A true story of vendetta and intrigue, triumph and tragedy, exile and repatriation, this book recounts the interwoven microhistories of Count Girolamo Della Torre, a feudal lord with a castle and other properties in the Friuli, and Giulia Bembo, grand-niece of Cardinal Pietro Bembo and daughter of Gian Matteo Bembo, a powerful Venetian senator with a distinguished career in service to the Venetian Republic. Their marriage in the mid-sixteenth century might be regarded as emblematic of the Venetian experience, with the metropole at the center of a fragmented empire: a Terraferma nobleman and the daughter of a Venetian senator, who raised their family in far off Crete in the stato da mar, in Venice itself, and in the Friuli and the Veneto in the stato da terra. The fortunes and misfortunes of the nine surviving Della Torre children and their descendants, tracked through the end of the Republic in 1797, are likewise emblematic of a change in feudal culture from clan solidarity to individualism and intrafamily strife, and ultimately, redemption. Despite the efforts by both the Della Torre and the Bembo families to preserve the patrimony through a succession of male heirs, the last survivor in the paternal bloodline of each was a daughter. This epic tale highlights the role of women in creating family networks and opens a precious window into a contentious period in which Venetian republican values clash with the deeply rooted feudal traditions of honor and blood feuds of the mainland.

Lorenzo Lotto's Portrait of Andrea Odoni is one of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Son of an immigrant and a member of the non-noble citizen class, Odoni understood how the power of art could make a name for himself and his family in his adopted homeland. Far from emulating Venetian patricians, however, he set himself apart through the works he collected and the way he displayed them. In this book, Monika Schmitter imaginatively reconstructs Odoni's house - essentially a 'portrait' of Odoni through his surroundings and possessions. Schmitter's detailed analysis of Odoni's life and portrait reveals how sixteenth-century individuals drew on contemporary ideas about spirituality, history, and science to forge their own theories about the power of things and the agency of object. She shows how Lotto's painting served as a meta-commentary on the practice of collecting and on the ability of material things to transform the self.

The gods of Olympus died with the advent of Christianity - or so we have been taught to believe. But how are we to account for their tremendous popularity during the Renaissance? This illustrated book, now reprinted in a new, larger paperback format, offers the general reader a multifaceted look at the far-reaching role played by mythology in Renaissance intellectual and emotional life. After a discussion of mythology in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Jean Seznec traces the fate of the gods from Botticelli and Raphael to their function and appearance in Ronsard's verses and Ben Jonson's masques.

In this absorbing illustrated history, Loren Partridge takes the reader on an insightful tour of Renaissance Florence and sheds new light on its celebrated art and culture by examining the city's great architectural and artistic achievements in their political, intellectual, and religious contexts. This essential and accessible text, the only up-to-date volume on Renaissance Florence currently available, incorporates insights from recent scholarship, including gender studies, while emphasizing the artists' social status, rivalries, and innovations. The result is a multilevel exploration of how the celebrated Florentine culture formally registers in specific works of art or architecture and how these works interactively informed and often shaped the culture.

"The chronology of the Italian Renaissance, its character, and context have long been a topic of discussion among scholars. Some date its beginnings to the fourteenthcentury work of Giotto, others to the generation of Masaccio, Brunelleschi, and Donatello that fl ourished from around 1400. The close of the Renaissance has also proved elusive. Mannerism, for example, is variously considered to be an independent (but subsidiary) late aspect of Renaissance style or a distinct style in its own right."

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.

The RF 1475-1556 Louvre Album is universally regarded as a corpus of drawings that was executed by the Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini. The album's trajectory prior to coming into the possession of the Bellini family is elucidated in the present book. Based on Norberto Gramaccini's interpretation, it was the Paduan painter Francesco Squarcione who was the mastermind and financier behind the drawings. The preparatory work had actually been delegated to his most gifted pupils, among them Andrea Mantegna, Jacopo Bellinis future son-in-law. The drawing's topics -anatomy, perspective, archeology, mythology, contemporary chronicles, and zoology -were part of the teaching program of an art academy established by Squarcione in the 1440s, famous in its day, which provided crucial impulses for the training of artists in the modern era.

