The green mantle of the earth! This metaphor is a poetic image that borrows from the vocabulary of weaving and epitomizes the Renaissance interest in "fashioning green worlds" in art and poetry. Here it serves as a motto for a cultural poetics that made representing living nature increasingly popular across Italy in the Early Modern period. The explosion of landscape art in this era is often associated with the rise of interest in the literary pastoral, narrowly defined, but this volume expands that understanding to show Green's broad appeal as it intrigued audiences ranging from the ecclesiastic to the medical and scientific to the humanistic and courtly. The essays gathered here explore the expanding technologies and varied cultural dimensions of verzure and verdancy in the Italian Renaissance, and thus the role of visual art in shaping the poetics and expression of greenery in the arts of the 16th-century and beyond.

Redefining Eclecticism in Early Modern Bolognese Painting. Ideology, Practice, and Criticism focuses on the unique nature of early modern Bolognese painting that found its expression in stylistic diversity. The flourishing of different stylistic approaches in the Mannerist paintings of the previous generation evolved, at the turn the seventeenth century, in the work of the Bolognese painters into an approach best described as eclecticism, characterized by the combination of two or more styles in a single work of art. Eclectism was a major innovation and major contribution to the history of art. But it then also became a critical term that suffered much negative press. The book therefore also traces the role of ecclecticism as a concept in the evolution of criticism and scholarship about the Bolognese school of painting over 250 years, showing how the dramatically vacillating attitudes towards this concept shaped the historical view of the Bolognese painters, ultimately having a tremendous dampening impact on our understanding of seventeenth-century art.

Museum visitors today usually see pre-16th-century Italian painted altarpieces exhibited alone, as single paintings. Yet this beautiful catalogue shows that these works were once part of decorative, integrated schemes, and the original experience for viewers of the paintings was significantly different from our own. Focusing on Italian altarpieces from the second half of the 13th century to the very end of the 15th, the book investigates the original functions and locations of altarpieces as well as the circumstances of their dislocations, dismantlings, and reconstructions. Regional variations are also analyzed, and the author examines altarpieces' formal and typological development, taking into account the wealth of related scholarship undertaken in the past thirty years. Published by National Gallery Company / Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The National Gallery, London (07/6/11-10/02/11)

Although Raphael has long been recognized as one of the great innovators of visionary painting (images of supernatural phenomena, including apparitions and prophetic visions), the full measure of his achievement in this area has never been taken. Vision and the Visionary in Raphael redresses this oversight by offering an expansive reading of these works within their contemporary artistic and religious contexts. At the center of the book is Raphael's engagement with one of the critical conflicts in the Renaissance understanding of vision. Whereas artistic theory emphasized painting's engagement with the physical world by way of the bodily eyes, religious images were generally intended to inspire their viewers to move from sensible appearances to the use of their "spiritual eyes" for contemplation of their god. For Raphael and his contemporaries, this double commitment to physical appearances and the spiritual dimensions of the image presented one of the greatest challenges of Renaissance religious art.

In Playful Pictures, Chriscinda Henry explores the rise of private art collection in Renaissance Venice as a diporto, or pastime, practiced within a kaleidoscopic matrix of domestic leisure that encompassed the recitation of poetry and tales, games, music making, amateur theatrical activity, and the conversational arts. Between around 1490 and 1550, a new class of pictures emerged in Venice. These images—primarily paintings but also drawings, prints, book illustrations, and historiated architectural elements—feature quotidian, festive, allusive, and performative subjects that catered to the cultural and intellectual interests of avant-garde patrons and collectors. Several generations of Venetian artists, including Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni Cariani, Bernardino Licinio, and Paris Bordon, rose to meet the demand of modern collectors seeking entertaining artworks that could speak to their personal values and taste. Playful Pictures connects painting and the graphic arts with other art forms engaged in the home: vernacular literature and the novella tradition; pastoral music, verse, and theater; urban dialect comedies; and carnival and ludic culture. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that treats these pursuits as linked forms of creative practice, Henry argues that they served as dynamic forms of personal and collective expression for patrons, collectors, artists, and other virtuosi seeking to express a new set of secular values and a contingent notion of selfhood. Incorporating fresh evidence from archival sources, this book expands the discourse on Renaissance art by situating it within the growing, and increasingly nuanced, scholarly understanding of Renaissance leisure and entertainment culture.

