Very few artists can claim such lasting and worldwide fame and importance as Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). The nickname il divino ("the divine one") has been applied to him since the 1530s right through to today: his achievements as a sculptor, painter, and architect remain unparalleled and his creations are among the best-known artworks in the world. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition is devoted to the artist's graphic work, a testimony to his masterly command of line, form, and detail, from architectural studies to anatomically perfect figures. The book brings together some of the artist's finest drawings from museums and collections around the world as well as some of his own notes and revisions, offering stunning proximity not only to the ambition and scope of Michelangelo's practice but also his working process. A chapter with a compilation of newly attributed and reattributed drawings provides further insights into Michelangelo's varied graphic oeuvre and the ongoing exploration of his genius. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

This book is the first major essay volume in over a decade to focus on Tudor and Jacobean painting. Its interdisciplinary approach reflects the dynamic state of research in the field, utilising a range of methodologies in order to answer key art historical questions about the production and consumption of art in Britain in the 16th and early 17th century. The introduction sets the tone for the interdisciplinary approach that is taken throughout the volume .It brings together a discussion of the context for the production of painted images in Tudor and Jacobean England with a selection of technical images of twenty paintings that span the period and demonstrate the information that can be gained from material analysis of paintings. In further chapters, leading exponents of painting conservation and conservation science discuss the material practices of the period, using and explaining a range of analytical techniques, such as infrared reflectography and dendochronology. Questions of authorship and aspects of workshop practice are also discussed. As well as looking at specific artists and their studios, the authors take a broader view in order to capture information about the range of artistic production during the period, stretching from the production of medieval rood screens to the position of heraldic painters. The final section of the book addresses artistic patronage, from the commissioning of works by kings and courtiers, to the regional networks that developed during the period and the influence of a developing antiquarianism on the market for paintings. The book is lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, with reproductions of whole paintings and many details selected to amplify the text. It will be an essential source for those working in the fields of art history, conservation and material science, and of interest to lovers of British Tudor and Stuart painting.

Around 1505 Goossen Van der Weyden, Rogier's grandson, painted a monumental altarpiece depicting the various phases of Saint Dymphna's insane life. This Irish princess, who fled her incestuous father in the sixth century, was beheaded in the Kempen village of Geel. On account of her tragic end and uncompromising chastity, the princess was venerated from that moment on as the patron saint of the mentally ill. From the late Middle Ages, pilgrims flocked to Geel in large numbers to catch a glimpse of Saint Dymphna. They paid homage to the local celebrity in the hope that she would alleviate their mental problems. To this day, Geel is known for its unique treatment of the mentally ill, who are cared for at home by locals. Goossen Van der Weyden's altarpiece came into being at the height of Dymphna's popularity. The masterpiece was intended for the church of Tongerlo Abbey. Today this work is characterised by a remarkable iconography and an eventful history: a panel was lost and the triptych was even sawn into pieces. It ultimately came into the hands of a team of specialists from Belgium and abroad who subjected the altarpiece to a meticulous conservation over a period of three years, a colossal undertaking during which new techniques were used. This gave the conservators unprecedented insight into the mind, and workshop, of an early 16th century painter. This richly illustrated book is the result of years of research and contains essays by Till-Holger Borchert (Musea Brugge), Stephan Kemperdick (Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Katharina Van Cauteren (The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp), Lucinda Timmermans (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Patrick Allegaert (Dr. Guislain Museum, Ghent) and many others.

In 1908, an idea arose during a conversation between Dr Felix Peipers and Rudolf Steiner. Steiner had been lecturing on the healing nature of the Egyptian Goddess Isis, and drew a parallel to the Christian Madonna, Mary. From that, Steiner and Peipers started to formulate a sequence of fifteen Madonna images, primarily by Raphael, which Dr Peipers used effectively in meditative therapy with his patients. All fifteen images are included in the book. This book explores the nature of the Madonna images, addressing topics ranging from the mystery of seeing, beauty, truth and goodness, and Sophia, the divine feminine wisdom, to Isis and Madonna, working with images and Rudolf Steiner's healing mission. There is a special section on Raphael's Sistine Madonna. This book is a perfect complement to Raphael's Madonnas (edited by Christopher Bamford), a beautiful collection of colour Madonna images.

