In the later fifteenth century, the Kingdom of Hungary became the first land outside Italy to embrace the Renaissance, thanks to its king, Matthias Corvinus, and his humanist advisors, Janos Vitez and Janus Pannonius. Matthias created one of the most famous libraries in the Western World, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, rivaled in importance only by the Vatican. The court became home to many Italian humanists, and through his friendship with Lorenzo the Magnificent, Matthias obtained the services of such great Florentine artists as Andrea del Verrocchio, Benedetto da Maiano, and Filippino Lippi. After Matthias's death in 1490, interest in Renaissance art was continued by his widowed Neapolitan queen, Beatrice of Aragon, and by his successors Vladislav I and Louis II Jagiello.

The twenty-one essays collected in this volume provide a window onto recent research on the development of humanism and art in the Hungary of Matthias Corvinus and his successors. Richly illustrated with new photography, this book eloquently documents and explores the unique role played by the Hungarian court in the cultural history of Renaissance Europe.

`With his profound mastery of design, particularly of nudes, and with his grace in invention and composition, [Luca Signorelli] opened the way to the perfection of art.' These words, written by Giorgio Vasari in his celebrated Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, express the great admiration with which Signorelli was regarded by his contemporaries. Born in Cortona around 1450, Signorelli began his apprenticeship under Piero della Francesca before going on to study with the Florentine masters Andrea del Verrocchio, in whose workshop Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi and Pietro Perugino also learned their art. It was as Perugino's assistant that Signorelli realized his first known work, the Testament and Death of Moses in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, in 1482. Between that date and his death in 1523, Signorelli worked throughout central Italy for some of the greatest patrons of the age, earning himself a reputation as one of the leading painters of his generation. Recently restored - and here exquisitely reproduced - the extraordinary cycle of frescoes of the Last Judgment in the Cappella Nova at Orvieto, rightly considered Signorelli's finest masterpiece and a highpoint of the Italian Renaissance, reveal in all their force and glory the artist's skill as a colourist of the first rank and as one of the supreme exponents of the male nude. Illustrated with stunning post-restoration colour plates, this book is the first in fifty years to re-evaluate Signorelli's importance and to catalogue his oeuvre. In a detailed life of the artist, Laurence Kanter traces his career from its origins in Piero's workshop to his late work in Tuscany and Umbria. In the catalogue, Tom Henry presents the artist's entire painted oeuvre, including a number of paintings never before reproduced, while in a separate plate section he discusses twenty-one of his most important works. Together these contributions make up the most complete volume on Luca Signorelli ever published.

Botticelli is one of the most admired artists of the Renaissance period and his seductive Venus and graceful Primavera are among the world's most recognisable works of art. This catalogue raisonne of Botticelli's paintings offers more than two hundred full-colour illustrations and meticulous scholarship by the distinguished Renaissance art historian Frank Zollner , described by The Financial Times, when reviewing this book's previous edition, as "a fabulous, accessible scholar; his book has luscious reproductions and exquisite detail." Presented in chronological order, the facts of Botticelli's life and career are insightfully discussed against the background of the artistic upheaval that marked the Renaissance period. The artist's reinterpretations of ancient myths as well as his religious paintings are thoughtfully explored in this sumptuously illustrated volume, which will please scholars and delight lovers of fine art books everywhere.