One of the most significant features of the religious spirit of the Counter-Reformation was Spanish mysticism, a vital aspect of which was visionary experience. In this exploration of the relationship between the ecstatic experience of the Sacred and the art of painting in the Golden Age, Victor I. Stoichita starts from the premise that visionary experience is in fact the apprehension of an image, for a vision implies the manifestation of the Divinity itself. Although painters in Spain before the late sixteenth century had shown little interest in depicting visions, in the seventeenth it was a crucial topos: at this time a number of artists sought to include in their paintings both the vision itself and the visionary saint at the moment of ecstasy. Further, they explored ways of implicating the beholder of the work as a privileged witness to the 'reality' of the event represented, and also of means to make the work itself serve as a vision-inducing agent. The challenges that beset artists were considerable. How, for example, was one to portray the unrepresentable, or develop a readable figurative code of ecstatic gesture? Further, Spanish visionary literature included criticisms of the employment of paintings in the exercise of religious devotion, while writings on religious art and Christian iconography were also often at odds. The author's insights into the ways that painters responded to the celebrated visions of popular saints, and of how the role of the beholder of works of art - works often bewildering in their multiple 'realities' - was manipulated, insistently demonstrate that the art of devotion in the Golden Age continued throughout as cerebral as it was impassioned.

Inspired by recent approaches to the field, the book reexamines the field of Renaissance art history by exploring the art of this era in the light of global connections. It considers the movement of objects, ideas and technologies and its significance for European art and material culture, analysing images through the lens of cultural encounter and conflict. -- .

A fascinating look at how Elizabethan England was transformed by its interactions with cultures from around the world Challenging the myth of Elizabethan England as insular and xenophobic, this revelatory study sheds light on how the nation's growing global encounters-from the Caribbean to Asia-created an interest and curiosity in the wider world that resonated deeply throughout society. Matthew Dimmock reconstructs an extraordinary housewarming party thrown at the newly built Cecil House in London in 1602 for Elizabeth I where a stunning display of Chinese porcelain served as a physical manifestation of how global trade and diplomacy had led to a new appreciation of foreign cultures. This party was also the likely inspiration for Elizabeth's celebrated Rainbow Portrait, an image that Dimmock describes as a carefully orchestrated vision of England's emerging ambitions for its engagements with the rest of the world. Bringing together an eclectic variety of sources including play texts, inventories, and artifacts, this extensively researched volume presents a picture of early modern England as an outward-looking nation intoxicated by what the world had to offer. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) is arguably the first truly international artist, a celebrity both during his own lifetime and since. A major artist of the northern Renaissance, he was praised by his contemporaries and described shortly after his death as 'the prince among German painters'. Durer's achievements as a painter were matched by his remarkable manipulation of the traditional techniques of woodcut and engraving, which altered the history of printmaking and ensured that his works were admired and collected throughout Europe. The British Museum holds one of the finest collections of Durer's graphic art in the world, with superlative prints and drawings from all phases of his career. Beginning with an introduction to the life of the artist, the book presents a selection of Durer's best-known works including early figure studies, landscape watercolours, animal studies drawn from nature and his imaginative famous prints such as Adam and Eve, Rhinoceros and Melancholia. As well as demonstrating Durer's astonishing range of subject matter, the book explores his working method and the versatile, spontaneous nature of his draughtsmanship. The development of Durer's ideas from drawings to related woodcuts and engravings is also investigated, making the book a perfect concise introduction to this fascinating and much-admired artist.

Among the immortals-Leonardo, Rembrandt, Picasso-Michelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was not only the greatest artist in an age of giants, but a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own demanding muse and promoting the novel idea that it was the artist, rather than the lord who paid for it, who was creative force behind the work. Miles Unger narrates the astonishing life of this driven and difficult man through six of his greatest masterpieces. Each work expanded the expressive range of the medium, from the Pieta Michelangelo carved as a brash young man, to the apocalyptic Last Judgment, the work of an old man tested by personal trials. Throughout the course of his career he explored the full range of human possibility. In the gargantuan David he depicts Man in the glory of his youth, while in the tombs he carved for the Medici he offers a sustained meditation on death and the afterlife. In the Sistine Chapel ceiling he tells the epic story of Creation, from the perfection of God's initial procreative act to the corruption introduced by His imperfect children. In the final decades of his life, his hands too unsteady to wield the brush and chisel, he exercised his mind by raising the soaring vaults and dome of St. Peter's in a final tribute to his God. A work of deep artistic understanding, Miles Unger's Michelangelobrings to life the irascible, egotistical, and undeniably brilliant man whose artistry continues to amaze and inspire us after 500 years.

This book seeks to broaden the comprehension of the student of Italian Renaissance painting by concentrating not on the works of art themselves, but on the various artistic theories which influenced them or were expressed by them. Taking Alberti's treatises as his starting-point, Anthony Blunt traces the development of artistic theory from Humanism to Mannerism. He discusses the writings of Leonardo, Savonarola, Michelangelo, and Vasari, examines the effect of the Council of Trent on religious art, and chronicles the successful struggle of the painters and sculptors themselves to elevate their status from craftsmen to creative artists.

Celebrates one of the greatest and most beloved painters of the Early Renaissance with luxurious, large-format images Sandro Botticelli, one of the greatest painters of the Italian High Renaissance, enjoyed the patronage of the greatest Florentine families. He spent most of his career in the humanist circle of the Medici, for whom he painted such masterpieces as Primavera and Venus and Mars, works that combine a decorative use of line with Classical elements in harmonious and supple compositions. This sumptuously produced volume features an updated, full-colour selection of the artist's works made for the original 1937 edition by Ludwig Goldscheider, co-founder of Phaidon Press. The original essay by Lionello Venturi is accompanied by a new introduction from Renaissance specialist Alessandro Cecchi, putting Botticelli and his school into a contemporary context. Elegant design, fine papers and tipped-on image plates make this a true collector's edition.

After the death of Raphael in 1520, the next generation in Italy was to see the rise of the complex and refined sensibility summed up in the term "Mannerism." In this uniquely comprehensive guide to sixteenth-century Renaissance art, Linda Murray examines the manifold achievements of Italian artists and identifies the individual forms taken by artists in Northern Europe and in Spain, including Durer, Bruegel and El Greco.

Otto Pacht, one of the most significant art-historians of the 'Vienna School', and well known for his analyses of Early Netherlandish art, turns his attention in this publication to the humanist circle of Early Renaissance painters in Venice, dominated by Jacopo Bellini, his sons Gentile and Giovanni, and also his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna. It was a period of newly awakened interest in the Antique, of studies made directly from nature, and of trial and error in the technique of perspective. And in addition, a new awareness of the role of light and colour in the devotional and often monumental images of the Madonna, of altarpieces and of allegories contributed to the founding of what we now recognise as the hall-mark of Venetian painting, that culminated with Titian. Of the Bellini family, it has been Giovanni who was generally regarded as the major figure of the dynasty. Pacht, however, devotes particular attention to Jacopo's work, interpreting it as the basis for his sons' later development. He analyses Jacopo's London and Paris Sketchbook drawings, demonstrating where Late Gothic elements can be seen to be overtaken by the need to give perspective depth to the image, and how subsequent painting took account of these changes. This is also the essence of Pacht's examination of Mantegna's work, where the construction of space and depth is the key to our understanding of Mantegna's creative process. Turning to the next generation of the Bellini family, Pachts guides our eyes to appreciate the refinement and perception of Gentile's portraits, and finally takes us step by step through the works of Giovanni, where fantasy combines with the play of colour and light in creating compositions, devotional images, and landscape settings of perfect harmony and beauty.

