In 1428, a devastating fire destroyed a schoolhouse in the northern Italian city of Forli, leaving only a woodcut of the Madonna and Child that had been tacked to the classroom wall. The people of Forli carried that print - now known as the Madonna of the Fire - into their cathedral, where two centuries later a new chapel was built to enshrine it. In this book, Lisa Pon considers a cascade of moments in the Madonna of the Fire's cultural biography: when ink was impressed onto paper at a now-unknown date; when that sheet was recognized by Forli's people as miraculous; when it was enshrined in various tabernacles and chapels in the cathedral; when it or one of its copies was - and still is - carried in procession. In doing so, Pon offers an experiment in art historical inquiry that spans more than three centuries of making, remaking, and renewal.

The fruits of knowledge--such as books, data, and ideas--tend to generate far more attention than the ways in which knowledge is produced and acquired. Correcting this imbalance, "Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe" brings together a wide-ranging yet tightly integrated series of essays that explore how knowledge was obtained and demonstrated in Europe during an intellectually explosive four centuries, when standard methods of inquiry took shape across several fields of intellectual pursuit.
Composed by scholars in disciplines ranging from the history of science to art history to religious studies, the pieces collected here look at the production and consumption of knowledge as a social process within many different communities. They focus, in particular, on how the methods employed by scientists and intellectuals came to interact with the practices of craftspeople and practitioners to create new ways of knowing. Examining the role of texts, reading habits, painting methods, and countless other forms of knowledge making, this volume brilliantly illuminates the myriad ways these processes affected and were affected by the period's monumental shifts in culture and learning.

Now back in print, "the ultimate book-lover's gift book" (Los Angeles Times) In 1561-62 the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay (died 1575), imperial secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created Mira calligraphiae monumenta (Model Book of Calligraphy) as a demonstration of his own preeminence among scribes. Some thirty years later, Ferdinand's grandson, the Emperor Rudolf II, commissioned Europe's last great manuscript illuminator, Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600), to embellish the work. The resulting book is at once a treasury of extraordinary beauty and a landmark in the cultural debate between word and image. Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and historical scripts for a work that summarized all that had been learned about writing to date-a testament to the universal power of the written word. Hoefnagel, desiring to prove the superiority of his art over Bocskay's words, employed every resource of illusionism, color, and form to devise all manner of brilliant grotesques, from flowers, fruit, insects, and animals to monsters and masks.

Since 1900, the connections between art and technology with nature have become increasingly inextricable. Through a selection of innovative readings by international scholars, this book presents the first investigation of the intersections between art, technology and nature in post-medieval times. Transdisciplinary in approach, this volume's 14 essays explore art, technology and nature's shifting constellations that are discernible at the micro level and as part of a larger chronological pattern. Included are subjects ranging from Renaissance wooden dolls, science in the Italian art academies, and artisanal epistemologies in the followers of Leonardo, to Surrealism and its precursors in Mannerist grotesques and the Wunderkammer, eighteenth-century plant printing, the climate and its artistic presentations from Constable to Olafur Eliasson, and the hermeneutics of bioart. In their comprehensive introduction, editors Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam and Jacob Wamberg trace the Kantian heritage of radically separating art and technology, and inserting both at a distance to nature, suggesting this was a transient chapter in history. Thus, they argue, the present renegotiation between art, technology and nature is reminiscent of the ancient and medieval periods, in which art and technology were categorized as aspects of a common area of cultivated products and their methods (the Latin ars, the Greek techne), an area moreover supposed to imitate the creative forces of nature.

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.

Luxurious, beautiful, and portable, tapestry was the pre-eminent art form of the Tudor court. Henry VIII amassed an unrivaled collection over the course of his reign, and the author weaves the history of this magnificent collection into the life of its owner with an engaging narrative style. Now largely dispersed or destroyed, Henry's extensive inventory is here reassembled and reveals how, through tapestry, Henry identified himself with historic, religious, and mythological figures, putting England in dialogue-and competition-with the leading courts of Early Modern Europe while promoting his own religious and political agendas at home. Campbell's original account sheds new light on Tudor political and artistic culture and the court's response to Renaissance aesthetic ideals. Sumptuously illustrated with newly commissioned photographs, this stunning re-creation of Europe's greatest tapestry collection challenges the predominantly text-driven histories of the period and offers a fascinating new perspective on the life of Henry VIII. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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.

