In 1505, Michelangelo began planning the magnificent tomb for Pope Julius II, which would dominate the next forty years of his career. Repeated failures to complete the monument were characterized by Condivi, Michelangelo's authorized biographer, as "the tragedy of the tomb." This definitive book thoroughly documents the art of the tomb and each stage of its complicated evolution. Edited by Christoph Luitpold Frommel, who also acted as the lead consultant on tge recent restoration campaign, this volume offers new post-restoration photography that reveal the beauty of the tomb overall, its individual statues, and its myriad details. This book traces Michelangelo's stylistic evolution; documents the dialogue between the artist and his great friend and exacting patron, Pope Julius II (who died long before the work was completed); unravels the complicated relationship between the master and his assistants, who executed large parts of the design; and sheds new light on the importance of Neo-Platonism in Michelangelo's thinking, which gave shape to the tomb's most famous statue, the Moses, and the work as a whole. A rich trove of documents in the original Latin and archaic Italian-many unpublished-relates the story firsthand through letters, contracts, and other records covering Michelangelo's travels, the purchase of the marble, the concerns that arose as work progressed, and numerous disagreements and negotiations. The book also includes catalogues of fifteen sculptures designed for the tomb and more than 80 related drawings, as well as an extensive and up-to-date bibliography.

Venetian artistic giants of the sixteenth century, such as Giorgione, Vittore Carpaccio, Titian, Jacopo Sansovino, Jacopo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and their contemporaries, continued to shape artistic development, tastes in collecting, and modes of display long after their own practices ended. The robust reverberation of the Venetian Renaissance spread far beyond the borders of the lagoon to inform and influence artists, authors, and collectors who spent very little or even no time in Venice proper. The Enduring Legacy of Venetian Renaissance Art investigates the historical resonance of Venetian sixteenth-century art and explores its afterlife and its reinvention by artists working in its shadow. Despite being a frequently acknowledged truism, the pervasive legacy of Venetian sixteenth-century art has not received comprehensive treatment in recent publication history. The broad scope of the topics covered in these essays, from Titian's profound influence on the development of landscape painting to the effects of Carpaccio's historical paintings on early twentieth-century fashion, illustrates the persistence and adaptability of the Venetian Renaissance's legacy. In addition to analyzing the effects of individual artists on each other, this volume offers insight into the shifting characterizations and reception of Venice as a center for artistic innovation and inspiration throughout the early modern period, providing a nuanced and multifaceted view of the singular lagoon city and its indelible imprint on the history of art.

'An absorbing book, beautifully told and with the writer fully in command of a huge body of research' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday There was an epic sweep to Michelangelo's life. At 31 he was considered the finest artist in Italy, perhaps the world; long before he died at almost 90 he was widely believed to be the greatest sculptor or painter who had ever lived (and, by his enemies, to be an arrogant, uncouth, swindling miser). For decade after decade, he worked near the dynamic centre of events: the vortex at which European history was changing from Renaissance to Counter Reformation. Few of his works - including the huge frescoes of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the marble giant David and The Last Judgment - were small or easy to accomplish. Like a hero of classical mythology - such as Hercules, whose statue Michelangelo carved in his youth - he was subject to constant trials and labours. In Michelangelo Martin Gayford describes what it felt like to be Michelangelo Buonarroti, and how he transformed forever our notion of what an artist could be. 'It is a measure of [Michelangelo's] magnitude, and Gayford's skill in capturing it, that you finish this book wishing that Michelangelo had lived longer and created more' Rachel Spence, FT 'One of our most distinguished writers on what makes modern artists tick . . . It is very difficult to cut through the thicket of generations of scholarship and say anything new about David, the Sistine Chapel, The Last Judgement, the Basilica of St Peter's or many of Michelangelo's other masterpieces, but Gayford manages to do so by encouraging us to think - and look - at both the obvious and the overlooked' Sunday Telegraph 'Only the most ambitious biographer can take on the talent of Michelangelo Buonarroti' The Times

