This work is the only autobiography of a Renaissance artist. It vividly describes the artist's life at the Papal Court in Rome and at the Royal Court of France, including and eyewitness account of the Sack of Rome in 1527. Cellini also gives us intimate details of his career as a Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith.

Virgil has always been copied, studied, imitated, and revered as perhaps the greatest poet of the Latin language. He has been centrally important to the transmission of the classical tradition, and has played a unique role in European education. In recognition of the richness of his reception the fourth conferences in the joint Warburg Institute and Institute of Classical Studies series on the afterlife of the Classics was devoted to the afterlife of Virgil. This volume focuses on the reception of the Eclogues and the Aeneid in three main areas: Italian Renaissance poetry, scholarship and visual art; English responses to Virgil's poetry; and emerging literatures in Eastern Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contributors are Giulia Perucchi, M. Elisabeth Schwab, Clementina Marsico, David Quint, Marilena Caciorgna, Mate Vince, Hanna Paulouskaya, Tim Markey, Charles Martindale, and Francesca Bortoletti.

The Renaissance was a ground-breaking period in the history of drawing. Drawing became an art form in its own right rather than just being used in the preparation of other works of art. Prior to 1400 few drawings survive, and it is only in the fifteenth century that we can gain an understanding of how and why artists drew. The reasons for this are threefold: the growth in paper production meant it became more economical to draw; the demand by patrons for originality necessitated artists make more studies to explore new compositional ideas and poses; and, finally a widening interest in collecting meant that drawings were preserved. Drawing was an integral part of how Renaissance artists were trained. Thanks to this education artists were able to express their ideas with extraordinary fluency on paper. The spontaneity and rawness of many of the drawings in this arresting book reveal the minds and working practices of the artists. The use of a variety of drawing tools from red chalk to silverpoint shows how expressive a medium drawing could be. The drawings have been thematically arranged to demonstrate the major innovations that occurred during the Renaissance: artists captured movement, light, human pose and the natural world more convincingly than ever before. They also approached storytelling in a new way: the figures were infused with a new sense of humanity, and the development of perspective helped create realism.

This book traces the development and spread of architecture under the Mughal emperors. Professor Asher considers the entire scope of architecture built under the auspices of the imperial Mughals and their subjects. She looks in particular at the role of political and cultural ideology, the relationship between construction in the major cities and in the provinces and the continuing Mughal fascination with paradisical imagery that culminated in the construction of the Taj Mahal.

A brilliant colorist and masterful storyteller, Dutch mannerist Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638) wielded a remarkably skilled brush and the technical ability to show it off in intricate compositions. He took inspiration from a wide range of biblical and mythological sources to create imaginative, often quite erotic scenes. While such pictures were prized in Wtewael's time, more recently they were hidden away--behind other paintings, in leather folders on bookshelves, and in the reserves of great museums. This richly illustrated volume brings together more than fifty of Wtewael's finest paintings and drawings, from a small jewel-like picture on copper depicting Mars and Venus to large-scale mannerist showpieces such as The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Perseus and Andromeda. A pillar of the Utrecht community, Wtewael was engaged in business, religion, and politics as well as art. He adopted the exotic mannerist style, full of artifice and inventive manipulation, and continued to be fascinated by the challenge of creating sophisticated variations well into his maturity, when other Dutch artists had turned to naturalism. This book explores Wtewael's amazingly refined and detailed paintings and drawings, shedding light on his reputation, his life, and the conflicted times--marked by iconoclasm and strife--in which he thrived. Exhibition schedule: *Centraal Museum Utrecht, February 21-May 25, 2015*National Gallery of Art, Washington, June 28-October 4, 2015* Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 1, 2015-January 31, 2016