The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Florentine and Venetian Painters of the Renaissance is a compilation of 2 books written by Bernhard Berenson. The 2 great studies of the Venetian and Florentine painters of the Renaissance are brought together in this one book. Chapter 1 provides information about some of the best and most famous Florentine artist who ever lived: Leonarde da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giotti, Ridolpho Ghirlandajo and Fra Filippo Lippi. While, chapter 2 provides information about the famous Venetian artists such as Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

2019, 450 years after the Old Master's death, will be celebrated as the Year of Bruegel, culminating in the exhibition 'The Age of Bruegel' at The Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA), Antwerp. In the run up to the numerous exhibitions and festivities that are planned for next year, Lannoo Publishers releases this glossy guidebook. It contains images of the Old Master's paintings with astonishing detail. It contains expert commentary by Till-Holger Borchert, director of all Bruges-based museums. Also available in the series: Masterpiece: Peter Paul Rubens (ISBN: 9789401441612) and Masterpiece: Jan Van Eyck (ISBN: 9789401441629).

Atmospheric and suspenseful, The Colour Storm is an intoxicating story of art and ambition, love and obsession in Renaissance Venice . . . 'A glorious, exuberant read' THE TIMES 'Addictive, ambitious and knife sharp. A compelling thriller and a celebration of art. Ravishing' RACHEL JOYCE 'A rich and rousing tale of art, love, rivalry and obsession in Renaissance Venice' CHLOË ASHBY, AUTHOR OF WET PAINT 'An engaging thriller and a compelling exploration of an artist's obsession with love and colour' SUNDAY TIMES _______ Venice, 1510. The world's greatest artists gather to enjoy fame, fortune, and colour. When a wealthy merchant discovers a mysterious new pigment, he knows it would create a masterpiece in the right hands. For struggling artist Giorgione 'Zorzo' Barbarelli, success is far from reach. Until he's commissioned by the merchant to paint a portrait of his wife, Sybille. Impress him, and Zorzo could acquire the most coveted colour in the world - and write his name in history. But it is Sybille whose eye he catches. And when their relationship drags Zorzo into a conspiracy spanning the entire continent, it is far more than his career in danger . . . _______ 'Art and ambition, love and obsession all come into play in this compelling and spellbinding tale set in Renaissance Venice' STYLIST 'An intoxicating story about an incredible period in history' THE SUN 'A terrific book . . . Absorbing, exciting and, dare I say it, colourful. An original tale told beautifully' A. D. SWANSTON 'Hugely evocative, it's a love story, it's a thriller, it's a fantastic page turner' SOPHIE HAYDOCK, AUTHOR OF THE FLAMES 'An alluring Renaissance mystery of rivalry in love and art, where the gothic dank darkness of Venice is steeped in dreams of exquisite colour' ESSIE FOX Praise for Damian Dibben 'An epic tale of love, of courage, of hope' Evening Standard 'I was captivated from the beginning' Rachel Joyce, bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry 'Original, ambitious, moving' Stylist 'Bask in the brilliance' The Mail on Sunday

During the past few decades, admirers of Petrus Christus have been astonishingly fortunate. Unknown or forgotten paintings in the style of Christus have turned up with surprising regularity: in the 1950s, the wonderful Kansas City Holy Family; in the 1960s the Birmingham Christ and the Bruges Isabella of Portugal Presented by Saint Elisabeth in the 1980s, the Cleveland Baptist and the problematic Bruges panels of the Annunciation and the Nativity. Nothing, of course, can compensate for the loss, during World War II, of the Dessau Crucifixion, and the Berlin wing panels of the Baptist and Saint Catherine. We had to wait until 1974 for the first monograph devoted to Christus, but since then two more books on Christus have been published and important discoveries have been made about his career in Bruges. Thanks to Maryan Ainsworth and her colleagues, we had a truly marvellous exhibition, where we had the privilige of studying more of Chrsitus' paintings than he himself can ever have seen gathered in one place. The exhibition itself initiated a new phase in Christus studies and it is the ideal beginning. If problems of attribution and chronology are ever to be settled, they had to be settled during the exhibition. This publication offers the papers of the 1994 Petrus Christus Symposium at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. L. Campbell, Approaches to Petrus Christus, W. Blockmans, The Creative Environment: Inventions and Functions of Bruges Art Production, C. Harbison, Fact, Symbol, Ideal, Roles for Realism in Early Netherlandish Painting, G.B. Canfield, The Reception of Flemish Art in Renaissance Florence and Naples, M.P.J. Martens, Discussion, J. Upton, PETRUS.XPI.ME.FECIT, The Transformation of a Legacy, S. Buck, Petrus Christus' Berlin Wings and the Metropolitan Museum's Eyckian Diptych, S. Jones, The Virgin of Nicholas van Maelbeke and the Followers of Jan Van Eyck, C. Eisler, Discussion, L. Gellman, Two Lost Portraits by Petrus Christu