A brand new look at the extraordinary accomplishments of early modern Italian women artists This generously illustrated volume surveys a sweeping range of early modern Italian women artists, exploring their practice and paths to success within the male-dominated art world of the period. New attention to archival documents and detailed technical analyses of the beautiful paintings featured here-ranging from historical subjects to portraits and still lifes-offer new insight into the ways these women worked and their accomplishments. Essays and catalogue entries by an international team of distinguished art historians examine the works of Artemisia Gentileschi, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Fede Galizia, Elisabetta Sirani, Giovanna Garzoni, Rosalba Carriera, and other less known Italian women artists. Through these works of art in diverse media-from paintings to prints-the fascinating stories of early modern Italian women artists are revealed. Distributed for the Detroit Institute of Arts Exhibition Schedule: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT (September 30, 2021-January 9, 2022) Detroit Institute of Arts (February 6-May 29, 2022)

Casting fresh light on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British art, literature, ecological science and paganism, Decadent Ecology reveals the pervasive influence of decadence and paganism on modern understandings of nature and the environment, queer and feminist politics, national identities, and changing social hierarchies. Combining scholarship in the environmental humanities with aesthetic and literary theory, this interdisciplinary study digs into works by Simeon Solomon, Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, Robert Louis Stevenson, Vernon Lee, Michael Field, Arthur Machen and others to address trans-temporal, trans-species intimacy; the vagabondage of place; the erotics of decomposition; occult ecology; decadent feminism; and neo-paganism. Decadent Ecology reveals the mutually influential relationship of art and science during the formulation of modern ecological, environmental, evolutionary and trans-national discourses, while also highlighting the dissident dynamism of new and recuperative pagan spiritualities - primarily Celtic, Nordic-Germanic, Greco-Roman and Egyptian - in the framing of personal, social and national identities.

In this beautifully illustrated overview, Renee Worringer provides a clear and comprehensive account of the longevity, pragmatism, and flexibility of the Ottoman Empire in governing over vast territories and diverse peoples. A Short History of the Ottoman Empire uses clear headings, themes, text boxes, primary source translations, and maps to assist students in understanding the Empire's complex history.

This study sets out to place the remarkable cultural events of the early Renaissance in a full historical perspective. Dealing with both literary and visual art, it describes the world of Dante and Giotto and explains the circumstances in which their innovations became possible. The political, economical, cultural, and religious life of Tuscany between 1260 and 1320 is explored, and the importance of the relationship with the papal court emphasized. Papal patronage encouraged classical influence on the visual arts; but the Papacy also played a leading role in the political and economic life of the 'Guelf League', in which it was linked with Florence, Siena, Naples, and France. Papal intervention in Florence in 1301, leading to Dante's exile, and the Papacy's removal to France in 1305, created new conditions in which the masterpieces of Dante and Giotto were created. This is the first paperback edition of Florence, Rome and the Origins of the Renaissance, which was published in hardback in 1986.

"Professor Wittkower's....studies of humanist architecture are masterpieces of scholarship."-Sir Kenneth Clark, Architectural Review.

A fourth edition of the forty-year-old classic.

Focusing on the principal architects of that time-from Alberti to Palladio-this bestselling classic explains the true significance of certain architectural forms, bringing to light the connections between the architecture and culture of the period. With publication scheduled to coincide with that of Architectonics of Humanism, this important reference is superbly reproduced in a new, large square format.

The late RUDOLF WITTKOWER was a college professor and eminent scholar residing in London, England.

Michelangelo was one of the biggest international art stars of his time, but being Michelangelo was no easy thing: he was stalked by fans, lauded and lambasted by critics, and depicted in unauthorized portraits. Still Lives traces the process by which artists such as Michelangelo, Durer, and Titian became early modern celebrities. Artists had been subjects of biographies since antiquity, but Renaissance artists were the first whose faces were sometimes as recognizable as their art. Maria Loh shows how this transformation was aided by the rapid expansion of portraiture and self-portraiture as independent genres in painting and sculpture. She examines the challenges confronting artists in this new image economy: What did it mean to be an image maker haunted by one's own image? How did these changes affect the everyday realities of artists and their workshops? And how did images of artists contribute to the way they envisioned themselves as figures in a history that would outlive them? Richly illustrated, Still Lives is an original exploration of the invention of the artist portrait and a new form of secular stardom.