Leonardo's writings on painting-among the most remarkable from any era-were never edited by Leonardo himself into a single coherent book. In this anthology the authors have edited material not only from his so-called Treatise on Painting but also from his surviving manuscripts and from other primary sources, some of which were here translated for the first time. The resulting volume is an invaluable reference work for art historians as well as for anyone interested in the mind and methods of one of the world's greatest creative geniuses. "Highly readable. . . . Also included are documentary sources and letters illuminating Leonardo's career; the manuscript sources for all of Leonardo's statements are fully cited in the notes. The volume is skillfully translated and is illustrated with appropriate examples of drawings and paintings by the artist."-Choice "Certainly easier to read and . . . more convenient than previous compilations." -Charles Hope, New York Review of Books "A chaotic assemblage of Leonardo da Vinci's writings appeared in 1651 as Treatise on Painting. . . . [Kemp] successfully applies . . . order to the chaos."-ArtNews

Hans Baldung Grien, the most famous apprentice and close friend of German artist Albrecht Dürer, was known for his unique and highly eroticised images of witches. In paintings and woodcut prints, he gave powerful visual expression to late medieval tropes and stereotypes, such as the poison maiden, venomous virgin, the Fall of Man, ‘death and the maiden’ and other motifs and eschatological themes, which mingled abject and erotic qualities in the female body. Yvonne Owens reads these images against the humanist intellectual milieu of Renaissance Germany, showing how classical and medieval medicine and natural philosophy interpreted female anatomy as toxic, defective and dangerously beguiling. She reveals how Hans Baldung exploited this radical polarity to create moralising and titillating portrayals of how monstrous female sexuality victimised men and brought them low. Furthermore, these images issued from—and contributed to—the contemporary understanding of witchcraft as a heresy that stemmed from natural ‘feminine defect,’ a concept derived from Aristotle. Offering new and provocative interpretations of Hans Baldung’s iconic witchcraft imagery, this book is essential reading for historians of art, culture and gender relations in the late medieval and early modern periods.

A provocative account of the philosophical problem of 'difference' in art history, Tintoretto's Difference offers a new reading of this pioneering 16th century painter, drawing upon the work of the 20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Bringing together philosophical, art historical, art theoretical and art historiographical analysis, it is the first book-length study in English of Tintoretto for nearly two decades and the first in-depth exploration of the implications of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy for the understanding of early modern art and for the discipline of art history. With a focus on Deleuze's important concept of the diagram, Tintoretto's Difference positions the artist's work within a critical study of both art history's methods, concepts and modes of thought, and some of the fundamental dimensions of its scholarly practice: context, tradition, influence, and fact. Indicating potentials of the diagrammatic for art historical thinking across the registers of semiotics, aesthetics, and time, Tintoretto's Difference offers at once an innovative study of this seminal artist, an elaboration of Deleuze's philosophy of the diagram, and a new avenue for a philosophical art history.

The social problem of infant abandonment captured the public's imagination in Italy during the fifteenth century, a critical period of innovation and development in charitable discourses. As charity toward foundlings became a political priority, the patrons and supporters of foundling hospitals turned to visual culture to help them make their charitable work understandable to a wide audience. Focusing on four institutions in central Italy that possess significant surviving visual and archival material, Visual Cultures of Foundling Care in Renaissance Italy examines the discursive processes through which foundling care was identified, conceptualized, and promoted. The first book to consider the visual culture of foundling hospitals in Renaissance Italy, this study looks beyond the textual evidence to demonstrate that the institutional identities of foundling hospitals were articulated by means of a wide variety of visual forms, including book illumination, altarpieces, fresco cycles, institutional insignia, processional standards, prints, and reliquaries. The author draws on fields as diverse as art history, childhood studies, the history of charity, Renaissance studies, gender studies, sociology, and the history of religion to elucidate the pivotal role played by visual culture in framing and promoting the charitable succor of foundlings.

Though Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera (1570), the first illustrated cookbook, is well known to historians of food, up to now there has been no study of its illustrations, unique in printed books through the early seventeenth century. In Food and Knowledge in Renaissance Italy, Krohn both treats the illustrations in Scappi's cookbook as visual evidence for a lost material reality; and through the illustrations, including several newly-discovered hand-colored examples, connects Scappi's Opera with other types of late Renaissance illustrated books. What emerges from both of these approaches is a new way of thinking about the place of cookbooks in the history of knowledge. Krohn argues that with the increasing professionalization of many skills and trades, Scappi was at the vanguard of a new way of looking not just at the kitchen-as workshop or laboratory-but at the ways in which artisanal knowledge was visualized and disseminated by a range of craftsmen, from engineers to architects. The recipes in Scappi's Opera belong on the one hand to a genre of cookery books, household manuals, and courtesy books that was well established by the middle of the sixteenth century, but the illustrations suggest connections to an entirely different and emergent world of knowledge. It is through study of the illustrations that these connections are discerned, explained, and interpreted. As one of the most important cookbooks for early modern Europe, the time is ripe for a focused study of Scappi's Opera in the various contexts in which Krohn frames it: book history, antiquarianism, and visual studies.

In recent years, art historians have begun to delve into the patronage, production and reception of sculptures-sculptors' workshop practices; practical, aesthetic, and esoteric considerations of material and materiality; and the meanings associated with materials and the makers of sculptures. This volume brings together some of the top scholars in the field, to investigate how sculptors in early modern Italy confronted such challenges as procurement of materials, their costs, shipping and transportation issues, and technical problems of materials, along with the meanings of the usage, hierarchies of materials, and processes of material acquisition and production. Contributors also explore the implications of these facets in terms of the intended and perceived meaning(s) for the viewer, patron, and/or artist. A highlight of the collection is the epilogue, an interview with a contemporary artist of large-scale stone sculpture, which reveals the similar challenges sculptors still encounter today as they procure, manufacture and transport their works.

For too long, the 'centre' of the Renaissance has been considered to be Rome and the art produced in, or inspired by it. This collection of essays dedicated to Deborah Howard brings together an impressive group of internationally recognised scholars of art and architecture to showcase both the diversity within and the porosity between the 'centre' and 'periphery' in Renaissance art. Without abandoning Rome, but together with other centres of art production, the essays both shift their focus away from conventional categories and bring together recent trends in Renaissance studies, notably a focus on cultural contact, material culture and historiography. They explore the material mechanisms for the transmission and evolution of ideas, artistic training and networks, as well as the dynamics of collaboration and exchange between artists, theorists and patrons. The chapters, each with a wealth of groundbreaking research and previously unpublished documentary evidence, as well as innovative methodologies, reinterpret Italian art relating to canonical sites and artists such as Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Sebastiano del Piombo, in addition to showcasing the work of several hitherto neglected architects, painters, and an inimitable engineer-inventor.

Prints changed the history of art, even as that history was first being written. In this study, Sharon Gregory argues that this reality was not lost on Vasari; she shows that, contrary to common opinion, prints thoroughly pervade Vasari's history of art, just as they pervade his own career as an artist. This volume examines Giorgio Vasari's interest, as an art historian and as an artist, in engravings and woodblock prints, shedding new light not only on aspects of Vasari's career, but also on aspects of sixteenth-century artistic culture and artistic practice. It is the first book to study his interest in prints from this dual perspective. Investigating how prints were themselves more often interpretive than strictly reproductive, Gregory challenges the long-held view that Vasari's reliance on prints led to errors in his interpretation of major monuments. She demonstrates how, like Raphael and later artists, Vasari used engravings after his designs as a form of advertisement through which he hoped to increase his fame and attract influential patrons. She also explores how contributing illustrations for books by his scholarly friends, Vasari participated in the contemporary exchange of intellectual ideas and concerns shared by Renaissance humanists and artists.

Decorated by Giovanni Buonconsiglio, Jacopo Tintoretto, Palma il Giovane, Sebastiano Ricci and Giambattista Tiepolo, the church of the former Benedictine female monastery Santi Cosma e Damiano occupies an outstanding position in Venice. The author of this study argues that from its foundation in 1481 to its dissolution in 1805, Santi Cosma e Damiano was a reform convent, and that its nuns employed art and architecture as a means to actively express their specific religious concerns. While on the one hand focusing, on the basis of extensive archival research, on the reconstruction of the history and construction of the convent, this study's larger concern is with the religious reform movement, its ideas concerning art and architecture, and with the convent as a space for female self-realization in early modern Venice.