Hailed as the greatest Venetian painter after Titian, Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480-1556) is known for a delightfully idiosyncratic artistic vision that has had special appeal for twentieth-century sensibilities. This book-which discusses Lotto's life and work-explores the way his formal and iconographic experiments set him apart from the mainstream culture of his time. The volume describes and reproduces paintings in most of the genres in which Lotto worked, including devotional paintings, altarpieces, portraits, and mythologies. These are arranged in chronological order from his beginnings as a pupil of Giovanni Bellini through the brilliant work of his maturity on which his reputation was based, to the end of his career in a religious community on the Adriatic coast. Focusing on his autograph paintings, the book presents such masterpieces as Saint Jerome in the Wilderness and Portrait of Andrea Odoni. The authors-David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey, Mauro Lucco, and other eminent scholars-draw on a large number of original documents, including Lotto's will, his letters to a confraternity in Bergamo, and his meticulously kept account books. They discuss not only Lotto's biography and inspiration but also his mastery of allegory, his possible sympathy with the Protestant Reformation, the patrons of his altarpieces, and the so-called Lotto carpets. This beautiful book is the catalogue for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, d.c., that will run from 2 November 1997 to 1 March 1998. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington

This brilliant two-volume publication joins an art historian's memoir with a biography of the mysterious painter Giorgione. No artist of the Renaissance is more elusive than Giorgione. Authentic paintings are rare, perhaps nonexistent, and little is known about his life, although speculation abounds in the scholarly literature devoted to fleshing out an identity for him. As fictive as he is real, as loved by art forgers as by art experts, this strange, shadowy figure is the subject of Seeing Double, the first of the two volumes. Thinking Twice, the second volume, presents Giorgione's contemporary counterpart, an unemployed, melancholic art historian who cannot connect with the magnificent art and architecture surrounding her in Florence. Delivering a series of imaginary slide lectures, she doubles back over her past, searching for transformative experience in Europe and back home in the US. Her search leads to humor-laced musings about the pitfalls of an elite education in art history. To enlarge her perspective, she turns to novels and poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Henry James, and William Gaddis to name just a few of the authors called upon for guidance. The wide-range and verve of this double book will surprise even seasoned aficionados of art history. Brimming with insights, it shows there is nothing more difficult--nothing more rewarding--than trying to be true to both art and life.

Although we live in an era when vast sums of money are lavished on wedding festivities, we are not unique: in Renaissance Italy, middle- and upper-class families spent enormous amounts on marriages that were intended to establish or consolidate the status and lineage of one or both of the respective families. This lavishly illustrated book explores the social and economic background to marriage in Renaissance Florence and discusses the objects--paintings, sculptures, furniture, jewelry, clothing, and household items--associated with marriage and ongoing family life. By analyzing urban palaces and their furnishings, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio shows how families interacted with art on a daily basis. This began at marriage, when the bride brought a dowry and the groom provided the home and its furnishings. It continued with the accumulation of objects during the marriage and the birth of children. And it ended with the redistribution of these same objects at death. Through the examination of art, documents, literature, and more, this lively book traces the life cycle of the Florentine Renaissance family through the art and objects that surrounded them in their home.

Accompanies the exhibition From Bosch's Stable: Hieronymous Bosch and the Adoration of the Magi, at the Noordbrabants Museum from December 12, 2018 to March 10, 2019. Marks the rare display of the Adoration of the Magi from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) in the city where Bosch was born. Presents the works in an accessible way for both art historians and the general public. In Christian tradition, the feast of the Epiphany marks the revelation of the divine nature of Jesus to the three kings from the East. This feast was an extremely popular theme in fine art around the year 1500. Numerous artists depicted the Adoration of the Magi with exotic figures, elaborate clothing, and ornate objects. Hieronymus Bosch portrayed the theme a number of times. Two paintings known to be entirely by him have survived: one of them in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and the other in the Museo del Prado (Madrid). Both paintings were copied and imitated from early on. This early appreciation from Bosch's own time is striking. Over thirty early copies remain, making Bosch's interpretation one of the most popular compositions from the Low Countries of the later Middle Ages. The Bosch Research and Conservation Project has studied a number of these copies very closely. These important works by Bosch, and their influence, are examined here in their cultural and historic context.