Studies on gender and sexuality have proliferated in the last decades, covering a wide spectrum of disciplines. This collection of essays offers a metanarrative of sexuality as it has been recently embedded in the art historical discourse of the European Renaissance. It revisits 'canonical' forms of visual culture, such as painting, sculpture and a number of emblematic manuscripts. The contributors focus on one image-either actual or thematic-and examine it against its historiographic assumptions. Through the use of interdisciplinary approaches, the essays propose to unmask the ideology(ies) of representation of sexuality and suggest a richer image of the ever-shifting identities of gender. The collection focuses on the Italian Renaissance, but also includes case studies from Germany and France.

An authoritative history of art history from its medieval origins to its modern predicaments In this authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher S. Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original and accessible account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline. Combining erudition with clarity, this book makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of art history.

The Italian Renaissance was a golden age for bronze sculpture, both on a grand scale-such as Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, or Cellini's Perseus-and more intimate statuettes and small-scale functional objects. Bronze, being both costly and luxurious, embodied power, authority, and eternity and emulated the classical past. Yet it was one of the easiest materials to recycle, especially at a time when the need for artillery was ever-present. Drawing on the latest research, and including some 200 superb images, The Culture of Bronze explores the material and making of bronzes and the interrelationships and collaboration between sculptor, foundry, and owner. Encompassing works made for domestic, religious, and civic environments, the book studies the symbolism of bronze, and the bronzes themselves, within their broader societal context. Features works from sculptors including Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacoisi (Antico), Benvenuto Cellini, Donatello, Adriano Fiorentino, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Giambologna, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Leone Leoni, Barthelemy Prieur, Benedetto da Rovezzano, Adriaen de Vries and Agostino Zoppo

Michaelangelo: Selected Readings is the long-awaited condensation of the five volume English article collection of Michaelangelo's life. Selections include: Life and Early Works; The Sistine Chapel; San Lorenzo; Tomb of Julius II and Other Works in Rome; and Drawings, Poetry and Miscellaneous Studies.

Despite the large number of monumental Last Supper frescoes which adorn refectories in Quattrocento Florence, until now no monograph has appeared in English on the Florentine Last Supper frescoes, nor has any study examined the perceptions of the original viewers. This study examines the rarely considered effect of gender on the profoundly contextualized perceptions of the male and female religious who viewed the Florentine Last Supper images in surprisingly different physical and cultural refectory environments. In addition to offering detailed visual analyses, the author draws on a broad spectrum of published and unpublished primary materials, including monastic rules, devotional tracts and reading materials, the constitutions and ordinazioni for individual houses, inventories from male and female communities and the Convent Suppression documents of the Archivio di Stato in Florence. By examining the original viewers' attitudes to images, their educational status, acculturated pieties, affective responses, levels of community, degrees of reclusion, and even the types of food eaten in the refectories, Hiller argues that the perceptions of these viewers of the Last Supper frescoes were intrinsically gendered.

Baroque depictions of violence are often dismissed as 'over the top' and 'excessive'. Their material richness and exciting visual complexity, together with the visceral engagement they demand from beholders, are usually explained in literature as reflecting the presumed violence of early modern society. This book explores the intersection between materiality, excess, and violence in seventeenth-century paintings through a close analysis of some of the most iconic works of the period. Baroque paintings expose or reference their materiality by insisting on various physical changes wrought through violence. This study approaches violence as the work of materiality, which has the potential to analogously stage pictorial surfaces as corporeal surfaces, where paint becomes flayed flesh, canvas threads ruptured skin, and red paint spilt blood.

