" A]n impressive and original work of synthetic scholarship that one hopes will be emulated by others." Phillip B. Wagoner, Wesleyan University

" A]n excellent and important work... with] a wonderful sophistication of method." Padma Kaimal, Colgate University

The patrons and artists of Bijapur, an Islamic kingdom that flourished in the Deccan region of India in the 16th and 17th centuries, produced lush paintings and elaborately carved architecture, evidence of a highly cosmopolitan Indo-Islamic culture. Bijapur s most celebrated monument, the Ibrahim Rauza tomb complex, is carved with elegant calligraphy and lotus flowers and was once dubbed "the Taj Mahal of the South." This stunningly illustrated study traces the development of Bijapuri art and courtly identity through detailed examination of selected paintings and architecture, many of which have never before been published. They deserve our attention for their aesthetic qualities as well as for the ways they expand our understanding of the rich synthesis of cultures and religions in South Asian and Islamic art."

As a great master of the early Renaissance, Piero della Francesca created paintings for ecclesiastics, confaternities, and illustrious nobles throughout the Italian peninsula. Since the early twentieth century, the rational space, abstract designs, lucid illumination and naturalistic details of his pictures have attracted wide audiences. Piero's treatises on mathematics and perspective fascinate scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This Companion brings together new essays that offer a synthesis and overview of Piero's life and accomplishments as a painter and theoretician.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was one of the most innovative painters of his time, and one of the most momentous artists of any era. Rescued from neglect, he has become a cultural icon in the late twentieth century, not only for his art but also because of his violent and tragic life. Catherine Puglisi's highly praised monograph, now available for the first time in paperback to extend its accessibility to a new audience, supersedes all previous studies of the artist by far. Making full use of the latest research and a series of dramatic recent discoveries, she has produced a concise, clear-headed and comprehensive work of scholarship that also provides a moving biography of the artist and an incisive deconstruction of the genius with which he absorbed and transformed the artistic tradition of his time. Altogether, Puglisi's work - a profound achievement in its own right - reveals a poignant aspect to Caravaggio's life and work, which offers a deeper insight into his function as an artist than has ever been made possible before. The entirety of Caravaggio's works are discussed with expertise and illustrated in colour, while the book also contains an appendix of documents dating back to the sixteenth century, full notes and a wide bibliography, a checklist of works and full indexes. This authoritative and beautifully produced monograph is the standard work on Caravaggio: it is now accessible to the broadest audience yet in a no less sophisticated but all the more user-friendly presentation.

This volume considers pictured and picturing women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy as the subjects, creators, patrons, and viewers of art. Women's experiences and needs (perceived by women themselves or defined by men on their behalf) are seen as important determinants in the production and consumption of visual culture. By using a variety of approaches the contributors demonstrate the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach when studying women in Italy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

Der Rimini-Altar zahlt zu den Spitzenleistungen transalpiner Bildhauerkunst der 1430er-Jahre und ist ein Hauptwerk der Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt/M. 1913 erworben, weckten die 12 Apostelstatuetten und die von ihnen flankierte vielfigurige Kreuzigung wegen des speziellen Materials Alabaster, des Umfangs des sudniederlandischen Figurenensembles, aber auch aufgrund seiner enormen kunstlerischen und handwerklichen Qualitat stets grosses Interesse nicht nur beim Fachpublikum. Die langjahrige Restaurierung der Skulpturen gab Anlass zu intensiver technologischer, geochemischer und kunsthistorischer Forschung. Neues und UEberraschendes trat zutage. Diese Erkenntnisse werden ebenso wie die neuen Methoden der Restaurierung in dieser ersten monografischen Bearbeitung des Rimini-Altars anschaulich dargestellt.

Hardly any other epoch in art history has been marked by as many profound changes as the Late Gothic was in the fifteenth century. Inspired by Netherlandish role models, depictions of light and shadow, body and space, became increasingly more realistic. Everyday life found entry into the arts. With the invention of printing, images and texts were distributed to an extent previously unheard of. Artists such as Nicolaus Gerhaert and Martin Schongauer became widely known and influenced the development of the visual arts throughout Europe and across all genres. Featuring a wide selection of works, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin present the first extensive exhibition of Late Gothic art in the German-speaking regions. Its comparison and contrast of the various genres turns the catalogue into a handbook for the arts at the threshold of the modern era.