Few Renaissance Venetians saw the New World with their own eyes. As the print capital of early modern Europe, however, Venice developed a unique relationship to the Americas. Venetian editors, mapmakers, translators, writers, and cosmographers represented the New World at times as a place that the city's mariners had discovered before the Spanish, a world linked to Marco Polo's China, or another version of Venice, especially in the case of Tenochtitlan. Elizabeth Horodowich explores these various and distinctive modes of imagining the New World, including Venetian rhetorics of 'firstness', similitude, othering, comparison, and simultaneity generated through forms of textual and visual pastiche that linked the wider world to the Venetian lagoon. These wide-ranging stances allowed Venetians to argue for their different but equivalent participation in the Age of Encounters. Whereas historians have traditionally focused on the Spanish conquest and colonization of the New World, and the Dutch and English mapping of it, they have ignored the wide circulation of Venetian Americana. Horodowich demonstrates how with their printed texts and maps, Venetian newsmongers embraced a fertile tension between the distant and the close. In doing so, they played a crucial yet heretofore unrecognized role in the invention of America.

This is a long-awaited and authoritative reinterpretation of the early life and career of arguably the greatest artist in history. Author John T. Spike surveys Michelangelo's early life from birth to his early thirties, probing the thinking, artistic evolution and yearnings of a young man thoroughly convinced of his own exceptional talent. Spike explores Michelangelo's involvement in the most troubling controversies of his age, and recreates Florence and Rome with vivid sketches of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leonardo, Julius II and Machiavelli. This is a prodigiously informative and compelling account that will fulfil the need for a major Michelangelo biography for this generation and many to come.

Learn about key movements like impressionism, cubism and symbolism in The Art Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Art in this overview guide to the subject, brilliant for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Art Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Art, with: - More than 80 of the world's most remarkable artworks - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Art Book is a captivating introduction to painting, drawing, printing, sculpture, conceptual art, and performance art - from ancient history to the modern day - aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 80 of the world's most groundbreaking artworks by history's most influential painters, sculptors and artists, through exciting text and bold graphics. Your Art Questions, Simply Explained This fresh new guide examines the ideas that inspired masterpieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, and dozens more! If you thought it was difficult to learn about the defining movements, The Art Book presents key information in a clear layout. Find out about subject matters, techniques, and materials, and learn about the talented artists behind the great works, through superb mind maps and step-by-step summaries. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Art Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

A true story of vendetta and intrigue, triumph and tragedy, exile and repatriation, this book recounts the interwoven microhistories of Count Girolamo Della Torre, a feudal lord with a castle and other properties in the Friuli, and Giulia Bembo, grand-niece of Cardinal Pietro Bembo and daughter of Gian Matteo Bembo, a powerful Venetian senator with a distinguished career in service to the Venetian Republic. Their marriage in the mid-sixteenth century might be regarded as emblematic of the Venetian experience, with the metropole at the center of a fragmented empire: a Terraferma nobleman and the daughter of a Venetian senator, who raised their family in far off Crete in the stato da mar, in Venice itself, and in the Friuli and the Veneto in the stato da terra. The fortunes and misfortunes of the nine surviving Della Torre children and their descendants, tracked through the end of the Republic in 1797, are likewise emblematic of a change in feudal culture from clan solidarity to individualism and intrafamily strife, and ultimately, redemption. Despite the efforts by both the Della Torre and the Bembo families to preserve the patrimony through a succession of male heirs, the last survivor in the paternal bloodline of each was a daughter. This epic tale highlights the role of women in creating family networks and opens a precious window into a contentious period in which Venetian republican values clash with the deeply rooted feudal traditions of honor and blood feuds of the mainland.

16th-century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder redefined how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critical eye to mankind’s labours and pleasures, its foibles and rituals of daily life. Portraying landscapes, peasant life and biblical scenes in startling detail, Bruegel questioned how well we really know ourselves and also how we know, or visually read, others. This superbly illustrated volume, now in paperback, examines how Bruegel’s art and ideas enabled people to ponder what it meant to be human. It will appeal to all those interested in art and philosophy, the Renaissance and the painting of the Dutch Golden Age.

Evelyn Karet's in-depth study of the Antonio II Badile Album - the earliest known example of an art collection pasted onto the pages of a book - is both focused and broad in its appeal to those interested in the early modern era. The provenance of the album is traced from its assemblage to the seventeenth-century collection of Conte Lodovico Moscardo to its dismantling by the dealer Francis Matthiesen in the 1950s, establishing that the volume conserved in the Frits Lugt Collection is not an original but a replica produced by Matthiesen. Although Antonio II must be celebrated as the collector of the drawings, new paleographic analysis has identified the actual compiler of the album after Antonio's death providing a terminus post quem in the late 1530s or early 1540s. Karet enlarges the focus from the album itself to the historic tradition of collecting drawings in northern Italy in the early modern era before Vasari, for which the album provides a new point of reference. Throughout the book, Karet discusses the Badile family, examines the individual drawings in the book, investigates the contacts between artists and humanists, their rich, diverse collections and the humanist mind-set that fostered the appreciation of drawings. She explores notable early drawing collections in northern Italy and the role of northern Italy as a center of collection in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book concludes with two appendices: a reconstruction of the original album, including a discussion of the reconstruction process, suggestions about what the album originally looked like, and a page-by-page guide to its contents; and a detailed analysis of Francis Matthiesen's career. This book opens up new areas of inquiry into an overlooked subject.