Richly illustrated, and featuring detailed descriptions of works by pivotal figures in the Italian Renaissance, this enlightening volume traces the development of art and architecture throughout the Italian peninsula in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. * A smart, elegant, and jargon-free analysis of the Italian Renaissance what it was, what it means, and why we should study it * Provides a sustained discussion of many great works of Renaissance art that will significantly enhance readers understanding of the period * Focuses on Renaissance art and architecture as it developed throughout the Italian peninsula, from Venice to Sicily * Situates the Italian Renaissance in the wider context of the history of art * Includes detailed interpretation of works by a host of pivotal Renaissance artists, both well and lesser known

This book provides a fully contextualised overview on aspects of visual culture, and how this was the product of patronage, politics, and religion in some European countries between the 13th and 17th centuries. The research that is showcased here offers new perspectives on the conception, production and reception of artworks as a means of projecting core values, ideals, and traditions of individuals, groups, and communities. This volume features contributions from established scholars and new researchers in the field, and examines how art contributed to the construction of identities by means of new archival research and a thorough interdisciplinary approach. The authors suggest that the use of conventions in style and iconography allowed the local and wider community to take part in rituals and devotional practices where these works were widely recognized symbols. However, alongside established traditions, new, ad-hoc developments in style and iconography were devised to suit individual requirements, and these are fully discussed in relevant case-studies. This book also contributes to a new understanding of the interaction between artists, patrons, and viewers in Medieval and Renaissance times.

The Moretti Gallery presents this compilation of carefully chosen paintings and accompanying critical essays intended as a tool for approaching its collection of late-medieval and early Renaissance works. Italian and English text.

English Description: Group portraits are an exceptional form of Dutch painting that particularly took hold in the burgeoning metropolis of Amsterdam. This volume focuses on the 17th century, the "Golden Age" of Dutch painting, and 11 famous group portraits that perfectly capture the essence of Dutch society at that time. The group portraits were commissioned for special occasions and displayed prominently as commemorations on the premises of a variety of institutions that played an important role in the political and economic life of the city. Painters include Adriaen Backer, Frans Badens, Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Govert Flinck, Bartholomeus van deer Helst, Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy, and Dirck van Santvoort. German text. German description: Das Gruppenportrat stellt eine herausragende hollandische Bildform dar, die besonders in der aufbluehenden Metropole Amsterdam Fua fasste. Im Zentrum des Katalog-Buches steht das 17. Jahrhundert, das so genannte "Goldene Zeitalter" und elf beruehmte Gruppenportrats, die das damalige Wesen der hollandischen Gesellschaft vollkommen ausdruecken. Regelmaaig lieaen sich Mitglieder des vermogenden Stadtbuergertums in voller Lebensgroae vereint darstellen, wie sie von Amts wegen gemeinsame Aufgaben wahrnehmen. Der besondere Reiz dieser Bilder aus dem 17. Jahrhundert besteht nicht zuletzt in ihrem unmittelbaren Bezug zur Gegenwart. Was damals in einem vom monarchischen Absolutismus gepragten Europa eine Ausnahme darstellte, bildet im heutigen politischen und wirtschaftlichen Leben die Regel: Organisationen und Firmen werden von Personengruppen als Kommissionen, Kuratorien oder Aufsichtsrate gefuehrt. Damit schlagen diese Bilder eine Bruecke, die Vergan- genheit und heutige Lebenswelt unmittelbar verbindet. Die Gruppenportrats wurden zu besonderen Anlassen in Auftrag gegeben und zur Erinnerung in den Reprasentationsraumen der Institutionen aufgehangt. Sie gelangten nach deren Auflosung in das Eigentum der Stadt Amsterdam, einen Teil bildet die Schuttersgalerij im Amsterdams Historisch Museum. Aus diesem Bestand wurden die elf Bilder der Ausstellung ausgewahlt, die von den Malern Adriaen Backer, Frans Badens, Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Govert Flinck, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy und Dirck van Santvoort stammen.

This is the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museum of Archeology and Art in Grosseto, Italy, from May to September 2008 in which thirty-one masterpieces of sixteenth-century Tuscan art were displayed for the public, most for the first time. Precise reproductions, both complete and in detail, are accompanied by rigorous academic and philological critical essays. The catalogue provides the reader with a striking pictorial treasure of rare beauty, while also appealing to scholars and experts through the quality of so many previously unpublished works by over twenty famous artists from the period. Italian text.

