By the sixteenth century, Florence was famous across Europe for its achievements in the arts, letters, and humanist learning. Its intellectual life flourished anew at midcentury with Duke Cosimo and the Accademia Fiorentina. In this study, Ann Moyer provides an overview of Florentine intellectual life and community in the late Renaissance. She shows how studies of language helped Florentines develop their own story as a people distinct from ancient Greece or Rome, trace the rise of the city's medieval government, and explore how the city evolved into a hospitable environment for letters and the arts. Studies of Florentine art gave rise to art history, while those devoted to Florentine traditions and customs inspired broader questions about how to think about cultural change. Demonstrating how the intellectual activity around language, history, and art related and supported each other, Moyer's book documents the origins of the modern narrative of the Renaissance itself.

The National Gallery, London possesses an important collection of paintings by 16th-century Netherlandish artists, including Joachim Beuckelaer, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jean Gossart, and Quinten Massys. They are grouped here with a small number of French paintings, some by artists who came from the Low Countries (Corneille de Lyon, probably Jean Hey, and perhaps the Master of Saint Giles). Lorne Campbell's catalogue is a model of scholarship; he examined all the pictures with conservators and rigorously researched their histories, subjects, and styles. New discoveries about artists' techniques and practices have led to many reattributions, and the rescue from anonymity of over twenty paintings. The identities of several patrons are established or suggested, while an introductory essay explains how contemporaries regarded these paintings. Generously illustrated, with many details and technical photographs, and beautifully produced, this comprehensive catalogue is essential reading for scholars, while also introducing general readers to a vital part of the Gallery's collection. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

This collection of essays offers a comparative perspective on religious materiality across the early modern world. Setting out from the premise that artefacts can provide material evidence of the nature of early modern religious practices and beliefs, the volume tests and challenges conventional narratives of change based on textual sources. Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World brings together scholars of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist practices from a range of fields, including history, art history, museum curatorship and social anthropology. The result is an unprecedented account of the wealth and diversity of devotional objects and environments, with a strong emphasis on cultural encounters, connections and exchanges.

One of the most important Italian manuscripts in the Getty Museum, the lavishly illustrated Gualenghi d'Este Hours was created around 1649 on the occasion of the marriage of diplomat Andrea Gualengo to Orsina d'Este, a member of Ferrara's ruling family. The devotional manuscript featured brilliant figured decoration of the suffrages--short prayers to saints--and was created by Taddeo Crivelli, one of the most important manuscript illuminators of the Renaissance.
This volume includes reproductions of all the illuminations in the original manuscript plus selected text pages, each with commentary. Kurt Barstow examines the book's vivid devotional imagery in relation to works of art of the period that help explain the Hours significance for the fifteenth-century patrons. This beautifully illustrated book is published to coincide with an exhibit featuring the manuscript that will take place at the Getty Museum from May 9 to July 30, 2000.

The Monochrome of the Sala delle Asse is a portion of wall decoration left at the drawing stage and represents the roots of one of the sixteen mulberry trees that, regularly spaced on the walls of the room, intertwine above to create a polychrome arboreal pavilion on the vault. The Monochrome of the Sala delle Asse is a portion of wall decoration left at the drawing stage and represents the roots of one of the sixteen mulberry trees that, regularly spaced on the walls of the room, intertwine above to create a polychrome arboreal pavilion on the vault. The decoration of the room, which was never completed, is historically tied to the name of Leonardo da Vinci by a letter written in April 1498 by Gualtiero da Bascape, the secretary of Ludovico il Moro, to the duke of Milan, explaining that Lunedi si desarmara la camera grande da le Asse c[i]oe da la tore. Magistro Leonardo promete finirla per tuto Septembre. The room was subjected to radically changing fortunes over the centuries, and was later the object of two complex restoration campaigns, the first carried out between 1893 and 1902 by Luca Beltrami and the second between 1955 and 1956 by Costantino Baroni. This volume provides an account of the result of these restorations. It describes the complex diagnostic research and the technical assessments that form the foundations of a broader project for the conservation of the painted area. Text in English and Italian.

Following the arc of Bellini's career, from his early devotional paintings to his later, occasionally secular works, this book offers an in-depth appreciation of the Venetian master who dominated the Early Renaissance. Featuring nearly every extant Bellini work, as well as those of his contemporaries, this book brims with gorgeous Renaissance art. Author Johannes Grave focuses on some of the artist's greatest works including Allegoria Sacra, the Brera Pieta, and the altarpiece of San Giobbe-to explore how Bellini excelled in tempera before mastering oil painting. Grave discusses how Bellini's precise lines, his delicate facial expressions, and the subtle effects of light and shadow were used in his religious paintings as well as his portraiture and late mythological depictions. This book examines Bellini's life, including his complex relationships with his father Jacopo, his brother Gentile, and his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. It considers the original contexts of Bellini's works, and elucidates the ways in which these paintings were meant to be perceived. The book also links Bellini's devotional paintings with the poetic creations of his pupil Giorgione. An important contribution to the scholarship of Renaissance art, this masterful book reaffirms Bellini's status as one of Venice's greatest painters.

During the years 1627 and 1628, Charles I of England purchased the cream of the Gonzaga art collection, belonging to the dukes of Mantua, in what would become the greatest art deal of the 17th century. Among the treasures sold were ancient statues and stunning paintings by Titian, Raphael, Correggio, and Rubens. This book examines this fascinating and significant art sale from the perspective of the man who orchestrated it-Daniel Nijs (1572-1647), a Flemish merchant, collector, and dealer living in Venice. Christina M. Anderson brings Nijs to life, asserting that he was more than the avaricious and unscrupulous trader that most modern writers and scholars deem him to be. Anderson's evocative text describes Nijs's unique talent as a dealer, rooted in superior commercial skills, connections to artistic and diplomatic circles, and a deep love of art. The narrative reveals that Nijs was ultimately the pivotal figure involved with the Gonzaga sale, though also-when he later fell into bankruptcy and dishonor due to a deal gone awry-the most tragic.

This study is the first to examine the relationship between art and violence in 15th-century Florence, exposing the underbelly of a period more often celebrated for enlightened and progressive ideas. Renaissance Florentines were constantly subjected to the sight of violence, whether in carefully staged rituals of execution or images of the suffering inflicted on Christ. There was nothing new in this culture of pain, unlike the aesthetic of violence that developed towards the end of the 15th century. It emerged in the work of artists such as Piero di Cosimo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, and the young Michelangelo. Inspired by the art of antiquity, they painted, engraved, and sculpted images of deadly battles, ultimately normalizing representations of brutal violence. Drawing on work in social and literary history, as well as art history, Scott Nethersole sheds light on the relationship between these Renaissance images, violence, and ideas of artistic invention and authorship.

Giles Knox examines how El Greco, Velaizquez, and Rembrandt, though a disparate group of artists, were connected by a new self-consciousness with respect to artistic tradition. In particular, Knox considers the relationship of these artists to the art of Renaissance Italy, and sets aside nationalist art histories in order to see the period as one of fruitful exchange. Across Europe during the seventeenth century, artists read Italian-inspired writings on art and these texts informed how they contemplated their practice. Knox demonstrates how these three artists engaged dynamically with these writings, incorporating or rejecting the theoretical premises to which they were exposed. Additionally, this study significantly expands our understanding of how paintings can activate the sense of touch. Knox discusses how Velaizquez and Rembrandt, though in quite different ways, sought to conjure for viewers thoughts about touching that resonated directly with the subject matter they depicted.

'Study me reader, if you find delight in me...Come, O men, to see the miracles that such studies will disclose in nature.' Most of what we know about Leonardo da Vinci, we know because of his notebooks. Some 6,000 sheets of notes and drawings survive, which represent perhaps one-fifth of what he actually produced. In them he recorded everything that interested him in the world around him, and his study of how things work. With an artist's eye and a scientist's curiosity he studied the movement of water and the formation of rocks, the nature of flight and optics, anatomy, architecture, sculpture, and painting. He jotted down fables and letters and developed his belief in the sublime unity of nature and man. Through his notebooks we can get an insight into Leonardo's thoughts, and his approach to work and life. This selection offers a cross-section of his writings, organized around coherent themes. Fully updated, this new edition includes some 70 line drawings and a Preface by Martin Kemp, one of the world's leading authorities on Leonardo. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Volume 2 of 2. Lorenzo Ghiberti, sculptor and towering figure of the Renaissance, was the creator of the celebrated Bronze Doors of the Baptistery at Florence, a work that occupied him for twenty years and became known (at Michelangelo's suggestion, according to tradition) as the Doors of Paradise. Here Richard Krautheimer takes what Charles S. Seymour, Jr., describes as "a fascinating journey into the mind, career, and inventiveness of one of the indisputably outstanding sculptors of all the Western tradition." This one-volume edition includes an extensive new preface and bibliography by the author. Richard Krautheimer, Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, currently lives in Rome. He is the author of numerous works, including the Pelican Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture and Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton). Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology, 31. Originally published in 1983. 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.

Singing the Resurrection brings music to the foreground of Reformation studies, as author Erin Lambert explores song as a primary mode for the expression of belief among ordinary Europeans in the sixteenth century, for the embodiment of individual piety, and the creation of new communities of belief. Together, resurrection and song reveal how sixteenth-century Christians-from learned theologians to ordinary artisans, and Anabaptist martyrs to Reformed Christians facing exile-defined belief not merely as an assertion or affirmation but as a continuous, living practice. Thus these voices, raised in song, tell a story of the Reformation that reaches far beyond the transformation from one community of faith to many. With case studies drawn from each of the major confessions of the Reformation-Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, and Catholic-Singing the Resurrection reveals sixteenth-century belief in its full complexity.

2013 will mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of the artist Mattia Preti (1613-1699), who spent forty years of his working life in Malta. Midsea Books, in collaboration with the Department of History of Art at the University of Malta, are working together to publish an outstanding book that discusses critically the artist s oeuvre in Malta. Research for this superb book is co-ordinated by Professor Keith Sciberras, who is also the author of the two critical essays which compose the first part of the book. Over 150 catalogue entries are co-authored by Professor Sciberras and Ms Jessica Borg M.A. The book will include over 270 paintings. The images of the paintings in Malta are being taken purposely for this book by master photographer Mr Joe P. Borg. Born in Taverna, Calabria, in 1613, Mattia Preti emerged as a leading exponent of the forceful Baroque of mid-17th century Italy, working in a tradition which brilliantly captured the characteristics of monumental dynamism and theatrical appeal. An extraordinary draughtsman and painterly virtuoso, he was quick with his brush and produced hundreds of pictures which spanned a career of some seventy years. His life-story can be easily and neatly divided in an early training and first maturity in Rome, his mid-years in Naples, and the nearly four decades that he spent on Malta between 1661 and his death in 1699. An artist-knight, his life was also conditioned by his membership in the chivalric Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Malta. Preti s works for St John s Conventual Church inspired a major transformation within the church. The Baroque re-decoration programme which Preti was to direct transformed the interior of the Conventual Church into one of the most important nodes of Baroque art South of Rome. Preti was to assume responsibility of painting the entire ceiling and many altar paintings and lunettes. Moreover, he produced designs for the carved decoration that spread throughout the church walls, the inlaid marble slabs for the flooring and ephemera. Preti s residency on the island did not go unnoticed and his circle of admirers grew beyond the circle of the Knights of Malta. The church and private patrons were attracted to his work. Owning a painting by the artist grew to become a desideratum. The artist s technique and method of painting was fast and he could rapidly execute large scale works. His inventive genius kept up with the pace of his technique and the artist thus produced a large corpus of paintings. This lavish publication, which will mark the 400th anniversary from the master s birth, will be another outstanding contribution to all enthusiast of Maltese art and history."

Cambridge University Library's collection of illuminated manuscripts is of international significance. It originates in the medieval university and stands alongside the holdings of the colleges and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The University Library contains major European examples of medieval illumination from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, with acknowledged masterpieces of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance book art, as well as illuminated literary texts, including the first complete Chaucer manuscript. This catalogue provides scholars and researchers easy access to the University Library's illuminated manuscripts, evaluating the importance of many of them for the very first time. It contains descriptions of famous manuscripts, for example the Life of Edward the Confessor attributed to Matthew Paris, as well as hundreds of lesser-known items. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the catalogue contains descriptions of individual manuscripts with up-to-date assessments of their style, origins and importance, together with bibliographical references.

Leonardo's greatest work of science beautifully reproduced for the 500th anniversary of his death. This edition offers a high-quality facsimile reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester, a collection of his scientific writings. Named after Thomas Coke (later Earl of Leicester) who purchased it in 1719, Codex Leicester holds the record as the most expensive book ever when it was bought by Bill Gates in 1994. Consisting of 72 pages, it was handwritten in Italian by Leonardo using his characteristic mirror writing, and is supported by drawings and diagrams. The Codex Leicester is an extraordinary mixture of Leonardo's observations and theories. Topics include his explanation of why fossils can be found on mountains; the flow of water in rivers; and the luminosity of the moon which Leonardo attributed to its surface being covered by water which reflects light from the sun. The facsimile reproduction is complemented by three further volumes that include a new transcription and translation, accompanied by a paraphrase in modern language, a page-by-page commentary, and a series of interpretative essays. These four volumes together introduce 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.

Gender, Space, and Experience at the Renaissance Court investigates the dynamic relationships between gender and architectural space in Renaissance Italy. It examines the ceremonial use and artistic reception of the Palazzo Te from the arrival of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530 to the Sack of Mantua in 1630. This book further proposes that we conceptualise the built environment as a performative space, a space formed by the gendered relationships and actors of its time. The Palazzo Te was constituted by the gendered behaviors of sixteenth-century courtiers, but it was not simply a passive receptor of gender performance. Through its multivalent form and ceremonial function, Maria F. Maurer argues that the palace was an active participant in the construction and perception of femininity and masculinity in the early modern court.

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.

Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 offers a fresh perspective on the art of Venice and the Veneto. The volume brings together the contributions of scholars and curators specialist on a wide variety of artists and art forms including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture. Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 takes disegno as its central theme, that in its plurality of meaning allows for a consideration of the conceptual role of design and the act of drawing. The relationship between disegno and Renaissance Venetian art has historically been a problematic one, with emphasis instead being placed on the Venetian predilection for colore. This volume is reflective of an ongoing challenge to this perspective and draws attention to the importance of Venetian disegno and the study of drawings for understanding various art forms. The book commences with a critical study of what constitutes disegno in Venetian art. It does so through questioning the historiography of Venetian artistic scholarship and the restrictive framework and preconceptions that have emerged before setting out the merits of a broader, more inclusive approach. Disegno is applied in its multifaceted nature to address the physical act of drawing, the tangible drawn object and the role of design in artistic practice. The term ‘Venetian’ is taken to encompass both Venice and its mainland territories not least because of the mobility of artists across and beyond the region. Contributions are divided into five thematic sections. The first, entitled ‘Peripheries’, frames the art of Venice within a wider discourse on the movement of ideas across and beyond the Veneto in locations including Padua, Verona and Rome. A section on Media considers the origins and innovations that took place in the use of materials such as blue paper, oil and coloured chalks. In another, the theories that have developed on Venetian notions of disegno are brought under scrutiny, addressing topics such as the long upheld perspective that Venetian artists did not draw, the role of sculpture in Tintoretto’s drawing practice and the interrelation between the written and drawn line in Palma Giovane’s draftsmanship. The section on Invention reflects on the technical innovations that were facilitated through the uptake of printmaking and the intellectual freedom granted by humanist patrons. Finally, Function gets to the heart of the practical purpose of disegno. Contributions focus on the workshops of the Bellini family and Titian to consider the diverse ways they used drawing within their artistic practices with an emphasis on technical analysis. These sections are all preceded by introductions that provide an overview on each theme while the volume is bookended by two reflections on the state of research into Venetian disegno and the potential for further progress. Sumptuously illustrated with over 100 images with a comprehensive bibliography, Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 represents a significant contribution to scholarship on the art of Venice, Renaissance workshops and drawing studies.

Drawing on a broad theoretical range from speculative realism to feminist psychoanalysis and anti-colonialism, this book represents a radical departure from traditional scholarship on maritime archaeology. Shipwreck Hauntography asserts that nautical archaeology bears the legacy of Early Modern theological imperialism, most evident through the savior-scholar model that resurrects-physically or virtually-ships from wrecks. Instead of construing shipwrecks as dead, awaiting resurrection from the seafloor, this book presents them as vibrant if not recalcitrant objects, having shaken off anthropogenesis through varying stages of ruination. Sara Rich illustrates this anarchic condition with 'hauntographs' of five Age of 'Discovery' shipwrecks, each of which elucidates the wonder of failure and finitude, alongside an intimate brush with the eerie, horrific, and uncanny.

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.

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 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.

Caterina Vigri (later Saint Catherine of Bologna) was a mystic, writer, teacher and nun-artist. Her first home, Corpus Domini, Ferrara, was a house of semi-religious women that became a Poor Clare convent and model of Franciscan Observant piety. Vigri's intensely spiritual decoration of her breviary, as well as convent altarpieces that formed a visual program of adoration for the Body of Christ, exemplify the Franciscan Observant visual culture. After Vigri's departure, it was transformed by d'Este women patrons, including Isabella da Aragona, Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia. While still preserving Observant ideals, it became a more elite noblewomen's retreat. Grounded in archival research and extant paintings, drawings, prints and art objects from Corpus Domini, this volume explores the art, visual culture, and social history of an early modern Franciscan women's community.

Explores the deployment of racial thinking and racial formations in the visual culture of the pre-modern world.   The capacious visual archive studied in this volume includes a trove of materials such as annotated or illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance costume books and travel books, maps and cartographic volumes produced by Europeans as well as Indigenous peoples, mass-printed pamphlets, jewelry, decorative arts, religious iconography, paintings from around the world, ceremonial objects, festival books, and play texts intended for live performance. Contributors explore the deployment of what coeditor Noémie Ndiaye calls “the racial matrix� and its interconnected paradigms across the medieval and early modern chronological divide and across vast transnational and multilingual geographies. This volume uses items from the Fall 2023 exhibition “Seeing Race Before Race�—a collaboration between RaceB4Race and the Newberry Library—as a starting point for an ambitious theoretical conversation between premodern race studies, art history, performance studies, book history, and critical race theory.