This is the first in-depth historical study of Jan Gossart (ca. 1478-1532), one of the most important painters of the Renaissance in northern Europe. Providing a richly illustrated narrative of the Netherlandish artist's life and art, Marisa Anne Bass shows how Gossart's paintings were part of a larger cultural effort in the Netherlands to assert the region's ancient heritage as distinct from the antiquity and presumed cultural hegemony of Rome. Focusing on Gossart's vibrant, monumental mythological nudes, the book challenges previous interpretations by arguing that Gossart and his patrons did not slavishly imitate Italian Renaissance models but instead sought to contest the idea that the Roman past gave the Italians a monopoly on antiquity. Drawing on many previously unused primary sources in Latin, Dutch, and French, Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity offers a fascinating new understanding of both the painter and the history of northern European art at large.

"My husband Jan finished me on 17 June 1439. . . . My age was 33 years." So speaks Margaret van Eyck from the frame of her portrait. This painted inscription honors its maker Jan van Eyck, even as it blurs the distinction between living subject and painted double. Frame Work, an in-depth study of paintings, sculpture, and manuscript illumination in their varied social settings, argues that frames and framing devices are central to how Renaissance images operate. In a period of rapid cultural change, framing began to secure the very notion of an independent "artwork," and reframings could regulate the meaning attached to works of art-a process that continues in the present day. Highlighting innovations in framing introduced by figures such as Donatello, Giovanni Bellini, and Jean Fouquet, this original book shows how the inventive character of Renaissance frames responds to broader sociopolitical and religious change. The frame emerges as a site of beauty, display, and persuasion, and as a mechanism of control.

In Playful Pictures, Chriscinda Henry explores the rise of private art collection in Renaissance Venice as a diporto, or pastime, practiced within a kaleidoscopic matrix of domestic leisure that encompassed the recitation of poetry and tales, games, music making, amateur theatrical activity, and the conversational arts. Between around 1490 and 1550, a new class of pictures emerged in Venice. These images—primarily paintings but also drawings, prints, book illustrations, and historiated architectural elements—feature quotidian, festive, allusive, and performative subjects that catered to the cultural and intellectual interests of avant-garde patrons and collectors. Several generations of Venetian artists, including Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni Cariani, Bernardino Licinio, and Paris Bordon, rose to meet the demand of modern collectors seeking entertaining artworks that could speak to their personal values and taste. Playful Pictures connects painting and the graphic arts with other art forms engaged in the home: vernacular literature and the novella tradition; pastoral music, verse, and theater; urban dialect comedies; and carnival and ludic culture. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that treats these pursuits as linked forms of creative practice, Henry argues that they served as dynamic forms of personal and collective expression for patrons, collectors, artists, and other virtuosi seeking to express a new set of secular values and a contingent notion of selfhood. Incorporating fresh evidence from archival sources, this book expands the discourse on Renaissance art by situating it within the growing, and increasingly nuanced, scholarly understanding of Renaissance leisure and entertainment culture.

A fascinating look at how Elizabethan England was transformed by its interactions with cultures from around the world Challenging the myth of Elizabethan England as insular and xenophobic, this revelatory study sheds light on how the nation's growing global encounters-from the Caribbean to Asia-created an interest and curiosity in the wider world that resonated deeply throughout society. Matthew Dimmock reconstructs an extraordinary housewarming party thrown at the newly built Cecil House in London in 1602 for Elizabeth I where a stunning display of Chinese porcelain served as a physical manifestation of how global trade and diplomacy had led to a new appreciation of foreign cultures. This party was also the likely inspiration for Elizabeth's celebrated Rainbow Portrait, an image that Dimmock describes as a carefully orchestrated vision of England's emerging ambitions for its engagements with the rest of the world. Bringing together an eclectic variety of sources including play texts, inventories, and artifacts, this extensively researched volume presents a picture of early modern England as an outward-looking nation intoxicated by what the world had to offer. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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.