Epic Arts in Renaissance France studies the relationship between epic literature and other art forms such as painting, sculpture, and architecture. Why, the book asks, the epic heroes and themes so ubiquitous in French Renaissance art are widely celebrated whereas the same period's literary epics, frequently maligned, now go unread? To explore this paradox, the book investigates a number of epic building sites, i.e. specific situations in which literary epics either become the basis for realisations in other art forms or somehow contest or compete with them. Beginning with a detour about the appearance of epic heroes (Odysseus and Aeneas) on marriage chests in fifteenth-century Florence, the study traces how French communities of readers, writers, translators, and artists reinvent epic forms in their own-or their patron's-image. Following extended discussion of three galleries in different regions of France, which all depicted key scenes from the classical epics of Homer, Virgil, and Lucan, the book turns to epics written in the period. Chapters of Epic Arts focus on Etienne Dolet's Fata, which praise the victories (but also failures) of Francois Ier in ways that make it both a continuum of Fontainebleau and a response to the celebration of French defeat in foreign paintings; on Ronsard's Franciade, whose muse was depicted on the facade of the Louvre and whose story was eventually taken up in a long series of paintings by Toussaint Dubreuil; and on Agrippa d'Aubigne's Protestant Tragiques, which allude to, and frequently function as graffiti over, Catholic works of art in Paris and Rome. Situated at the frontier of literary criticism and art history, Epic Arts in Renaissance France is a compelling call for a revaluation of French epic literature and indeed of how we read.

Leonardo da Vinci: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works covers his life and work, beginning with his paintings, including several he never completed, that form the core of his artistic oeuvre. The extensive A to Z section includes several hundred entries. The bibliography provides a comprehensive list of publications concerning his life and work.

Art in England fills a void in the scholarship of both English and medieval art by offering the first single volume overview of artistic movements in Medieval and Early Renaissance England. Grounded in history and using the chronology of the reign of monarchs as a structure, it is contextual and comprehensive, revealing unobserved threads of continuity, patterns of intention and unique qualities that run through English art of the medieval millennium. By placing the English movement in a European context, this book brings to light many ingenious innovations that focused studies tend not to recognize and offers a fresh look at the movement as a whole. The media studied include architecture and related sculpture, both ecclesiastical and secular; tomb monuments; murals, panel paintings, altarpieces, and portraits; manuscript illuminations; textiles; and art by English artists and by foreign artists commissioned by English patrons.

In late 15th-century Italy, there was a growing demand for goods of all types, including art. Painting under Pressure shows how the increased desire for art objects exerted significant pressure on highly sought-after painters. Michelle O'Malley analyzes the lives and works of four artists: Alessandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, and Pietro Perugino. She considers network systems, production practices, economic concepts, and workshop input to demonstrate the consequences of high demand on some of the most respected artists of the time. In this fascinating and incisive book, O'Malley asks how painters approached the manufacture of large bodies of commissioned work, how they made day-to-day decisions about design and the application of pigments, and how serial production related to creating work for commissions, in addition to questions of economics. Using documentary evidence about price, scientific evidence about production, and formal analysis about appearance, the book demonstrates Renaissance business practices and shows the individual approaches artists took to producing excellence and meeting high demand.

The first full-length study of the impact of the discovery of the Americas on Italian Renaissance art and culture, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence demonstrates that the Medici grand dukes of Florence were not only great patrons of artists but also early conservators of American culture. In collecting New World objects such as featherwork, codices, turquoise, and live plants and animals, the Medici grand dukes undertook a "vicarious conquest" of the Americas. As a result of their efforts, Renaissance Florence boasted one of the largest collections of objects from the New World as well as representations of the Americas in a variety of media. Through a close examination of archival sources, including inventories and Medici letters, Lia Markey uncovers the provenance, history, and meaning of goods from and images of the Americas in Medici collections, and she shows how these novelties were incorporated into the culture of the Florentine court. More than just a study of the discoveries themselves, this volume is a vivid exploration of the New World as it existed in the minds of the Medici and their contemporaries. Scholars of Italian and American art history will especially welcome and benefit from Markey's insight.

