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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > 1400 to 1600 > Renaissance art > General
Leo Steinberg was one of the most original art historians of the
twentieth century, known for taking interpretive risks that
challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In
essays and lectures ranging from old masters to contemporary art,
he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that
illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual
evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His
writings, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and
influential reading. Steinberg's perceptions evolved from long,
hard looking at his objects of study. Almost everything he wrote
included passages of formal analysis, but always put into the
service of interpretation. This volume begins and ends with
thematic essays on two fundamental precepts of Steinberg's art
history: how dependence on textual authority mutes the visual
truths of images and why artists routinely copy or adapt earlier
artworks. In between are fourteen chapters on masterpieces of
Renaissance and Baroque art, with bold and enlightening
interpretations of works by Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Pontormo, El
Greco, Caravaggio, Steen and, finally, Velazquez. Four chapters are
devoted to some of Velazquez's best-known paintings, ending with
the famously enigmatic Las Meninas. Renaissance and Baroque Art is
the third volume in a series that presents Steinberg's writings,
selected and edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz.
This book recounts the exciting rediscovery of Giorgio Vasari's
painting Allegory of Patience, painted in 1551-52 for the Bishop of
Arezzo, Vasari's hometown. The painting was conceived in Rome with
the aid of Michelangelo, as many surviving letters reveal. The work
will be on view to the public at the National Gallery, London,
through 2023. The monumental figure of a woman, life-sized, with
arms crossed, watches time run down. The passing of time is
symbolized in the drops that fall from an antique water clock
beside her, gradually wearing away the stone on which she rests her
foot. The Bishop of Arezzo regarded patience as the key to his
career and achievements, and wished it to be represented in a
picture. Vasari consulted his contemporaries and fellow humanists
as well as the great sculptor Michelangelo when deciding what form
it should take. The image represents more exactly the Latin tag
'diuturna tolerantia' (daily tolerance). The painting quickly
became famous in its time and numerous copies were made of it - but
not until now has the original emerged. Thanks to letters between
those involved, the painting and the process of its creation are
richly documented, and in particular provide insights and
quotations about picture-making from Michelangelo. The book carries
full documentation of the work and its known copies, some of which
can be traced to leading patrons in Renaissance Italy. It also
examines Vasari's own autograph technique and artistic aims.
No city but Florence contains such an intense concentration of art
produced in such a short span of time. The sheer number and
proximity of works of painting, sculpture, and architecture in
Florence can be so overwhelming that Florentine hospitals treat
hundreds of visitors each year for symptoms brought on by trying to
see them all, an illness famously identified with the French author
Stendhal. While most guidebooks offer only brief descriptions of a
large number of works, with little discussion of the historical
background, Judith Testa gives a fresh perspective on the rich and
brilliant art of the Florentine Renaissance in An Art Lover's Guide
to Florence. Concentrating on a number of the greatest works, by
such masters as Botticelli and Michelangelo, Testa explains each
piece in terms of what it meant to the people who produced it and
for whom they made it, deftly treating the complex interplay of
politics, sex, and religion that were involved in the creation of
those works. With Testa as a guide, armchair travelers and tourists
alike will delight in the fascinating world of Florentine art and
history.
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Notebooks
(Paperback, New)
Leonardo Da Vinci; Selected by Irma A. Richter; Edited by Thereza Wells; Preface by Martin Kemp
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R316
R260
Discovery Miles 2 600
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'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.
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.
Europe Views the World examines the wide diversity of images that
Europeans produced to represent the wide variety of peoples and
places around the globe during and after the so-called 'Age of
Exploration'. Beginning with the medieval imagery of Europe's
imagined alien races, and with an emphasis on the artists of
Northern Europe, Larry Silver takes the reader on a tour across
continents, from the Americas to Africa and Asia. Encompassing
works such as prints, paintings, maps, tapestries and sculptural
objects, this book addresses the overall question of an emerging
European self-definition through the evidence of visual culture,
however biased, about the wider world in its component parts.
Unique to this book, each chapter concludes with an 'in response',
analysing representations of Europeans by indigenous peoples of
each continent to give a deeper and more multi-faceted account of
the impact of Europe's view of the world.
"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar
Degas Covering every era and over 650 artists, this comprehensive,
illustrated guide offers an accessible yet expansive view of art
history, featuring everything from iconic works and lesser-known
gems to techniques and themes. Offering a comprehensive overview of
Western artists, themes, paintings, techniques, and stories, Art: A
Visual History is packed full of large, full-colour images of
iconic works and lesser-known gems. Exploring every era, from
30,000BCE to the present, it includes features on the major schools
and movements, as well as close-up critical appraisals of 22
masterpieces - from Botticelli's Primavera to J. M. W. Turner's The
Fighting Temeraire. With detailed referencing, crisp reproductions
and a fresh design, this beautiful book is a must-have for anyone
with an interest in art history - from first-time gallery goers to
knowledgeable art enthusiasts. What makes great art? Discover the
answer now, with Art: A Visual History.
Fifteenth-century Italy witnessed sweeping innovations in the art
of sculpture. Sculptors rediscovered new types of images from
classical antiquity and invented new ones, devised novel ways to
finish surfaces, and pushed the limits of their materials to new
expressive extremes. The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century
Italy surveys the sculptural production created by a range of
artists throughout the peninsula. It offers a comprehensive
overview of Italian sculpture during a century of intense
creativity and development. Here, nineteen historians of
Quattrocento Italian sculpture chart the many competing forces that
led makers, patrons, and viewers to invest sculpture with such
heightened importance in this time and place. Methodologically
wide-ranging, the essays, specially commissioned for this volume,
explore the vast range of techniques and media (stone, metal, wood,
terracotta, and stucco) used to fashion works of sculpture. They
also examine how viewers encountered those objects, discuss varying
approaches to narrative, and ponder the increasing contemporary
interest in the relationship between sculpture and history.