Through an interdisciplinary examination of sixteenth-century theatre, Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces studies the performative aspects of the early modern stage, paying special attention to the overlooked complexities of audience experience. Examining the period's philosophical and aesthetic ideas about space, place, and setting, the book shows how artists consciously moved away from traditional representations of real spaces on stage, instead providing their audiences with more imaginative and collaborative engagements that were untethered by strict definitions of naturalism. In this way, the book breaks with traditional interpretations of early modern staging techniques, arguing that the goal of artists in this period was not to cater to a single privileged viewer through the creation of a naturalistically unified stage but instead to offer up a complex multimedia experience that would captivate a diverse assembly of theatre-goers.

Michelangelo is best known for great artistic achievements such as the Sistine ceiling, the "David," the "Pieta," and the dome of St. Peter's. Yet throughout his seventy-five year career, he was engaged in another artistic act that until now has been largely overlooked: he not only filled hundreds of sheets of paper with exquisite drawings, sketches, and doodles, but also, on fully a third of these sheets, composed his own words. Here we can read the artist's marginal notes to his most enduring masterpieces; workaday memos to assistants and pupils; poetry and letters; and achingly personal expressions of ambition and despair surely meant for nobody's eyes but his own. "Michelangelo: A Life on Paper" is the first book to examine this intriguing interplay of words and images, providing insight into his life and work as never before.

This sumptuous volume brings together more than two hundred stunning, museum-quality reproductions of Michelangelo's most private papers, many in color. Accompanying them is Leonard Barkan's vivid narrative, which explains the important role the written word played in the artist's monumental public output. What emerges is a wealth of startling juxtapositions: perfectly inscribed sonnets and tantalizing fragments, such as "Have patience, love me, sufficient consolation"; careful notations listing money spent for chickens, oxen, and funeral rites for the artist's father; a beautiful drawing of a Madonna and child next to a mock love poem that begins, "You have a face sweeter than boiled grape juice, and a snail seems to have passed over it." Magnificently illustrated and superbly detailed, this book provides a rare and intimate look at how Michelangelo's artistic genius expressed itself in words as well as pictures."

The Renaissance is one of the most celebrated periods in European history. But when did it begin? When did it end? And what did it include? Traditionally regarded as a revival of classical art and learning, centred upon fifteenth-century Italy, views of the Renaissance have changed considerably in recent decades. The glories of Florence and the art of Raphael and Michelangelo remain an important element of the Renaissance story, but they are now only a part of a much wider story which looks beyond an exclusive focus on high culture, beyond the Italian peninsula, and beyond the fifteenth century. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance tells the cultural history of this broader and longer Renaissance: from seminal figures such as Dante and Giotto in thirteenth-century Italy, to the waning of Spain's 'golden age' in the 1630s, and the closure of the English theatres in 1642, the date generally taken to mark the end of the English literary Renaissance. Geographically, the story ranges from Spanish America to Renaissance Europe's encounter with the Ottomans-and far beyond, to the more distant cultures of China and Japan. And thematically, under Gordon Campbell's expert editorial guidance, the volume covers the whole gamut of Renaissance civilization, with chapters on humanism and the classical tradition; war and the state; religion; art and architecture; the performing arts; literature; craft and technology; science and medicine; and travel and cultural exchange.

After the death of Raphael in 1520, the next generation in Italy was to see the rise of the complex and refined sensibility summed up in the term "Mannerism." In this uniquely comprehensive guide to sixteenth-century Renaissance art, Linda Murray examines the manifold achievements of Italian artists and identifies the individual forms taken by artists in Northern Europe and in Spain, including Durer, Bruegel and El Greco.

This is the first English translation of Francesco Sansovino's (1521-1586) celebrated guide to Venice, which was first published in 1561. One of the earliest books to describe the monuments of Venice for inquisitive travelers, Sansovino's guide was written at a time when St. Mark's Piazza was in the process of taking the form we see today. With in-depth descriptions of the buildings created by the author's father, noted sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), including the Mint, Library, and Loggetta, the volume presents a vivid portrait of Venice during a particularly rich moment in the city's history. An engaging introduction and scholarly annotations to the original text provide the modern reader with an appreciation of the history of this great city as well as a practical guide for seeking out and enjoying its Renaissance treasures.