A dazzling piece of Italian history of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Medicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns. 'A great overview of one family's centuries-long role in changing the face of Europe' Irish Independent

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.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts - only the second exhibition ever devoted to the artist - this noteworthy publication considers De Beer's work and career, working methods, and traces the history of De Beer's paintings in British collections. The Antwerp painter Jan de Beer (c.1475-1527/28) was highly esteemed in his lifetime and still famous a couple of generations after his death, but then fell into oblivion until the early twentieth century. Only recently have his achievements been fully recognized and documented. The artist's known oeuvre consists of forty works, mainly devotional paintings and triptychs but also a dozen drawings and a stained glass window, after a lost design. De Beer's stylish and elegant art appealed to patrons and collectors, churches abroad, and copyists. His work is typically associated with that of the Antwerp Mannerists, a prominent group of mostly anonymous painters active in the city during his lifetime. This publication will accompany an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (25 October 2019 to 19 January 2020) that focuses on one of its and De Beer's acknowledged masterpieces: the double-sided Joseph and the Suitors/ The Nativity. This is the only surviving fragment from what must have been a major altarpiece. It will be accompanied by a half-dozen key loans of paintings and drawings by De Beer and his workshop including all the attributed paintings in UK collections. These will provide both an instructive context for the Barber painting and for De Beer's art more generally, with the whole chronological range of his career represented. It will be only the second ever exhibition devoted to De Beer, and the first to show the broad range of his work. The fully-illustrated catalogue will feature extended entries for all the exhibited works and three essays exploring the core themes of the show, written by Robert Wenley, Head of Collections at the Barber Institute and the lead curator of the exhibition, and two leading De Beer specialists. Professor Dan Ewing (Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida) will consider De Beer's work and career; while Peter van den Brink (Director, Suermondt-Aachen Museum) will explore De Beer's working methods, in particular as revealed by the underdrawings of his pictures. Robert Wenley's essay will survey the history of De Beer's paintings in British collections.

This book is not only a fascinating biography of one of the greatest painters of the seventeenth century but also a social history of the colorful extended family to which he belonged and of the town life of the period. It explores a series of distinct worlds: Delft's Small-Cattle Market, where Vermeer's paternal family settled early in the century; the milieu of shady businessmen in Amsterdam that recruited Vermeer's grandfather to counterfeit coins; the artists, military contractors, and Protestant burghers who frequented the inn of Vermeer's father in Delft's Great Market Square; and the quiet, distinguished "Papists Corner" in which Vermeer, after marrying into a high-born Catholic family, retired to practice his art, while retaining ties with wealthy Protestant patrons. The relationship of Vermeer to his principal patron is one of many original discoveries in the book.

We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a "mental space" between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as "things in themselves"--things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance "discovery" of the observable world. In Poetry in a World of Things, Rachel Eisendrath explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a mode of resistance to this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted highly artful descriptions that recovered the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This highly original book reclaims subjectivity as a decidedly poetic and human way of experiencing the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.

Immerse yourself in the rich shades and textures of Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488-1576), commonly known as Titian, and the figurehead of 16th-century Venetian painting. With his bold approach to form and startling, opulent colors, Titian worked with a number of prestigious commissions and left behind an astonishing repertoire of portraits, mythological scenes, altarpieces, and landscapes that remains one of the most important legacies of Renaissance art. This dependable artist introduction traces Titian's complete career and its trailblazing influence on successive generations of artists, from Diego Velazquez to van Dyck. From the rippling sensuality of Venus of Urbino (c. 1488-1576) to the airborne dynamism of Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-1523), all the major works are here, charting the artist's stylistic experimentation over time as well as his consistent and unique ability to work across genres and to bring a defining new level of emotional and spiritual aspect to his subjects. "Titian has the finest talent and a very pleasant, vivacious manner." - Michelangelo.

This new edition of Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester is the most comprehensive scholarly edition of any of Leonardo's manuscripts. It contains a high-quality facsimile reproduction of the Codex, a new transcription and translation, accompanied by a paraphrase in modern language and a page-by-page commentary, and a series of interpretative essays. This important endeavour introduces important new research into the interpretation of the texts and images, on the setting of Leonardo's ideas in the context of ancient and medieval theories, and above all into the notable fortunes of the Codex within the sciences of astronomy, water, and the history of the earth, opening a new field of research into the impact of Leonardo as a scientist after his death.