Articles presented at the conference on Florentine Renaissance palaces held at the State Archives in Florence in 2005. Various articles deal with architecture, facades, interior design, politics and style, all in relation to Renaissance palatial edifices in Florence. Papers in Italian and English. SOMMARIO: Brenda Preyer, Non solo facciate: dentro i palazzi Pazzi, Lenzi e Ridolfi Guidi Gianluca Belli, Il disegno delle facciate nei palazzi fiorentini del Quattrocento Riccardo Pacciani, Spazi e forme del culto in palazzi d'area fiorentina, 1370-1470. Dalla casata in chiesa alla chiesa in casa Linda Pellecchia, Stepping Up: Observations on the Renaissance Starcaise in Florence Carla G. Romby, Dietro la facciata. Rinnovamento e qualita dell'abitare nelle dimore fiorentine del Quattrocento Michael Lingohr, Un contributo alla lettura del palazzo da Gagliano a Firenze. Temi stilistici o politici nella Firenze del primo Cinquecento? Gabriele Morolli, Gli "horti" suburbani di Boboli. da Luca Pitti a Eleonora di Toledo: 'belvedere' albertiano o 'delizia' vasariana? Amedeo Belluzzi, Palazzi fiorentini del secondo Cinquecento Emanuela Ferretti, Un cantiere fiorentino nella Roma di meta Cinquecento. Nanni di Baccio e il palazzo di Averardo Serristori in Borgo Vecchio: Delizie per gli eruditi Caterina D'Amelio, Il palazzo Lenzi nei secoli XVII e XVIII. La proprieta Buini: storia e documenti Francesca Carrara, L'intrigante vicenda fiorentina di don Luigi di Toledo.

Andrea del Sarto's 1514 painting The Holy Family with St. Elizabeth, St. John the Baptist and two angels counts as one of the masterpieces of Italian painting in Munich's Alte Pinakothek. Her art, at the threshold between High Renaissance and Mannerism, is the focus of a special exhibition, and is extensively documented in this publication. For nearly 20 years, the painting was withdrawn from public viewing as its poor state required extensive restorations. To mark its return to the gallery in Munich from the collection of the Elector Johann Wilhelm in Dusseldorf, the painting is presented together with del Sarto's second version of the theme, currently in the possession of the Louvre. This results in the first opportunity to analyze the relationships between the two works side by side. This catalog documents and analyzes the art historical research and the results of detailed investigation of both paintings. German text.

This comprehensive study of the sculptures of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) follows in twelve chapters his development as an artist and the area in which he excelled: portraits, the likeness of which astonished his contemporaries; the sculptures for St Peter in Rome; his extraordinary fountains; the timeless beauty of his renderings of mythological figures. German text. Die umfassende Monographie ueber die Skulpturen Gianlorenzo Berninis (1598-1680) beleuchtet in zwolf Kapiteln die Stationen seiner Entwicklung und die Gebiete, in denen er brillierte: die Portrats, deren -sprechende- Ahnlichkeit die Zeitgenossen verblueffte, die Werke fuer den Petersdom, die grandiosen Brunnen und seine Heiligen und zeitlos schonen Gestalten der antiken Mythologie. Den ausgefuehrten Werken gegenuebergestellte Vorzeichnungen, Tonskizzen und Modelle erlauben einen faszinierenden Einblick in den kuenstlerischen Schaffensprozea.

Dieser Band enthalt 131 Katalognummern mit mittelalterlichen und fruhneuzeitlichen Inschriften der Stadt Wiesbaden und ihrer eingemeindeten Vororte bis zum Jahr 1700. Sowohl die im Original erhaltenen als auch die verlorenen, jedoch durch Abschriften, Zeichnungen oder Fotos uberlieferten Inschriften wurden in den Katalog aufgenommen. Die altesten Grabsteine des 5. bis 6. Jahrhunderts legen Zeugnis ab von dem Weiterleben christlicher Glaubenstradition in der germanischen Bevolkerung nach dem Ende der romischen Herrschaft am Rhein. Gegen Ende des Mittelalters setzt auch in Wiesbaden die allenthalben zu beobachtende Verdichtung des Materials ein. Der Kreis der Auftraggeber von Inschriften erweitert sich und umfasst nun Adlige, Amtleute, Pfarrer und ein Jahrhundert spater auch Burgerliche, die in der untergegangenen Mauritiuskirche und den Vororten ihre Denkmaler hinterliessen. Die Einleitung des Bandes stellt Bezuge zwischen dem Inschriftenbestand und der Stadtgeschichte her. Im Katalogteil werden die Inschriftentrager beschrieben, die Texte wiedergegeben, bei Bedarf mit Ubersetzungen versehen und eingehend besprochen. Register und ein ausfuhrlicher Tafelteil erganzen die Edition.