Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) put the connoisseurship of Renaissance art on a firm footing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His monument is the library and collection of Italian painting, Islamic miniatures, and Asian art at Villa I Tatti in Florence. The authors in this collection of essays explore the intellectual world in which Berenson was formed and to which he contributed. Some essays consider his friendship with William James and the background of perceptual psychology that underlay his concept of "tactile values." Others examine Berenson's relationships with a variety of cultural figures, ranging from the German-born connoisseur Jean Paul Richter, the German art historian Aby Warburg, the Boston collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, and the American medievalist Arthur Kingsley Porter to the African-American dance icon Katherine Dunham, as well as with Kenneth Clark, Otto Gutekunst, Archer Huntington, Paul Sachs, and Umberto Morra. Bernard Berenson: Formation and Heritage makes an important contribution to the rising interest in the historiography of the discipline of art history in the United States and Europe during its formative years.

This book presents and explores the Waddesdon Bequest, the name given to the Kunstkammer or cabinet collection of Renaissance treasures which was bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, MP in 1898. The Bequest is named after Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, a fairy tale French chateau built by Baron Ferdinand from 1874 - 83, where the collection was housed during his lifetime. As a major Jewish banking family, the Rothschilds were the greatest collectors of the nineteenth century, seeking not only the finest craftsmanship in their treasures, but also demonstrating great discernment and a keen sense of historical importance in selecting them. Baron Ferdinand's aim, often working in rivalry with his cousins, was to possess a special room filled with splendid, precious and intricate objects in the tradition of European courts of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It was understood at the time that a collection of this quality could never be formed again, given the rarity and expense of the pieces, and the problems of faking and forgery of just this kind of material. The book will unlock the history and romance of this glorious collection through its exploration of some of its greatest treasures and the stories they tell. It will introduce makers and patrons, virtuoso craftsmanship, faking and the history of collecting from the late medieval to modern periods, as told through the objects. Treasures discussed will include masterpieces of goldsmiths' work in silver; jewellery; hardstones and engraved rock crystal; astonishing microcarvings in boxwood, painted enamel, ceramic and glass; arms and armour and 'curosities': exotic treasures incorporating ostrich eggs, Seychelles nut, amber or nautilus shell. Scholarly catalogues have appeared for parts of this splendid collection but this book will open up the Bequest for the general reader. By looking at individual objects in detail, and drawing on new photography and research, the book will enable readers to see and understand the objects in a completely different light.

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.

Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, European society confronted rapid monetization, a process that has been examined in depth by economic historians. Less well understood is the development of architecture to meet the needs of a burgeoning mercantile economy in the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. In this volume, Lauren Jacobi explores some of the repercussions of early capitalism through a study of the location and types of spaces that were used for banking and minting in Florence and other mercantile centers in Europe. Examining the historical relationships between banks and religious behavior, she also analyzes how urban geographies and architectural forms reveal moral attitudes toward money during the onset of capitalism. Jacobi's book offers new insights into the spaces and locations where pre-industrial European banking and minting transpired, as well as the impact of religious concerns and financial tools on those sites.

An accomplished painter, architect and diplomat, Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) is best known for Lives of the Artists, his classic account of the great masters-an extraordinary book that invented the genre of artistic biography, single-handedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art and founded the cults of Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo that persist to this day. Vasari positioned art as an intellectual pursuit instead of just a technical skill, teaching us to view artists as geniuses and visionaries rather than as simple craftsmen. Immersing readers in the world of the Medici and the popes, Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney show the great works of Western culture taking shape amid the thrilling culture of Renaissance Italy.

'The underlying message of the series is, of course, that Death comes for us all, and if it interrupts the recreations of the wealthy rather more insolently than those of the poor, then let that be a lesson to us' Nick Lezard, Guardian A new departure in Penguin Classics: a book containing one of the greatest of all Renaissance woodcut sequences - Holbein's bravura danse macabre One of Holbein's first great triumphs, The Dance of Death is an incomparable sequence of tiny woodcuts showing the folly of human greed and pride, with each image packed with drama, wit and horror as a skeleton mocks and terrifies everyone from the emperor to a ploughman. Taking full advantage of the new literary culture of the early 16th century, The Dance of Death took an old medieval theme and made it new. This edition of The Dance of Death reproduces a complete set from the British Museum, with many details highlighted and examples of other works in this grisly field. Ulinka Rublack introduces the woodcuts with a remarkable essay on the late medieval danse macabre and the world Holbein lived in.

The first comprehensive look at the origins and diffusion across Europe of the etched print during the late 15th and early 16th centuries The etching of images on metal, originally used as a method for decorating armor, was first employed as a printmaking technique at the end of the 15th century. This in-depth study explores the origins of the etched print, its evolution from decorative technique to fine art, and its spread across Europe in the early Renaissance, leading to the professionalization of the field in the Netherlands in the 1550s. Beautifully illustrated, this book features the work of familiar Renaissance artists, including Albrecht Durer, Jan Gossart, Pieter Breughel the Elder, and Parmigianino, as well as lesser known practitioners, such as Daniel Hopfer and Lucas van Leyden, whose pioneering work paved the way for later printmakers like Rembrandt and Goya. The book also includes a clear and fascinating description of the etching process, as well as an investigation of how the medium allowed artists to create highly detailed prints that were more durable than engravings and more delicate than woodblocks. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (October 23, 2019-January 19, 2020)

Old St Peter's Basilica in Rome stood for over eleven centuries until it was demolished to make room for today's church on the same Vatican site. Its last eyewitness, Maffeo Vegio, explained to the Roman hierarchy how revival of the papacy, whose prestige after the exile to Avignon had been diminished, was inseparable from a renewed awareness of the primacy of Peter's Church. To make his case, Vegio wrote a history founded on credible written and visual evidence. The text guides us through the building's true story in its material reality, undistorted by medieval guides. This was its living memory and a visualization of the continuity of Roman history into modern times. This volume makes available the first complete English translation of Vegio's text. Accompanied by full-color digital reconstructions of the Basilica as it appeared in Vegio's day.

Volume 1 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.

Art, Theory and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy was originally published in 1998, and offers a critical overview of the literature on the visual arts produced during the High and Late Renaissance. Analysing and interpreting texts by such writers as Vasari, Lomazzo, Zuccaro, and Tasso, Robert Williams demonstrates how these works offer insight into the experience of contemporary viewers, thus permitting a clearer view of the relationship between abstract thought and lived experience. Also examined is the argument that art is a privileged form of knowledge that subordinates all others. By focusing on a hitherto neglected, but important, body of literature, Williams shows how an understanding of it can transform our knowledge and appreciation of the Renaissance.

For almost twenty years, new historicism has been a highly controversial and influential force in literary and cultural studies. In "Practicing the New Historicism, " two of its most distinguished practitioners reflect on its surprisingly disparate sources and far-reaching effects.
In lucid and jargon-free prose, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on five central aspects of new historicism: recurrent use of anecdotes, preoccupation with the nature of representations, fascination with the history of the body, sharp focus on neglected details, and skeptical analysis of ideology. Arguing that new historicism has always been more a passionately engaged practice of questioning and analysis than an abstract theory, Gallagher and Greenblatt demonstrate this practice in a series of characteristically dazzling readings of works ranging from paintings by Joos van Gent and Paolo Uccello to "Hamlet" and "Great Expectations."
By juxtaposing analyses of Renaissance and nineteenth-century topics, the authors uncover a number of unexpected contrasts and connections between the two periods. Are aspects of the dispute over the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist detectable in British political economists' hostility to the potato? How does Pip's isolation in "Great Expectations" shed light on Hamlet's doubt?
Offering not only an insider's view of new historicism, but also a lively dialogue between a Renaissance scholar and a Victorianist, "Practicing the New Historicism" is an illuminating and unpredictable performance by two of America's most respected literary scholars.

A nucleus of sculptures cast by Andrea di Alessandri, commonly called from his native city, 'Il Bresciano', or from his products, 'Andrea dai bronzi', has been identified over the centuries. His style has been described as having similarities both with the High Renaissance of Sansovino and the Mannerism of Vittoria, the two successive master sculptors of sixteenth-century Venice, though he cast major bronzes for both. Andrea's signed masterpiece is a Paschal Candlestick in bronze, over two metres high and with sixty or more fascinating figures, made for Sansovino's magnificent lost church of Santo Spirito in 1568 and now in Santa Maria della Salute. The author's identification in 1996 of a pair of magnificent Firedogs with sphinx feet (which in 1568 had been recommended to Prince Francesco de'Medici in Florence), and in 2015 of an elaborate figurative bronze Ewer in Verona, have been the culmination of the process of recognition. Archival research has at last revealed the span of Andrea's life as 1524/25-1573, as well as many significant facts about his family and patronage. So the time is ripe for a comprehensive, well-illustrated, book on Il Bresciano, a 'new' and major bronzista in the great tradition of north Italy.

