to serve social ideologies, and the reception of this cultural phenomenon in modern historiography, among other topics. Demonstrating that the antique model was itself an artful construct, Antiquity and its Interpreters shows that the originality of Renaissance culture owed as much to ignorance about antiquity as to an understanding of it. It also provides a synthesis of seminal work that recognizes the reciprocal relationship of the Renaissance to antiquity.

First published in 2000, Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image was the first book to consider the role of Italian confraternities in the patronage of art. Eleven interdisciplinary essays analyze confraternal painting, sculpture, architecture, and dramatic spectacles by documenting the unique historical and ritual contexts in which they were experienced. Exploring the evolution of devotional practices, the roles of women and youths, the age's conception of charity, and the importance of confraternities in civic politics and urban design, this book offers illuminating approaches to one of the most dynamic forms of corporate patronage in early modern Italy.

Originally published in 1996, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy situates the art made between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries for the Franciscan nuns in its historical and religious contexts. Evaluating its production from sociological and intellectual perspectives, this study also addresses the discourse between spirituality, devotional practices, and aesthetic attitudes as formalised in the construction and decoration of the women's convents and in their didactic literature. Based on a range of sources, it integrates important primary texts, such as Saint Clare's rule, poetry composed by the nuns, financial records, and family history in the analysis of paintings, sculpture, and architecture commissioned by the order. The text also synthesises theories from anthropology, women's studies, history, and literature with traditional iconographical and social approaches from art history.

Vitruvius's Ten Books of Architecture, the only architectural treatise to have survived from antiquity, was the fountainhead of architectural theory in the Italian Renaissance. Offering theoretical and practical solutions to a wide variety of architectural issues, this treatise did not, however, address all of the questions that were of concern to early modern architects. Originally published in 1999, this study examines the Italian Renaissance architect's efforts to negotiate between imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400-1600, Alina Payne identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused. Ornament, she argues, facilitated a dialogue across disciplines and invited exchanges with literary and rhetorical practices. Payne's study also highlights the place of the architectural treatise in the text-based culture of the period and of architectural discourse in Renaissance thought.

Originally published in 1997, Visualizing Boccaccio represents an intriguing approach to the interpretation of Boccaccio's classic book of erotic tales, The Decameron. Using literary, critical, psychoanalytic, and film theories, Jill Ricketts offers a feminist critique of these stories, exposing tensions generated by sexual difference that motivate privilege and investigating the possibilities of change in power relations associated with that privilege. In a comparison of selected tales from The Decameron with works by Cimabue and Giotto, fifteenth-century manuscript illumination, a series of paintings by Botticelli, and Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinematic interpretation of the tales, Ricketts also demonstrates how the juxtaposition of verbal and visual renditions permit new interpretation of each of these works.

Albert Durer was born in Nuremberg on 21 May 1471. He began his career under the tutelage of Michael Wolgemut, the eminent German painter and printmaker, before travelling through Germany and to parts of Italy. In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg, where he remained until his death on 6 April 1528. Although an artist and a fluent and engaging writer, it is Durer's woodcuts and engravings that most demonstrate his enviable creative skills. Indeed, the editor of this volume, T. D. Barlow, argues that Durer can indeed be reckoned one of the all-time masters of his craft. Within this 1926 volume, Barlow has chronologically catalogued almost 300 of Durer's engravings; it is the result of many years' work. The finished product will be of great interest as a reference work for scholars engaged in the study of Durer's work and in the distribution of his impressions and their reproductions.

Winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize from the Renaissance Society of America Titian, one of the most successful painters of the Italian Renaissance, was credited by his contemporaries with painting a miracle-working image, the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross. Taking this unusual circumstance as a point of departure, Christopher J. Nygren revisits the scope and impact of Titian's life's work. Nygren shows how, motivated by his status as the creator of a miracle-working object, Titian played an active and essential role in reorienting the long tradition of Christian icons over the course of the sixteenth century. Drawing attention to Titian's unique status as a painter whose work was viewed as a conduit of divine grace, Nygren shows clearly how the artist appropriated, deployed, and reconfigured Christian icon painting. Specifically, he tracks how Titian continually readjusted his art to fit the shifting contours of religious and political reformations, and how these changes shaped Titian's conception of what made a devotionally efficacious image. The strategies that were successful in, say, 1516 were discarded by the 1540s, when his approach to icon painting underwent a radical revision. Therefore, this book not only tracks the career of one of the most important artists in the tradition of Western painting but also brings to light new information about how divergent agendas of religious, political, and artistic reform interacted over the long arc of the sixteenth century. Original and erudite, this book represents an important reassessment of Titan's approach to devotional subject matter. It will appeal to students and specialists as well as art aficionados interested in Titian and in religious painting.

In this study, Luba Freedman examines the revival of the twelve Olympian deities in the visual arts of sixteenth-century Italy. Renaissance representations of the Olympians as autonomous figures in paintings, sculpture and drawing were not easily integrated into a Christian society. While many patrons and artists venerated the ancient artworks for their artistic qualities, others, nourished by religious beliefs, felt compelled to adapt ancient representations to Christian subjects. These conflicting attitudes influenced the representation of deities intentionally made all'antica, often resulting in an interweaving of classical and non-classical elements that is alien to the original, ancient sources. This study, the first devoted to this problem, highlights how problematic it was during the Cinquecento to display and receive images of pagan gods, whether shaped by ancient or contemporary artists. It offers new insights into the uneven absorption of the classical heritage during the early modern era.

Raphael is one of the rare artists who have never gone out of fashion. Acclaimed during his lifetime, he was imitated by contemporaries and served as a model for painters through the nineteenth century. Because of the artist s renown, his works have continuously been subject to care, conservation, and restoration. In this book, Cathleen Hoeniger focuses on the legacy of Raphael s art: the historical trajectory or afterlife of the paintings themselves. The appreciation of Raphael was expressed and the restoration of his works debated in contemporary treatises, which provide a backdrop for probing the fortune of his paintings. What happened to his panel-paintings and frescoes in the centuries after his death in 1520? Some were lost altogether; others were severely damaged in natural disasters; and many were affected by uncontrolled climactic conditions, by travel from one place to another, and by the not always cautious and careful hands of restorers. This book reveals the five-hundred-year story of many of Raphael s most well-known paintings.

This volume directs a transdisciplinary gaze on the field of Renaissance Studies as currently practised in Europe, North America and beyond. The concept of the Renaissance as applied to a particular time and place is still regarded as being of central importance to the history of thought and culture. The essays collected here raise the question of the contemporary relevance of the Renaissance. What is the significance of doing Renaissance Studies now, not only in terms of the field per se, but in terms of what the field has to say to contemporary society? In the past, the field of Renaissance Studies has drawn themes and orientations from particular concerns of the moment, without losing its rigorous focus, and has given back crucial insights to those studying it. Could the same be said today? To facilitate a multifaceted answer, this book attempts to cover some of the principal areas of this interdisciplinary field within the humanities and social sciences. Contributors include specialists in history, languages and literatures, the history of science, cultural studies, art history, philosophy, sociology and politics.

A groundbreaking work on how the topic of scale provides an entirely new understanding of Inca material culture Although questions of form and style are fundamental to art history, the issue of scale has been surprisingly neglected. Yet, scale and scaled relationships are essential to the visual cultures of many societies from around the world, especially in the Andes. In Scale and the Incas, Andrew Hamilton presents a groundbreaking theoretical framework for analyzing scale, and then applies this approach to Inca art, architecture, and belief systems. The Incas were one of humanity's great civilizations, but their lack of a written language has prevented widespread appreciation of their sophisticated intellectual tradition. Expansive in scope, this book examines many famous works of Inca art including Machu Picchu and the Dumbarton Oaks tunic, more enigmatic artifacts like the Sayhuite Stone and Capacocha offerings, and a range of relatively unknown objects in diverse media including fiber, wood, feathers, stone, and metalwork. Ultimately, Hamilton demonstrates how the Incas used scale as an effective mode of expression in their vast multilingual and multiethnic empire. Lavishly illustrated with stunning color plates created by the author, the book's pages depict artifacts alongside scale markers and silhouettes of hands and bodies, allowing readers to gauge scale in multiple ways. The pioneering visual and theoretical arguments of Scale and the Incas not only rewrite understandings of Inca art, but also provide a benchmark for future studies of scale in art from other cultures.

Although much has been written about literary, cultural, and artistic influences in the work of Cervantes, at the time of this book's publication very little had been said about his interest in the classics. Frederick de Armas argues convincingly in this book that throughout his literary career, Cervantes was interested in the classical authors of Greece and Rome. Rather than looking at Cervantes' texts in relation to other literary works, this book demonstrates how Cervantes' experiences in Italy and his observation of Italian Renaissance art - particularly the works of Raphael at the Vatican - led him to create new images and structures in his works.