Renaissance Children puts child portrait painting from the 15th and 16th century in the spotlight and tells the historical, pedagogical and artistic story of the most remarkable paintings. In the 15th and 16th century, the House of Habsburg ruled over a large part of Europe, and would turn into one of the most important European royal families in world history. In that time, Mechelen was the centre of education, where many Habsburg princes and princesses spent a large part of their youth, among whom Margaret of Austria and Charles V. Other powerful families also sent their children to Mechelen - the most famous of whom is perhaps Anne Boleyn, who would later become queen of England. Renaissance Children goes back to that Belgian city, where many portrait paintings of children originated. The book specifically focusses on child portraits of top artists, such as Jan Gossart, Bernard van Orley and Juan de Flandes. Includes unique paintings by Flemish Masters, such as Jan Gossart, Bernard van Orley and Juan de Flandes Insight into educational values and techniques from the 15th and 16th century The first publication about art and education at one the most important royal houses in European history

An authoritative history of art history from its medieval origins to its modern predicaments In this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline. The book shows that the pioneering chroniclers of the Italian Renaissance-Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari-measured every epoch against fixed standards of quality. Only in the Romantic era did art historians discover the virtues of medieval art, anticipating the relativism of the later nineteenth century, when art history learned to admire the art of all societies and to value every work as an index of its times. The major art historians of the modern era, however-Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Heinrich Wo lfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Ernst Gombrich-struggled to adapt their work to the rupture of artistic modernism, leading to the current predicaments of the discipline. Combining erudition with clarity, this book makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of art history.

This is an authoritative account of the Italian painter, architect and draughtsman, Raphael, one of the most influential artists of the High Renaissance. It is a lively study that examines his life, the areas of Italy that shaped his work and the historical context of the times. It explores his innovative style and his compassionate depictions of Madonna and child groups, his portraits and his works based on Bible stories and myths. It features a wonderful gallery of his paintings and drawings with expert analysis, and descriptions of his style and technique. It includes beautiful illustrations of Raphael's great works, those of the painters who influenced him, as well as artists who were inspired by him in turn. Artist, architect and draughtsman, one of the great masters and one of the most influential painters of the High Renaissance, Raphael produced a huge body of work during his short working life. His artistic development took place in Umbria, Rome and Florence, where he met Michelangelo and Leonardo, and was influenced by their dynamic and evocative images. Some of his subsequent work reflected his admiration for them. In Rome, he painted The School of Athens, a major fresco depicting the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the past and present. His beautiful style is reflected in the second part of the book in a gallery of around 300 of Raphael's major paintings and drawings, with an analysis of each in the context of his life, his technique and oeuvre. Raphael was one of the greatest artists of all time; his death in 1520 marked the end of the 16th century.

Hardly any other epoch in art history has been marked by as many profound changes as the Late Gothic was in the fifteenth century. Inspired by Netherlandish role models, depictions of light and shadow, body and space, became increasingly more realistic. Everyday life found entry into the arts. With the invention of printing, images and texts were distributed to an extent previously unheard of. Artists such as Nicolaus Gerhaert and Martin Schongauer became widely known and influenced the development of the visual arts throughout Europe and across all genres. Featuring a wide selection of works, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin present the first extensive exhibition of Late Gothic art in the German-speaking regions. Its comparison and contrast of the various genres turns the catalogue into a handbook for the arts at the threshold of the modern era.

Material culture is not static: objects are created, used and re-used, sometimes for centuries, and their lives interact with those of the people who made and used them. The essays in this book discuss the 'social lives' of objects in late-medieval and renaissance Italy, ranging from maiolica, through sculpture and prostitutes' jewellery, to miraculous painted images.
Demonstrates the continued life of these objects well past the deaths of their creators and patrons.
Contains a series of original contributions by young scholars, representing a broad range of approaches.

The frescoes of Peruzzi, Raphael and Sodoma still dazzle visitors to the Villa Farnesina, but they survive in a stripped-down environment bereft of its landscape, sealed so it cannot breathe. Turner takes you outside that box, restoring these canonical images to their original context, when each element joined in a productive conversation. He is the first to reconstruct the architect-painter Peruzzi's original, well-proportioned, well-appointed building and to re-visualize his lost facade decoration-erotic scenes and mythological figures who make it come alive and soar upward. More comprehensively than any previous scholar, he reintegrates painting, sculpture, architecture, garden design, topographical prints and drawings, archaeological discoveries and literature from the brilliant circle around the patron Agostino Chigi, the powerful banker who 'loved all virtuosi' and commissioned his villa-palazzo from the best talents in multiple arts. It can now be understood as a Palace of Venus, celebrating aesthetic, social and erotic pleasure.