This essay collection features innovative scholarship on women artists and patrons in the Netherlands 1500-1700. Covering painting, printmaking, and patronage, authors highlight the contributions of women art makers in the Netherlands, showing that women were prominent as creators in their own time and deserve to be recognized as such today.

Why did Hans Memling paint everything in such minute detail? How did Rubens, in just a few brushstrokes, create special effects that Steven Spielberg would envy? And why was the Southern Netherlands the artistic centre of the world for three centuries? From Memling to Rubens: The Golden Age of Flanders tells the story of Flemish art from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, as you've never read it before. It's a rollercoaster ride through 300 years of cultural history. Leading the charge are breathtaking masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation, unknown gems by the likes of Hans Memling, Quinten Metsys, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck that plunge you into a world full of folly and sin, fascination and ambition. Along the way you'll bump into dukes and emperors, rich citizens and poor saints, picture galleries like wine cellars, and Antwerp as Hollywood on the Scheldt. This is a stirring tale about the image and its meaning, and the link between culture and society. Above all, it's about us, and about who we are today - as people. Published on the occasion of the exhibition From Memling to Ruben - The Golden Age of Flanders,during Autumn 2020, in the Kadriorg Palace in Tallinn (Estonia).

'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.

"The art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history itself. Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among current disciples. Professor Alpers puts forward a vividly argued thesis. There is, she says, a truly fundamental dichotomy between the art of the Italian Renaissance and that of the Dutch masters. . . . Italian art is the primary expression of a 'textual culture, ' this is to say of a culture which seeks emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting. Alberti, Vasari and the many other theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance teach us to 'read' a painting, and to read it in depth so as to elicit and construe its several levels of signification. The world of Dutch art, by the contrast, arises from and enacts a truly 'visual culture.' It serves and energises a system of values in which meaning is not 'read' but 'seen, ' in which new knowledge is visually recorded."--George Steiner, "Sunday Times"
"There is no doubt that thanks to Alpers's highly original book the study of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century will be thoroughly reformed and rejuvenated. . . . She herself has the verve, the knowledge, and the sensitivity to make us see familiar sights in a new light."--E. H. Gombrich, "New York Review of Books"

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.

Around 1500, Lucas Cranach the Elder steps onto the world stage - in Vienna. The publication explores this, the artist's earliest period of work and presents all the paintings he produced during this time, their expressiveness radically different from the courtly-elegant compositions he subsequently produced as court painter in Wittenberg. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) produced his earliest works around 1500 in Vienna, shortly before moving to Wittenberg to become court painter to the Elector of Saxony. These brilliant paintings, drawings, and woodcuts document both the thirty-year-old's close contacts with the humanist circles of Konrad Celtis and Johannes Cuspinian, and identify him as a precursor of the so-called Danube School.

Around 1515, Raphael (1483-1520) designed a set of tapestries for Leo X, the first Medici pope. Each was sumptuously woven in gold, silver, and silk, and depicted scenes from classical mythology with inventive grotesques. Now lost, these spectacular, grand-scale textiles are reconstructed in Raphael's Tapestries and set among a series of unprecedented decorative projects that Pope Leo commissioned from the artist. Likely produced by the Brussels weaver Pieter van Aelst, the tapestries pioneered a new all'antica style analogous with contemporary painted and sculpted interior programs. Tapestries played a central role at Leo's court, as spectacle and as propaganda, and the Grotesques of Leo X would inform tapestry design for the next three centuries. Their beauty and complexity rivaled those of contemporary painting, and their luxurious materials made them highly prized. With this new study, the Grotesques take their rightful place as Renaissance masterworks and as documents of the fervent humanist culture of early 16th-century Rome.

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.