In this lucid account, Stephanie Porras charts the fascinating story of art in northern Europe during the Renaissance period (ca. 1400-1570). She explains how artists and patrons from the regions north of the Alps - the Low Countries, France, England, Germany - responded to an era of rapid political, social, economic, and religious change, while redefining the status of art. Porras discusses not only paintings by artists from Jan van Eyck to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, but also sculpture, architecture, prints, metalwork, embroidery, tapestry, and armor. Each chapter presents works from a roughly 20-year period and also focuses on a broad thematic issue, such as the flourishing of the print industry or the mobility of Northern artists and artworks. The author traces the influence of aristocratic courts as centers of artistic production and the rise of an urban merchant class, leading to the creation of new consumers and new art products. This book offers a richly illustrated narrative that allows readers to understand the progression, variety, and key conceptual developments of Northern Renaissance art.

Villa Madama, Raphael's late masterwork of architecture, landscape, and decoration for the Medici popes, is a paradigm of the Renaissance villa. The creation of this important, unfinished complex provides a remarkable case study for the nature of architectural invention. Drawing on little known poetry describing the villa while it was on the drawing board, as well as ground plans, letters, and antiquities once installed there, Yvonne Elet reveals the design process to have been a dynamic, collaborative effort involving humanists as well as architects. She explores design as a self-reflexive process, and the dialectic of text and architectural form, illuminating the relation of word and image in Renaissance architectural practice. Her revisionist account of architectural design as a process engaging different systems of knowledge, visual and verbal, has important implications for the relation of architecture and language, meaning in architecture, and the translation of idea into form.

"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.

Leo Steinberg was one of the most original art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretive risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures ranging from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His writings, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. Steinberg's perceptions evolved from long, hard looking at his objects of study. Almost everything he wrote included passages of formal analysis, but always put into the service of interpretation. This volume begins and ends with thematic essays on two fundamental precepts of Steinberg's art history: how dependence on textual authority mutes the visual truths of images and why artists routinely copy or adapt earlier artworks. In between are fourteen chapters on masterpieces of Renaissance and Baroque art, with bold and enlightening interpretations of works by Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Pontormo, El Greco, Caravaggio, Steen and, finally, Velazquez. Four chapters are devoted to some of Velazquez's best-known paintings, ending with the famously enigmatic Las Meninas. Renaissance and Baroque Art is the third volume in a series that presents Steinberg's writings, selected and edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz.

Unprecedented in scope, this fifth volume in the Architecture in Context series traces the rediscovery of Classical ideas and the emergence of the great artists and architects of late 15th- and early 16th-century Italy that led to the cultural peak characterized as the High Renaissance. It begins with a definition of Mannerism, the seminal development from the High Renaissance and the Baroque, associated with such dominant and influential figures as Raphael, Michelangelo, Vignola, Romano and Palladio. The political context within which Mannerism and its variants developed - from the Reformation to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War - is outlined before the major figures and achievements of Italian architecture in the period are explored in great depth and breadth. The journey then moves to France and architects and thinkers such as Pierre Lescot, Philibert de l'Orme, J.A. du Cerceau and Salomon de Brosse. These two major traditions - with the intercession of architects from the Netherlands who had ideas of their own - had a huge impact in central Europe, the ideas spreading across a vast area including modern-day Germany, Austria and Poland. After a digression to the notably eclectic England of Elizabeth I and James I, where pioneers such as Robert Smythson were overshadowed by the towering figure of Inigo Jones, Reformations ends with a survey of architecture in the Iberian peninsula and the colonies of Spain and Portugal, where the powerful influence of the Italian masters met a strong vernacular tradition. Profusely illustrated and with many specially drawn plans, this is a wide-ranging and detailed guide to the architecture of a period that continues to fascinate and engage us today.