Titian is the artist who best illustrates the revolution and triumph of colour, and hence the very art of the 16th century and beyond. The work of Titian (c. 1490-1576) represents the point of arrival for a whole pictorial tradition: his early emphasis on colour developed into the art of a mature and then elderly painter seeking to explore night and darkness, to dim hues, and to push the use of liquid and dusky tones to the very limit. A prolific painter and the head of a well-organised workshop, Titian was at the same time capable of perfectly meeting new tastes. By renewing and setting the standard for the official images and aesthetics of the ruling class of his day, he became the first truly European artist, praised to high heaven by his admirers. Particularly revealing is Ludovico Dolce's panegyric: 'the greatness and the power of Michelangelo, the sweetness and beauty of Raphael and the very colours of Nature herself'. Highly sought after by collectors, disputed by royal courts and pontiffs, the master from Cadore created works that are now on display in museums across the world. This volume exceptionally brings together some of Titian's greatest masterpieces, including his large altarpieces, in such a way as to illustrate the whole span of his career.

For four hundred years Caravaggio's (1571-1610) staggering artistic achievements have thrilled viewers, yet his volatile personal trajectory-the murder of Ranuccio Tomasini, the doubt surrounding Caravaggio's sexuality, the chain of events that began with his imprisonment on Malta and ended with his premature death-has long confounded historians. In a bravura performance, Andrew Graham-Dixon delves into the original Italian sources, presenting fresh details about Caravaggio's sex life, his many crimes and public brawls, and the most convincing account yet published of the painter's tragic death at the age of thirty-eight. With illuminating readings of Caravaggio's infamous religious paintings, which often depict prostitutes and poor people, Graham-Dixon immerses readers in the world of Italy at the height of the Counter-Reformation and creates a masterful profile of the mercurial painter's life and work.

A radical new perspective on the dynamics of urban life in Renaissance Italy The cities of Renaissance Italy comprised a network of forces shaping both the urban landscape and those who inhabited it. In this illuminating study, those complex relations are laid bare and explored through the lens of contemporary urban theory, providing new insights into the various urban centers of Italy's transition toward modernity. The book underscores how the design and structure of public space during this transformative period were intended to exercise a certain measure of authority over its citizens, citing the impact of architecture and street layout on everyday social practices. The ensuing chapters demonstrate how the character of public space became increasingly determined by the habits of its residents, for whom the streets served as the backdrop of their daily activities. Highlighting major hubs such as Rome, Florence, and Bologna, as well as other lesser-known settings, Street Life in Renaissance Italy offers a new look at this remarkable era.

The first half of this stunning new book explores Michelangelo's fascinating life through his family, friends, patrons and commissions. Born near Florence in 1475 Michelangelo grew up surrounded by new forms of architecture, painting and sculpture. His influences and achievements are explained clearly and comprehensively with informative and attractive illustrations throughout. The second half of the book contains a comprehensive gallery of over 300 of his major works of sculpture, painting and architecture. These superb reproductions are accompanied by thorough analysis of each artwork and its significance with the context of Michelangelo's life, his technique and his body of work as a whole.

We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a "mental space" between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as "things in themselves"--things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance "discovery" of the observable world. In Poetry in a World of Things, Rachel Eisendrath explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a mode of resistance to this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted highly artful descriptions that recovered the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This highly original book reclaims subjectivity as a decidedly poetic and human way of experiencing the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.

This volume explores the late medieval and early modern periods from the perspective of objects. While the agency of things has been studied in anthropology and archaeology, it is an innovative approach for art historical investigations. Each contributor takes as a point of departure active things: objects that were collected, exchanged, held in hand, carried on a body, assembled, cared for or pawned. Through a series of case studies set in various geographic locations, this volume examines a rich variety of systems throughout Europe and beyond. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1650, a time of change, conflict, and transformation. Innovations in color production transformed the material world of the Renaissance, especially in ceramics, cloth, and paint. Collectors across Europe prized colorful objects such as feathers and gemstones as material illustrations of foreign lands. The advances in technology and the increasing global circulation of colors led to new color terms enriching language. Color shapes an individual's experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Amy Buono is Assistant Professor at the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University , USA. Sven Dupre is Professor of History of Art, Science and Technology at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf