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

Published in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, this engrossing publication accompanies an exhibition the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Raphael and the Pope’s Librarian brings together for the first time one of the most fascinating works in the museum’s collection – the Gardner Museum’s portrait of papal librarian Tommaso Inghirami – and a painting from the Vatican Museums depicting an episode in this life. This book tells the story of the first Raphael in America and explores Inghirami’s fascinating career. Nearly five centuries after his death in 1520, Raphael’s fame remains undiminished. Crowned “prince of painters� by Giorgio Vasari, he inspired both artists of his own time and others for centuries afterward. According to the celebrated writer Henry James, Raphael’s work was “semi-sacred.� Gilded Age American collectors swooned over his iconic religious images and masterly brushwork, and James’s contemporaries feverishly tried and failed to acquire Raphael’s rare paintings in a market flooded with copies, and the occasional forgery. Isabella Stewart Gardner took up the challenge, determined to buy a magnificent Madonna by Raphael. Following her gripping hunt, Gardner was the first collector to bring a work by Raphael to America, where its unexpected subject led to a mixed reception and generated surprising rumors in the years to follow. Despite any hesitations over the painting’s beauty, Gardner named an entire gallery of her new Boston museum after the Renaissance master and installed many of her most celebrated works of art around his portrait of the rotund cleric Tommaso Inghirami. Described by Erasmus as “the Cicero of our era�, Inghirami was a celebrity in the high Renaissance esteemed for his profound erudition and theatrical abilities. His unparalleled knowledge and understanding of classics made him the ideal choice for Vatican Librarian under Pope Julius II. Yet he achieved a lasting fame on stage, playing a leading role in the revival of ancient theatre and acquiring the nickname “Fedra� after starring as the lovesick Queen Athens in Seneca’s Greek tragedy Hippolytus (Phaedra). Inghirami’s friend Raphael offered him another role, recasting the Renaissance humanist as the congenial philosopher Epicurius in his legendary School of Athens fresco before memorializing him in the more worldly painted portrait at the center of this exhibition. Raphael and the Pope’s Librarian is the latest in the Close Up series of books accompanying a Gardner exhibition series, each installment of which sheds new light on an outstanding work of art in the permanent collection.

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

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

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

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

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

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), considered by many to be the greatest of Spain's great painters, spent his crucial formative years in Seville, learning his craft and producing many early masterpieces. When he departed from his native city as a young man of 24, Velazquez's accomplishments were already impressive: he left to assume the position of Court Painter to Philip IV of Spain in Madrid. In this beautifully illustrated book, an international team of art scholars explores the importance of Seville for Velazquez. Discussions range across many topics, including Velazquez's education and training, Sevillian culture and Catholic theology, picaresque literature, and Velazquez's subject matter-portraiture, sacred subjects, and the bodegones (kitchen and tavern scenes with prominent still life) in which Velazquez developed his distinctive naturalistic style. The Seville of Velazquez's youth was the chief Spanish port of trade with the New World and a major religious center that witnessed the passionate controversy over the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, a subject depicted in an early Velazquez painting. Other surviving paintings from the artist's Sevillian years include his first dated painting, Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618), and his famous masterpiece Water-seller of Seville. This book serves as the catalogue for a major exhibition on Velazquez's early work to be held at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, August 8 through October 20, 1996. The exhibit also includes a selection of influential works by Velazquez's important contemporaries, such as the sculptor Montanes and painters Alonso Cano and Ribalta. Distributed by Yale University Press for National Galleries of Scotland

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

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

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance," was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.
This new translation, specially commissioned for the Oxford World's Classics series, contains thirty-six of the most important lives. Fully annotated and with a brand new package, Lives of the Artists is an invaluable classic to add to your collection.
About the Series For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The first book to explore the role of images in philosophical thought and teaching in the early modern period Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, The Art of Philosophy shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction. From frontispieces of books to monumental prints created by philosophers in collaboration with renowned artists, Susanna Berger examines visual representations of philosophy and overturns prevailing assumptions about the limited function of the visual in European intellectual history. Rather than merely illustrating already existing philosophical concepts, visual images generated new knowledge for both Aristotelian thinkers and anti-Aristotelians, such as Descartes and Hobbes. Printmaking and drawing played a decisive role in discoveries that led to a move away from the authority of Aristotle in the seventeenth century. Berger interprets visual art from printed books, student lecture notebooks, alba amicorum (friendship albums), broadsides, and paintings, and examines the work of such artists as Pietro Testa, Leonard Gaultier, Abraham Bosse, Durer, and Rembrandt. In particular, she focuses on the rise and decline of the "plural image," a genre that was popular among early modern philosophers. Plural images brought multiple images together on the same page, often in order to visualize systems of logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, or moral philosophy. Featuring previously unpublished prints and drawings from the early modern period and lavish gatefolds, The Art of Philosophy reveals the essential connections between visual commentary and philosophical thought.