"Liveliness" is the dominant topos in the art and discourse on art of the early modern era. It is characterized by a paradox, since the works only seem to live. But what is also reflected in the fascination with almost living works at the same time is the impossibility of drawing rigid lines of demarcation between the living and the dead. Here, art explores what also occupied natural philosophy at the time in an experimental way. The book examines the transitions between living and dead in case studies, for instance, based on early tombs, anatomical renderings, and sculptural monochromy as well as on the history of coloring, Vasari's teleology, Michelangelo's non-finito, and Titian's portraits. What come into play are eroticism, monetary theory, the luster of eyes, and still-lifes, and also visual poetry, princely triumphal processions, and light and sculpture in the Baroque.

Screen of Kings is the first book in any language to examine the cultural role of the regional aristocracy - relatives of the emperors - in Ming dynasty China (1368-1644). Through an analysis of their patronage of architecture, calligraphy, painting and other art forms, and through a study of the contents of their splendid and recently excavated tombs, this innovative study puts the aristocracy back at the heart of accounts of China's culture, from which they have been excluded until very recently. Screen of Kings challenges much of the received wisdom about Ming China. Craig Clunas sheds new light on many familiar artworks, as well as works that have never before been reproduced. New archaeological discoveries have furnished the author with evidence of the lavish and spectacular lifestyles of these provincial princes and demonstrate how central the imperial family was to the high culture of the Ming era. Written by the leading specialist in the art and culture of the Ming period, this book illuminates a key aspect of China's past, and will significantly alter our understanding of the Ming. It will be enjoyed by anyone with a serious interest in the history and art of this great civilization.

Richard L. Feigen has amassed a collection of Italian paintings that is widely admired for its depth and quality, especially for the works it features by the principal masters of the early Italian Renaissance. This beautifully illustrated catalogue of the complete collection presents rare masterpieces by artists from Bernardo Daddi to Fra Angelico, Orazio Gentileschi's Danae, Annibale Carracci's Virgin and Child, and precious, small-scale coppers by major Mannerist and Baroque masters. Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection catalogues more than fifty major works from the 14th to the 17th century, and is the first publication of this remarkable and important collection. Published in association with the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (5/28/10-9/12/10)

Analyzing convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns' chronicles, this study examines the nuns' intellectual and imaginative achievements to determine how they preserved individual and convent identities by writing chronicles. The chronicles reveal many examples of the nuns' achievements, especially with regard to cultural creativity, and demonstrate that convent traditions ultimately determined the cultural priorities that dictated convent ceremonial life.

When the Jesuit missionaries ventured from Europe to newly discovered territories in Asia and Latin America, they brought with them the rich traditions of Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture. What happened to the artistic and social practices already thriving in the communities that the missionaries encountered is the story told by art historian and Jesuit specialist Gauvin Alexander Bailey.

The Jesuits, determined to convert both spiritually and culturally, put great effort into imparting their own artistic techniques and knowledge. At the same time they were unusually tolerant of the non-European cultures, making artistic accommodations in order to communicate with each particular society. The resulting hybridization was complex: German, Italian, and Flemish as well as the dominant Spanish and Portuguese idioms mingled with multiple Asian and Amerindian traditions.

Bailey argues that this cross-pollination of early modern art became the first truly global visual currency for cultural exchange. Through a sweeping look at Japan, China, Mughul India, and Paraguay, the author focuses on four of the most flourishing artistic encounters and discovers much unrecognized or misunderstood art. He overturns the simple thesis that art was imposed on subject cultures in favour of the more difficult paradigm of exchange. This meticulously researched book has over 100 beautiful illustrations and a thorough index.