Knight, Death and Devil; Melencolia I, and more-all Drer's known works in all three media, including 6 works formerly attributed to him. 120 plates.
This book celebrates the extraordinary talent of Raphael, 500 years
after his death. This is the story of an unequalled master whose
figure has surpassed that of other leading figures of the
Renaissance. His talent grew with astonishing rapidity, starting
with the years of training at the workshop of his father Giovanni
Santi: in 1500, at only 17 years old, he was already defined
'magister'. The author leads us into the folds of the extraordinary
story of Raphael, studded with masterpieces that have become
cornerstones in the history of art, and helps us to understand his
timeless talent through new comparisons and explanations. The deep
knowledge and the profound passion of the author make reading the
book exciting and unforgettable.
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.
In this vivid account Ana Debenedetti examines the life and work of
Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, through the lens of the
organization of his workshop and the commercial strategies he
devised to make his way in the very competitive art market in
Florence at that time. She looks at the remarkable career of this
pivotal artist and his production with fresh eyes, presenting the
analysis within the wider context of Florentine society and
culture. Many of Botticelli's most celebrated works such as The
Birth of Venus are evaluated alongside less familiar forms such as
tapestry and embroidery, showing the wide breath of the artist's
oeuvre and his talent as a designer across media.
In Praying to Portraits, art historian Adam Jasienski examines the
history, meaning, and cultural significance of a crucial image type
in the early modern Hispanic world: the sacred portrait. Across
early modern Spain and Latin America, people prayed to portraits.
They prayed to “true” effigies of saints, to simple portraits
that were repainted as devotional objects, and even to images of
living sitters depicted as holy figures. Jasienski places these
difficult-to-classify image types within their historical context.
He shows that rather than being harbingers of secular modernity and
autonomous selfhood, portraits were privileged sites for mediating
an individual’s relationship to the divine. Using Inquisition
records, hagiographies, art-theoretical treatises, poems, and
plays, Jasienski convincingly demonstrates that portraiture was at
the very center of broader debates about the status of images in
Spain and its colonies. Highly original and persuasive, Praying to
Portraits profoundly revises our understanding of early modern
portraiture. It will intrigue art historians across geographical
boundaries, and it will also find an audience among scholars of
architecture, history, and religion in the early modern Hispanic
world.
Translated by Lucinda Byatt This book tells the remarkable story of
a rare discovery: the uncovering of two lost paintings by the great
Renaissance artist Michelangelo. Like many stories of artistic
loss, this one begins in a library in Italy, where Antonio
Forcellino - a distinguished Michelangelo scholar and restorer -
stumbled across some unpublished letters among the papers of
Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, son of Isabella d Este and an extremely
important figure in the Italian Renaissance. These letters comment
on the paintings of Michelangelo in a way that is completely at
odds with what was to become the dominant critical tradition of
Michelangelo scholarship, an inconsistency that set Forcellino off
on a journey that took him to Dubrovnik, Oxford, New York and
Niagara Falls and culminated in the discovery of two magnificent
paintings: Pieta with Mary and Two Angels, now in a private
collection in America, and Cavalieri Crucifixion, now held by an
educational institution in England. Through a combination of
careful historical research, extensive restoration and meticulous
radiographic analysis, Forcellino shows convincingly that these
paintings can be traced back to the studio of Michelangelo. This
extraordinary story, brilliantly retold, calls into question the
received view of Michelangelo s work and fills in a missing piece
in our understanding of one of the greatest artists of all time.
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Renaissance Children
(Hardcover)
Till-Holger Borchert, Hilde Ridder-Symoens, Annemarieke Willemsen, Samuel Mareel
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R728
Discovery Miles 7 280
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Renaissance Children puts child portrait painting from the 15th and
16th century in the spotlight and tells the historical, pedagogical
and artistic story of the most remarkable paintings. In the 15th
and 16th century, the House of Habsburg ruled over a large part of
Europe, and would turn into one of the most important European
royal families in world history. In that time, Mechelen was the
centre of education, where many Habsburg princes and princesses
spent a large part of their youth, among whom Margaret of Austria
and Charles V. Other powerful families also sent their children to
Mechelen - the most famous of whom is perhaps Anne Boleyn, who
would later become queen of England. Renaissance Children goes back
to that Belgian city, where many portrait paintings of children
originated. The book specifically focusses on child portraits of
top artists, such as Jan Gossart, Bernard van Orley and Juan de
Flandes. Includes unique paintings by Flemish Masters, such as Jan
Gossart, Bernard van Orley and Juan de Flandes Insight into
educational values and techniques from the 15th and 16th century
The first publication about art and education at one the most
important royal houses in European history
This book brings together essays about painting in Venice during
three centuries of remarkable artistic production, influence, and
exchange. The chronological scope of the anthology reflects the
crucial interrelationship between the life of the arts and the
republic, but also indicates the longevity of the distinctive, but
not in the least isolated, mode of making and looking that engaged
painters and viewers both inside and outside of Venice. The focused
themes that emerge in the essays-the artist's self-perception, the
role of innovation and tradition in formal and material aspects of
pictorial composition, the artistic exchange between Venice and
other cities, both east and west, and the unique political and
social pressures on artistic production and reception-reflect the
Venetian engagement with many of the central concerns that
preoccupied early modern artists. The dialogue established between
Venetian art and society underpins all of the essays in the
anthology; however, their critical focus remains on the formal,
stylistic, and structural aspects of the pictures and how these
visual mechanisms express meaning and shape viewer response.
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