Roston demonstrates that what emerges is not a fixed or monolithic pattern for each generation but a dynamic series of responses to shared challenges. The book relates leading English writers and literary modes to contemporary developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture, exploring by a close reading of the texts and the artistic works the insights such comparison offers. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Scholars have traditionally viewed the Italian Renaissance artist as a gifted, but poorly educated craftsman whose complex and demanding works were created with the assistance of a more educated advisor. These assumptions are, in part, based on research that has focused primarily on the artist's social rank and workshop training. In this volume, Angela Dressen explores the range of educational opportunities that were available to the Italian Renaissance artist. Considering artistic formation within the history of education, Dressen focuses on the training of highly skilled, average artists, revealing a general level of learning that was much more substantial than has been assumed. She emphasizes the role of mediators who had a particular interest in augmenting artists' knowledge, and highlights how artists used Latin and vernacular texts to gain additional knowledge that they avidly sought. Dressen's volume brings new insights into a topic at the intersection of early modern intellectual, educational, and art history.

This new edition of Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester is the most comprehensive scholarly edition of any of Leonardo's manuscripts. It contains a high-quality facsimile reproduction of the Codex, a new transcription and translation, accompanied by a paraphrase in modern language and a page-by-page commentary, and a series of interpretative essays. This important endeavour introduces important new research into the interpretation of the texts and images, on the setting of Leonardo's ideas in the context of ancient and medieval theories, and above all into the notable fortunes of the Codex within the sciences of astronomy, water, and the history of the earth, opening a new field of research into the impact of Leonardo as a scientist after his death.

A remarkable private collection formed over the last thirty years is the focus of this richly illustrated book that introduces the reader to English silver spanning a century and a half from a little before the Tudor age (1485-1603) to the threshold of the Civil War (1642-51). This was a period when England changed out of all recognition. At the beginning it was still essentially a medieval country dominated by an autocratic king and a rich and powerful Church; by the end of the period the Church had lost virtually all of its power and, with the execution of Charles I in 1649, the monarchy itself was abolished. To a degree, this changing world is mirrored in the styles represented by the silver featuring in the collection. Besides setting the silver against its social and historical background the book examines the wide range of techniques used by silversmiths at the time to shape and adorn silver objects.

In a major analysis of pictorial forms from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Christopher Braider argues that the painted image provides a metaphor and model for all other modes of expression in Western culture--particularly literature, philosophy, religion, and science. Because critics have conventionally explained visual images in terms of verbal texts (Scripture, heroic poetry, and myth), they have undervalued the impact of the pictorial naturalism practiced by painters from the fifteenth century onward and the fundamentally new conception of reality it conveys. By reinterpreting modern Western experience in light of northern "descriptive art," the author enriches our understanding of how both painted and written cultural texts shape our perceptions of the world at large. Throughout Braider draws on works by such painters as van der Weyden, Bruegel the Elder, Steen, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Poussin, and addresses such topics as the Incarnation of the Word in Christ, the elegiac foundations of Enlightenment aesthetics, and the rivalry between northern and southern art. His goal is not only to reexamine important aesthetic issues but also to offer a new perspective on the general intellectual and cultural history of the modern West. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Where previous accounts of the Renaissance have not fully acknowledged the role that music played in this decisive period of cultural history, Laurenz Lutteken merges historical music analysis with the analysis of the other arts to provide a richer context for the emergence and evolution of creative cultures across civilizations. This fascinating panorama foregrounds music as a substantial component of the era and considers musical works and practices in a wider cultural-historical context. Among the topics surveyed are music's relationship to antiquity, the position of music within systems of the arts, the emergence of the concept of the musical work, as well as music's relationship to the theory and practice of painting, literature, and architecture. What becomes clear is that the Renaissance gave rise to many musical concepts and practices that persist to this day, whether the figure of the composer, musical institutions, and modes of musical writing and memory.

The fourteen essays in this collection explore the dominance of patronage in Renaissance politics, religion, theatre, and artistic life.