Winner of the 2000 Roland H. Bainton Prize Winner for Art and Music History - Sixteenth Century Studies Conference

This edition comprises 87 miniatures of early 15th century Parisian book illuminations in facsimile form, with wide decorative borders, floriated initials, and Gothic script. The French text, written in the 1380s by Gaston Phebus, Count of Foix, contains not only technical details about the practice of huntsmanship in the 14th-century, but also descriptions of the wild animals which were then hunted. The particular manuscript on which this text is based is dated 1405-10.;The facsimile of the entire Phebus manuscript is followed by an introduction and commentary. The former identifies the various owners of the manuscript throughout its history and analyzes the complex links between this and related manuscripts. It also discusses the attribution of hands and the methods adopted by the artists responsible for the scenes and backgrounds of the miniatures. The commentary then summarizes the contents of each chapter of the text, relating it to the imagery of the miniatures.

This title provides a view of the development of the literature on art in Italy during the Cinquecento. The selections bring out the close relationship between art theories and the actuality of art and chart a trend from a humanistic orientation to a more technical and professorial one. Together, the documents and the commentary reveal the effects that humanistic circles, the courts, and the Church (during the High Renaissance as well as the Counter-Reformation) had on the way people thought and wrote about art in that splendid century.

One of the most important books on the modernist movement in architecture, written by a founder of the Bauhaus school. One of the most important books on the modern movement in architecture, The New Architecture and The Bauhaus poses some of the fundamental problems presented by the relations of art and industry and considers their possible, practical solution. Gropius traces the rise of the New Architecture and the work of the now famous Bauhaus and, with splendid clarity, calls for a new artist and architect educated to new materials and techniques and directly confronting the requirements of the age.

Zahlreiche mitteleuropaische Tafelgemalde des 15. Jahrhunderts nehmen Bezug auf asthetische Phanomene an ihrem ursprunglichen Aufstellungort. Diese Rekurse werden in Gemalden des Heisterbacher Altars, des Kirchenvater-Altars von Michael Pacher, des Nurnberger Augustiner-Altars und des Bartholomaus-Altars naher bestimmt; ausfuhrlich werden ihre Funktionen wie die Vermittlungsleistung, die verschiedenen Auspragungen asthetischer Reflexion sowie ein inharenter Ikonoklasmus eroertert. Im Fokus stehen dabei die damals weit verbreiteten gemalten Skulpturenretabel mit nebeneinander gereihten Heiligen.

Text in English & German. Francesco di Giorgio Martini's fortress complexes, created at the end of the Quattrocento, continue to look experimental and highly speculative half a millennium later by their semiotic character. They represent an extreme of European architectural history, occupying a position where architecture and sculpture cannot be sharply distinguished any longer. The alien-looking creations represented in this book have their origins in a particular historic situation: the emergence of firearms in the 14th century and their spread in the 15th century had shifted the balance of warfare in favour of the attacking side, against which the defensive structure had not yet found a remedy. Enter Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439 to 1502) at this point, a native of Siena and one of the Quattrocento's highly versatile artists. He worked mainly in Federico da Montefeltro's Urbino, and left behind a body of work that included painting -- the three famous prospects of ideal cities in Berlin, Baltimore and Urbino are attributed to him -- sculpture -- primarily his imposing reliefs -- and architecture -- here he was definitely the outstanding figure between Alberti and Bramante. His achievements as an engineer are equally impressive, and his elaborate designs for machines strongly influenced those of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a true Renaissance uomo universale, though, despite of his voluminous and influential theoretical work, less in the sense of a humanist homme de lettres than as an all-round artist. Francesco's sacred and secular structures are classicist and austere in nature, yet his fortress structures look as if, moving beyond all functional concerns, he is exploiting the newness of the task, the lack of any tried and tested technical solutions and the removal of all typological boundaries to give his architectonic fantasies free rein, resulting in an apotheosis of the new, the unfamiliar and the alien. This book is an attempt to understand the strangely grandiose semiotic character of these structures. In doing so, it poses the question of what strategies can be used when seeking a shape for buildings for which there is no precedent.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Northern Europe were characterized by enormous religious change. During this period new religious ideas and ideals gradually took shape and materialized in all aspects of religious life, both on a private level as well as in public and liturgical space. The fundamental question of how God could be experienced as present in the world, became - again - the center of lively debate. Lutheran, Calvinist, Roman Catholic and Anglican reformations - to mention just a selection of the different ideological movements in play during this period - challenged interpretations of the Bible, the sacraments, the communication of religious truth, the practice of devotion and the material expressions of faith. When looking at the European reformations from a transnational perspective, they stand forth as a bundle of fundamentally interwoven religious movements attempting to define their specific religious identity in terms of dissimilarity. Material Cultures of Devotion in the Age of Reformations explores how the visual and material cultures of Christian devotion were adapted, developed, transformed, and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, in the age of reformations, c.1500-1650 in Northern Europe.