The visual legacy of early modern cardinals constitutes a vast and extremely rich body of artworks, many of superb quality, in a variety of media, often by well-known artists and skilled craftsmen. Yet cardinal portraits have primarily been analyzed within biographical studies of the represented individual, in relation to the artists who created them, or within the broader genre of portraiture. Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal addresses questions surrounding the production, collection, and status of the cardinal portrait, covering diverse geographies and varied media. Examining the development of cardinals' imagery in terms of their multi-layered identities, this volume considers portraits of 'princes of the Church' as a specific cultural phenomenon reflecting cardinals' unique social and political position.

For the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death comes an immersive journey through five centuries of history to define the Leonardo mystique and uncover how the elusive Renaissance artist became a global pop icon. Virtually everyone would agree that Leonardo da Vinci was the most important artist of the High Renaissance. It was Leonardo who singlehandedly created the defining features of Western art: a realism based on subtle shading; depth using atmospheric effects; and dramatic contrasts between light and dark. But how did Leonardo, a painter of very few works who died in obscurity in France, become the internationally renowned icon he is today, with the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper the most visited artworks in the world, attracting nearly a billion visitors each year, and Salvator Mundi selling as the most expensive artwork of all time, for nearly half a billion dollars? This extraordinary volume, lavishly illustrated with 130 color images, is the first book to unravel these mysteries by diving deep into the art, literature, science, and politics of Europe from the Renaissance through today. It gives illuminating context to both Leonardo and his accomplishments; explores why Leonardo’s fame vastly overshadowed that of his contemporaries and disciples; and ultimately reveals why despite finishing very few works, his celebrity has survived, even thrived, through five centuries of history.

A beautiful book that argues artists were fascinated by still life painting considerably earlier than previously thought This eloquent and generously illustrated book asserts that artists were fascinated by and extremely skilled at still life significantly earlier than previously thought. Instead of the genre beginning in the early 17th century, noted scholar David Ekserdjian explores its origins in classical antiquity and the gradual re-emergence of still life in Renaissance painting. The author presents a visual anthology of finely executed flowers, fruit, food, household objects, and furnishings seen in the background of paintings. Paintings are reproduced in full and paired with detailed close-ups of still-life elements within the work. Ekserdjian further examines both the artistic and symbolic significance of a chosen detail, as well as information about each artist's career. Featured works include radiant paintings from Renaissance greats such as Da Vinci, Durer, Holbein, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Van Eyck, as well as the work of less-celebrated masters Barthelemy d'Eyck and Ortolano.

Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays on all aspects of the Renaissance submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference, organized originally in the early 1950s by scholars at Duke University and the universities of North and South Carolina. This year's annual volume, the forty-sixth to be published by the Conference and the fourth by Camden House, is the most substantial ever, containing twelve articles. Five articles on Shakespeare range from alchemy and hermaphroditism in Sonnet 20 to Leontes and skepticism in The Winter's Tale. There are two pieces on Milton, one involving his feminine representation of himself as author, the other attempting a breakthrough in interpretation of Samson Agonistes. There are also literary studies of Mucedorus, the most popular play in the English Renaissance, and of Spenser's two female protagonists, Britomart and Amoret. There are also an examination of the power struggles in an Italian convent, a new assessment of Stephen Gardiner's role in the Counter-Reformation in England, and a study of the early characteristics of Cromwell in the press of the English Civil War.

Writing about the Renaissance can be a daunting task. Not only do scholars disagree on what the Renaissance is, but they also disagree on whether or not it even took place. Margaret L. King's richly illustrated social history of the Renaissance succeeds as a trusted resource, introducing readers to Europe between 1300-1700, as well as to the problems of cultural renewal. A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe includes a detailed discussion of Burckhardt as well as new content on European contact with the Islamic world. This new edition also provides improved coverage of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. "Focus" features provide fascinating insights into the Renaissance era, and "Voices" sections introduce a wealth of primary sources. King's engaging narrative is enhanced by over 100 images, statistical tables, timelines, a glossary, and suggested readings.