Originally published in 1982.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Roston demonstrates that what emerges is not a fixed or monolithic pattern for each generation but a dynamic series of responses to shared challenges. The book relates leading English writers and literary modes to contemporary developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture, exploring by a close reading of the texts and the artistic works the insights such comparison offers.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The volume, starting from the celebrated and fascinating Portrait of a Lady from the Poldi Pezzoli museum in Milan, one of the greatest masterpieces of Florentine portraiture from the latter half of the 15th century, investigates the art of the Pollaiolo brothers: Antonio, a goldsmith, painter and sculptor, and the most famous of the three; Piero, a painter; and Silvestro, who died young and was soon forgotten. Based on in- depth scientific analyses and research conducted on the methods of execution and materials used for the wide range of different works issued from the Pollaiolo brothers' workshop, the volume presents paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, bronzes, and objects of applied art.

The Folly of the Cross is the fourth book in Richard Viladesau's series examining the aesthetics and theology of the cross through Christian history. Previous volumes have brought the story up through the Baroque era. This new book examines the reception of the message of the cross from the European Enlightenment to the turn of the twentieth century. The opening chapters set the stage in the transition from the Baroque to the Classical eras, describing the changing intellectual and cultural paradigms. Viladesau examines the theology of the cross in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the aesthetic mediation of the cross in music and the visual arts. He shows how the aesthetic treatment of the cross widely replaced the dogmatic treatment in the post-Enlightenment era, and how this thought was translated into popular spirituality, piety, and devotion. The Folly of the Cross shows how classical theology responded to the critiques of modern science, history, Biblical scholarship, and philosophy, and how both classical and modern theology served as the occasion for new forms of representation of Christ's passion in the arts and music.

The extraordinary technologic innovations and revolutionary machines from the collection of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci. This beautifully illustrated volume discovers the multiple interests of Leonardo the technologist, the architect, the man of science and, more generally, the history of Renaissance techniques.

The radical Protestantism that led to the suppression of religious drama in England also by the early years of Queen Elizabeth I destroyed perhaps the majority of ecclesiastical art in the country. The essays in this book provide analysis of the intellectual and religious motivation as well as new historical information concerning this phase of iconoclasm.

It was one of the most concentrated surges of creativity in the history of civilization. Between 1390 and 1537, Florence poured forth an astonishing stream of magnificent artworks. But Florentines did more during this brief period than create masterpieces. As citizens of a fractious republic threatened from below, without, and within, they also were driven to reimagine the political and ethical basis of their world, exploring the meaning and possibilities of liberty, virtue, and beauty. This vibrant era is brought to life in rich detail by noted historian Lawrence Rothfield in The Measure of Man. His highly readable account introduces readers to a city teeming with memorable individuals and audacious risk-takers, capable of producing works of the most serene beauty and acts of the most shocking violence. Rothfield's cast of characters includes book hunters and book burners, devout Christians and assassins, humble pharmacists and arrogant oligarchs, all caught up in a dramatic struggle--a tragic arc running from the cultural heights of republican idealism in the early fifteenth century, through the aesthetic flowerings and civic vicissitudes of the age of the Medici and Savonarola, to the brooding meditations of Machiavelli and Michelangelo over the fate of the dying republic.

With the patronage of the powerful Medici family, a canon of secular and religious work, and contributions to the celebrated Sistine Chapel, Sandro Botticelli (1444/45-1510) was well placed for fame. After his death, however, his work was eclipsed for some four hundred years. It wasn't until the 19th century that the painter began to gain major art-historical recognition. Today, Botticelli is hailed as a towering figure of the Florentine Early Renaissance. His secular works The Birth of Venus and Primavera, mostly read as an allegory of Spring, are among the most recognized paintings in the world, resplendent in their delicate details, graceful lines, and compositional balance. His arrangements are fluid yet poised, his figures serene yet sensual. Venus, in particular, is held up as art-historical icon of beauty: pale-skinned, delicately featured, soft with fecund promise. This essential introduction presents key works from Botticelli's oeuvre to understand the making of a Renaissance legend. Through the painter's most famous mythological and allegorical scenes, as well as his radiant religious works, we explore a mastery of figuration, movement, and line, which has gone on to inspire artists from Edgar Degas to Andy Warhol, Rene Magritte to Cindy Sherman.