Early modern art features a remarkable fascination with ornament, both as decorative device and compositional strategy, across artistic media and genres. Interestingly, the inventive, elegant manifestations of ornament in the art of the period often include layers of disquieting paradoxes, creating tensions - monstrosities even - that manifest themselves in a variety of ways. In some cases, dichotomies (between order and chaos, artificiality and nature, rational logic and imaginative creativity, etc.) may emerge. Elsewhere, a sense of agitation undermines structures of statuesque control or erupts into wild, unruly displays of constant genesis. The monstrosity of ornament is brought into play through strategies of hybridity and metamorphosis, or by the handling of scale, proportion, and space in ambiguous and discomforting ways that break with the laws of physical reality. An interest in strange exaggeration and curious artifice allows for such colossal ornamental attitude to thrive within early modern art.

The Cambridge Companion to Giotto serves as an introduction to one of the most important masters of early Italian art. Providing an overview of his life and career, this 2003 volume offers essays by leading authorities on the critical reception of the artist, an analysis of workshop practices of the period, the complexities of religious and secular patronage, Giotto's innovations in painting and architecture, and close readings of his most celebrated work, the frescoes of the Arena Chapel in Padua. Designed to serve as an essential resource for students of late medieval and early Renaissance Italy, The Cambridge Companion to Giotto also provides a chronology of the artist's life and a select but comprehensive bibliography.

Artists like Botticelli, Holbein, Leonardo, Durer, and Michelangelo and works such as the Last Supper fresco and the monumental marble statue of David, are familiar symbols of the Renaissance. But who were these artists, why did they produce such memorable images, and how would their original beholders have viewed these objects? Was the Renaissance only about great masters and masterpieces, or were women artists and patrons also involved? And what about the "minor" pieces that Renaissance men and women would have encountered in homes, churches and civic spaces? This Very Short Introduction answers such questions by considering both famous and lesser-known artists, patrons, and works of art within the cultural and historical context of Renaissance Europe. The volume provides a broad cultural and historical context for some of the Renaissance's most famous artists and works of art. It also explores forgotten aspects of Renaissance art, such as objects made for the home and women as artists and patrons. Considering Renaissance art produced in both Northern and Southern Europe, rather than focusing on just one region, the book introduces readers to a variety of approaches to the study of Renaissance art, from social history to formal analysis.

This substantial and beautifully illustrated volume documents the National Gallery's unrivaled collection of Venetian paintings created between 1540 and 1600, including some of the greatest works commissioned by the city from Veronese, Titian, Tintoretto, and the Bassano family. The collection is so rich and varied that the book serves as an introduction to all the major types of painting produced in Venice during this period--the altarpiece, portrait, confraternity chapel decoration, ceiling and furniture painting, and paintings for the portego (long central hall) of a palace. Among the many important works included are Titian's Vendramin Family Venerating a Relic of the True Cross, Veronese's Family of Darius and four Allegories, and Tintoretto's Origin of the Milky Way. Nicholas Penny provides comprehensive and detailed information reflecting the most up-to-date scholarship on the paintings--many of which have passed through some of the greatest collections in Europe--along with a thorough discussion of their provenance. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

This volume comprises the fullest and most detailed catalogue of the drawings by and after Michelangelo in the Ashmolean Museum. It is one of the most important collections of drawings by this artist, which also includes drawings after his own by contemporaries that shed light on lost works as well as the artist's reputation and influence during the sixteenth century. The introduction provides a history of Michelangelo's drawings generally and also surveys the various types of drawing practised by Michelangelo and an account of his development as a draughtsman. Most of the drawings in the Ashmolean Museum came from the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence, and this book contains a detailed appendix that traces the histories of all of the drawings by or after Michelangelo that Lawrence owned, both before he acquired them and after they were dispersed.