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.

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.

This is a fascinating volume that uses illustrated manuscripts to gain a unique insight into the gardens of the Renaissance. Whether part of a grand villa or an extension of a common kitchen, gardens in the Renaissance were planted and treasured in all reaches of society. Illuminated manuscripts of the period offer a glimpse into how people at the time pictured, used, and enjoyed these idyllic green spaces. Drawn from a wide range of works in the Getty Museum's permanent collection, this gorgeously illustrated volume explores gardens on many levels, from the literary Garden of Love and the biblical Garden of Eden to courtly gardens of the nobility, and reports on the many activities - both reputable and scandalous - that took place there.

Sublime Beauty: Raphael's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn focuses on one of the artist's most beguiling and enigmatic paintings and the idendity of the mysterious blonde sitter who epitomized his female portraiture during his Florentine period. Two essays by leading specialists in Renaissance art, Linda Wolk-Simon and Mary Shay-Millea, explore the stylistic relationship between this masterpiece and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and the link to Petrarch's poetry and popular notions of beauty in Renaissance art. They examine attributions and the painting's distinct iconography, and why, in place of the usual lapdog, the woman holds a unicorn.

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.

An innovative look at the creation of Leonardo's The Virgin of the Rocks This concise but innovative book, published to accompany an immersive digital exhibition at the National Gallery, London, focuses on a single Leonardo painting, and one of the artist's most celebrated: The Virgin of the Rocks. The quarter-century process of its creation is described, while a technical study shows how the latest scanning technology has been used by the National Gallery to explore beneath the surface of the picture, resulting in new insights into Leonardo's approach, optical theories, and painting technique. Illustrated with details of the painting, technical images, drawings, and comparative works, this volume combines the expertise of curators, conservators, and scientists in order to introduce readers to a fresh perspective on one of history's most extraordinary minds. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London (November 9, 2019-January 12, 2020)

Based on a lifetime's work in the field, Sir Roy Strong offers an expert and engaging new look at portrait painting in Stuart England, studying the sitters as much as the artists. Sir Roy Strong has been writing for over half a century on the painters of the courts of James I and Charles I. While taking account of the mass of scholarly work that has appeared during that time, this book offers a very different approach to the subject. Until now, the universal method has been to look at the artists, in particular van Dyck, and to see half a century of painting through the six years when the latter was in England. Instead, we are offered a view based on portraits and their sitters, and particularly on the dramatic change in their attitudes, from the still medieval (if Protestant) aesthetic of the Elizabethan age to the ambiguity of one which replaced that aesthetic by one based on the Catholic baroque of European art. Portraits after all are permanent records of how a sitter wished to be seen by posterity as well as in his or her own period. The obsession with the painter and with attribution has tended to obscure that very basic fact. They are inevitably self-fashioning images that chart the new mythology not only of a new dynasty, the Stuarts, but also of a burgeoning and assertive aristocracy. Unlike their spectacular court masques, however, which were gone in an evening of glory, the portraits are still with us - or, rather, those that have survived. Through them we are able to trace a new iconography for a new dynasty and also an aesthetic revolution which moved away from the Elizabethan world of ambiguity and hieroglyphs to one set in space defined by the new optics of the Renaissance. But the title, The Stuart Image, is designed to emphasise that above all what we see is the image and not the reality.

In The Patron's Payoff, Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser apply the innovative methods of information economics to the study of art. Their findings, written in highly accessible prose, are surprising and important. Building on three economic concepts--signaling, signposting, and stretching--the book develops the first systematic methodology for assessing the meaning of art patronage and provides a broad and useful framework for understanding how works of art functioned in Renaissance Italy. The authors discuss how patrons used conspicuous commissions to establish and signal their wealth and status, and the book explores the impact that individual works had on society. The ways in which artists met their patrons' needs for self-promotion dramatically affected the nature and appearance of paintings, sculptures, and buildings. The Patron's Payoff presents a new conceptual structure that allows readers to explore the relationships among the main players in the commissioning game--patrons, artists, and audiences--and to understand how commissioned art transmits information. This book facilitates comparisons of art from different periods and shows the interplay of artists and patrons working to produce mutual benefits subject to an array of limiting factors. The authors engage several art historians to look at what economic models reveal about the material culture of Italy, ca. 1300?1600, and beyond. Their case studies address such topics as private chapels and their decorations, donor portraits, and private palaces. In addition to the authors, the contributors are Molly Bourne, Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, Thomas J. Loughman, and Larry Silver.