El Greco, early modern painting, Mediterranean studies, Renaissance art, transmaterialities of religious imagery

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.

Richly illustrated, and featuring detailed descriptions of works by pivotal figures in the Italian Renaissance, this enlightening volume traces the development of art and architecture throughout the Italian peninsula in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. * A smart, elegant, and jargon-free analysis of the Italian Renaissance what it was, what it means, and why we should study it * Provides a sustained discussion of many great works of Renaissance art that will significantly enhance readers understanding of the period * Focuses on Renaissance art and architecture as it developed throughout the Italian peninsula, from Venice to Sicily * Situates the Italian Renaissance in the wider context of the history of art * Includes detailed interpretation of works by a host of pivotal Renaissance artists, both well and lesser known

Perhaps the most imaginative writer on art in the sixteenth century, Giovan Paolo Lomazzo was also an ambitious painter, well-informed critic, and sarcastic wit: he proved a lively adversary for Vasari, Dolce, and even Aretino. His greatest contribution to the history of art is his special treatment of expression and, in its more mature form, self-expression. The image of the Temple of Painting embodies all his essential thoughts about art. Housing statues of Michelangelo, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Leonardo, Raphael, Mantegna, and Titian--paradigms of style and, for Lomazzo, the seven greatest painters in the world--it guides the novice in the discovery of a unique style that matches his own temperament. Idea of the Temple of Painting (1590), written as a pithy introduction to the encyclopedic Trattato dell'arte della pittura, demonstrates why art is all about expressing an individual style or maniera. Neither spontaneous nor unconscious, style reflects the rational process of adapting all the elements of painting into a harmonious whole. This treatise also represents a rare historical document. Presiding over an original confraternity of artists and humanists, Lomazzo actively participated in the Milan art scene, which is vividly brought to life by his personal commentaries. This is the first translation of any of his treatises into English.

Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici was the head of the ruling political party at the apogee of the golden age of Quattrocento Florence. Born in 1449, his life was shaped by privilege and responsibility, and his deeds as a statesman were legendary even while he lived. At his death he was master of the largest and most famous private palace in Florence, a building crammed full of the household goods of four generations of Medici as well as the most extraordinary collections of art, antiquities, books, jewelry, coins, cameos, and rare vases in private hands. His heirs undertook an inventory of the estate, a usual procedure following the demise of an important head of family. An anonymous clerk, pen and paper in hand, walked through the palace from room to room, counting and recording the barrels of wine and the water urns; opening cabinets and chests; unfolding and examining clothes, fabrics, and tapestries; describing the paintings he saw on the walls; and unlocking jewel boxes and weighing and evaluating coins, medals, necklaces, brooches, rings, and cameos. The original document he produced has been lost, but a copy was made by another clerk in 1512. Richard Stapleford's critical translation of this document offers the reader a window onto the world of the Medici family, their palace, and the material culture that surrounded them.

Cuba dominates the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, fixed between the great continents to the north and to the south, and has long served as a bridge between the Old World and the New. First visited by Christopher Columbus in 1492, its history of interaction with the Old World of Europe is among the longest in the Americas, and its architecture bears testament to this: Cuba is home to some of the most ancient cities and towns in the western hemisphere. As a result, the country once known as the pearl of the Antilles, stands now as a treasure chest of alluring historic architecture seasoned by European precedents mixed with colonial and Caribbean spice and boasts an extraordinary number of UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites, from the historic center of Old Havana with its original city walls and the Castillo de la Real Fuerza the oldest extant colonial fortress in the Americas to the sixteenth-century city of Trinidad, within the central Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, recognized by historians and scholars as a triumph of historic preservation and whose maze of pastel mansions and churches forms one of the best collections of colonial architecture to be found anywhere. From Old Havana to Santiago de Cuba, Old Cuba offers an intimate look at the historic architecture the houses, apartments, monuments, charming public spaces, and centuries-old churches of this storied country.