This is a catalogue of the pre-Gothic Revival stained glass found at 50 sites in Cheshire. Many of these are churches, but there are also domestic residences and other buildings. Highlights include an important 14th-century regional workshop, probably based in Chester, whose output survives at 9 sites in the county; 16th-century armorials and donors; a fascinating window of 1581 at High Legh which demonstrates the Elizabethan religious settlement; a unique window commemorating the English Civil War; and a plethora of 17th-century quarries depicting a wide range of subjects such as English monarchs, classical sibyls, military drill and menial occupations. The county's outstanding collections of foreign panels are also catalogued.
The stained glass of the neighbouring county of Lancashire appears in CVMA, Great Britain, Summary Catalogue 8, The Medieval Stained Glass of Lancashire. The introduction discusses many aspects of the stained glass of both counties: documentary sources, donors and heraldry, condition, iconography, as well as examining the style and techniques used by the glass-painters. This catalogue will be essential for scholars and students of the history of medieval and early modern art, and for all those interested in the social and religious history of Tudor and Stuart Cheshire.

This beautiful and extensively illustrated catalogue presents in-depth case studies of twenty-four rare and remarkable Late Medieval panel paintings, many from the German-speaking regions of Europe, but also from Spain, France and the Southern Netherlands. These works - often fragments of larger altarpieces designed for liturgical performance and communal or private devotion - can be monumental and dramatic or small and intimate, but all on close examination prove to be rich in meaning - even in cases where the painters remain anonymous, and the precise contexts of their creation have become obscured or fragmented. The collected essays will encompass a broad spectrum of artistic styles, techniques, and interests, including in some instances the works' original frames, and the attendant meanings they give to the imagery housed within. The group will also be augmented by a rare and important small-scale tapestry altarpiece with close links to panel painting. The inclusion of such a piece, one of the many newly resurfaced works to be included in the catalogue, will offer an innovative approach to the scholarship of Medieval paintings, and enrich our understanding of the cross-pollination of ideas between mediums and the role played by painters in tapestry production at the turn of the sixteenth century. The book, a follow-up to Susie Nash's important 2011 catalogue, considers the physical history, original form, condition and technique of the assembled works, using wood analysis and dendrochronology, paint samples, infra-red, x-rays and macro photography to document the materials and methods involved in their making and the alterations and transformations they have undergone with time. This new information is combined with close readings of their imagery and its presentation to explore issues of meaning, creative process, patronal intervention and artistic intention, leading in many cases to new reconstructions, attributions, dates and iconographic readings. The text is extensively illustrated with a series of images of all of the works, along with technical photographs and comparative material.

This major scholarly publication accompanies the exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art, New York in Summer 2009 focusing attention on the extraordinary array of biblical prints produced in the Low Countries during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a time of dynamic religious and political change. In particular, the book studies the crucial role played by scriptural prints in the complex processes of religious self-formation that dominated early modern European culture. In cities such as Antwerp and Amsterdam, prints were the primary medium for the invention and dissemination of biblical imagery. Far from simply following artistic developments in the monumental arts, prints of Old and New Testament subjects were agents of innovation in their own right, offering a lens through which the Bible was received and interpreted. This volume features over 130 prints, woodcuts and engravings by Lucas van Leyden, Jan Swart van Groningen, Maarten van Heemskerck, Philips Galle, Hendrick Goltzius and Hieronymus Wierix, among others.