This is the first English translation of Francesco Sansovino's (1521-1586) celebrated guide to Venice, which was first published in 1561. One of the earliest books to describe the monuments of Venice for inquisitive travelers, Sansovino's guide was written at a time when St. Mark's Piazza was in the process of taking the form we see today. With in-depth descriptions of the buildings created by the author's father, noted sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), including the Mint, Library, and Loggetta, the volume presents a vivid portrait of Venice during a particularly rich moment in the city's history. An engaging introduction and scholarly annotations to the original text provide the modern reader with an appreciation of the history of this great city as well as a practical guide for seeking out and enjoying its Renaissance treasures.

This collection of essays by 26 Renaissance scholars from Europe and the United States represents the outcome of an international conference which took place at The National Museum of Denmark and the castles of Kronborg and Frederiksborg on 28 September 1 October 2006 as part of the Danish Renaissance Festival 2006 ("Renossance 2006"). The agenda of the conference was to reevaluate and re-present art and architecture in the Danish realms during the 16th and early 17th century for an international audience, given the fact that this material has often been left in the blind spot of interest in general surveys of the Renaissance. Moreover, it was essential to integrate the cases presented into recent discourses, aiming at resetting the theoretical or methodological frameworks of the field. Accordingly, the contributions represent different approaches, ranging from more universal issues to close readings of individual problems or monuments with emphasis on examples produced for circles, preferentially the elites, in the former monarchy of Denmark-Norway, yet including to no less extent works of art, agencies and activities related to areas, individuals or parallel initiatives beyond the narrow national frames. From an overall perspective several of the articles thus seek to open for a more European or even Global vision of the periods artistic physiognomy, basically questioning as well the notion of a specific 'Danish Renaissance', anchored in the art historical tradition of the 19th century. The general introduction is followed by 25 essays, arranged in four sections: "Reframing the Frames", "Lutheran Rhetorics", "Catalysts to Change" and "Rex Triumphans: The Unsurpassed

"Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy" represents a departure from previous studies, both in its focus on demand and in its emphasis on the history of the material culture of the West. By demonstrating that the roots of modern consumer society can be found in Renaissance Italy, Richard Goldthwaite offers a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the history of modern consumerism--a movement which he regards as a positive force for the formation of new attitudes about things that is a defining characteristic of modern culture.

Lorenzo de' Medici was a key figure in the creation of the Renaissance. An important patron of the arts in fifteenth century Florence, he was also a passionate collector of objects from antiquity and the post-antique period. His activities as a collector are documented in a group of 173 letters, previously unknown and published here for the first time, which provide the most complete picture of a well-known and historically important collector. As revealed in these letters, Lorenzo acquired sculpture to embellish his palace, but his real predilection was for small objects: coins, hardstone vases, and gems. His main source was the Roman dealer Giovanni Ciampolini, whose scandalous behavior demonstrates the gamesmanship of the art market. This book reveals how objects were studied, where they were displayed, the criteria for their selection, and their monetary worth.

A definitive overview of one of the most celebrated figures of the Italian Renaissance Among the great figures of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael (1483-1520) is unarguably the artist who has been most widely and consistently admired across the centuries. He had an extraordinary and perhaps unrivaled capacity for self-reinvention-as he progressed from Umbria to Florence and Rome-and an ability to draw strength from the other great artists around him, seemingly growing in stature the more daunting the competition became. This insightful, impeccably researched, and comprehensive volume chronicles the progress of his career in all its richness and complexity. Sumptuous production values and generous illustrations go hand in hand with its rigorous and wide-ranging scholarship. The essays explore Raphael's paintings and drawings, his frescoes in the Vatican Stanze, his designs for tapestries, sculptures and prints, and his engagement with architecture. Detailed and authoritative catalogue entries examine many of Raphael's finest works. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The National Gallery, London April 9-July 31, 2022

"Singularly interesting and stimulating. . . . A passionate and original work of scholarship."--Richard Wollheim, "Times Literary Supplement "
"With the publication [of "Rembrandt's Enterprise"], Svetlana Alpers has firmly established herself in the front ranks of art historians at work today. . . . The book is not a long one. Yet, there is more perceptive scholarship packed into its four chapters than is typically found in a whole shelf of the more common outpourings of academic writers. "Rembrandt's Enterprise" is less a book of archival discoveries than of fresh interpretation of the revered artist and his milieu. . . . Alpers makes us see how Rembrandt's complex and enormously popular art has embedded itself in our ways of thinking about who we are and how we live, even in the late 20th century."--Christopher Knight, "Los Angeles Herald Examiner "

Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices. Influences is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also perhaps even primarily functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican's Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays. An original and intellectually stimulating study, Influences adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.