Writing about the Renaissance can be a daunting task. Not only do scholars disagree on what the Renaissance is, but they also disagree on whether or not it even took place. Margaret L. King's richly illustrated social history of the Renaissance succeeds as a trusted resource, introducing readers to Europe between 1300-1700, as well as to the problems of cultural renewal. A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe includes a detailed discussion of Burckhardt as well as new content on European contact with the Islamic world. This new edition also provides improved coverage of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. "Focus" features provide fascinating insights into the Renaissance era, and "Voices" sections introduce a wealth of primary sources. King's engaging narrative is enhanced by over 100 images, statistical tables, timelines, a glossary, and suggested readings.

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.

Understanding late medieval pictorial representations of violence. Destroyed faces, dissolved human shapes, invisible enemies: violence and anonymity go hand in hand. The visual representation of extreme physical violence makes real people nameless exemplars of horror-formless, hideous, defaced. In Defaced, Valentin Groebner explores the roots of the visual culture of violence in medieval and Renaissance Europe and shows how contemporary visual culture has been shaped by late medieval images and narratives of violence. For late medieval audiences, as with modern media consumers, horror lies less in the "indescribable" and "alien" than in the familiar and commonplace. From the fourteenth century onward, pictorial representations became increasingly violent, whether in depictions of the Passion, or in vivid and precise images of torture, execution, and war. But not every spectator witnessed the same thing when confronted with terrifying images of a crucified man, misshapen faces, allegedly bloodthirsty conspirators on nocturnal streets, or barbarian fiends on distant battlefields. The profusion of violent imagery provoked a question: how to distinguish the illegitimate violence that threatened and reversed the social order from the proper, "just," and sanctioned use of force? Groebner constructs a persuasive answer to this question by investigating how uncannily familiar medieval dystopias were constructed and deconstructed. Showing how extreme violence threatens to disorient, and how the effect of horror resides in the depiction of minute details, Groebner offers an original model for understanding how descriptions of atrocities and of outrageous cruelty depended, in medieval times, on the variation of familiar narrative motifs.

How the far North offered a different kind of terra incognita for the Renaissance imagination. European narratives of the Atlantic New World tell stories of people and things: strange flora, wondrous animals, sun-drenched populations for Europeans to mythologize or exploit. Yet, as Christopher Heuer explains, between 1500 and 1700, one region upended all of these conventions in travel writing, science, and, most unexpectedly, art: the Arctic. Icy, unpopulated, visually and temporally "abstract," the far North-a different kind of terra incognita for the Renaissance imagination-offered more than new stuff to be mapped, plundered, or even seen. Neither a continent, an ocean, nor a meteorological circumstance, the Arctic forced visitors from England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, to grapple with what we would now call a "non-site," spurring dozens of previously unknown works, objects, and texts-and this all in an intellectual and political milieu crackling with Reformation debates over art's very legitimacy. In Into the White, Heuer uses five case studies to probe how the early modern Arctic (as site, myth, and ecology) affected contemporary debates over perception and matter, representation, discovery, and the time of the earth-long before the nineteenth century Romanticized the polar landscape. In the far North, he argues, the Renaissance exotic became something far stranger than the marvelous or the curious, something darkly material and impossible to be mastered, something beyond the idea of image itself.

Roston demonstrates that what emerges is not a fixed or monolithic pattern for each generation but a dynamic series of responses to shared challenges. The book relates leading English writers and literary modes to contemporary developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture, exploring by a close reading of the texts and the artistic works the insights such comparison offers.

Originally published in 1990.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

More than ever before, the Renaissance stands as one of the defining moments in world history. Between 1400 and 1600, European perceptions of society, culture, politics and even humanity itself emerged in ways that continue to affect not only Europe but the entire world. This wide-ranging exploration of the Renaissance sees the period as a time of unprecedented intellectual excitement and cultural experimentation and interaction on a global scale, alongside a darker side of religion, intolerance, slavery, and massive inequality of wealth and status. It guides the reader through the key issues that defined the period, from its art, architecture, and literature, to advancements in the fields of science, trade, and travel. In its incisive account of the complexities of the political and religious upheavals of the period, the book argues that Europe's reciprocal relationship with its eastern neighbours offers us a timely perspective on the Renaissance that still has much to teach us today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.