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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > 1400 to 1600 > Renaissance art > General
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.
'The most important art historian of his generation' is how some
scholars have described the late Michael Baxandall (1933-2007),
Professor of the Classical Tradition at the Warburg Institute,
University of London, and of the History of Art at the University
of California, Berkeley. Baxandall's work had a transformative
effect on the study of European Renaissance and eighteenth-century
art, and contributed to a complex transition in the aims and
methods of art history in general during the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
While influential, he was also an especially subtle and independent
thinker - occasionally a controversial one - and many of the
implications of his work have yet to be fully understood and
assimilated. This collection of 10 essays endeavors to assess the
nature of Baxandall's achievement, and in particular to address the
issue of the challenges it offers to the practice of art history
today. This volume provides the most comprehensive assessment of
Baxandall's work to date, while drawing upon the archive of
Baxandall papers recently deposited at the Cambridge University
Library and the Warburg Institute.
Michelangelo was, apart from being a sculptor, architect, and
painter of genius, a poet and letter-writer of remarkable
accomplishment. George Bull, a distinguished translator of many
Italian classics, has brought his skill and experience to bear on
translating this new selection of Michelangelo's letters and
poetry, as well as the Life, the biography written by
Michelangelo's pupil Ascanio Condivi.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the broadest spectrum 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, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Painter, poet and actor Salvator Rosa was one of the most engaging
and charismatic personalities of seventeenth-century Italy.
Although a gifted landscape painter, he longed to be seen as the
pre-eminent philosopher-painter of his age. This new account traces
Rosa's strategies of self-promotion, and his creation of a new kind
of audience for his art. The book describes the startling novelty
of his subject matter - witchcraft and divination, as well as
prophecies, natural magic and dark violence - and his early
exploration of a nascent aesthetic of the sublime. Salvator Rosa
shows how the artist, in a series of remarkable works, responded to
new movements in thought and feeling, creating images that spoke to
the deepest concerns of his age.
A fifteenth-century Flemish painter who spent most of his life in
Bruges, van Eyck was revered for his innovative manipulation of oil
paint. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book
offers full-page spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of
smaller details - allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of
the artist's technique and oeuvre.
It was one of the most concentrated surges of creativity in the
history of civilization. Between 1390 and 1537, Florence poured
forth an astonishing stream of magnificent artworks. But
Florentines did more during this brief period than create
masterpieces. As citizens of a fractious republic threatened from
below, without, and within, they also were driven to reimagine the
political and ethical basis of their world, exploring the meaning
and possibilities of liberty, virtue, and beauty. This vibrant era
is brought to life in rich detail by noted historian Lawrence
Rothfield in The Measure of Man. His highly readable account
introduces readers to a city teeming with memorable individuals and
audacious risk-takers, capable of producing works of the most
serene beauty and acts of the most shocking violence. Rothfield's
cast of characters includes book hunters and book burners, devout
Christians and assassins, humble pharmacists and arrogant
oligarchs, all caught up in a dramatic struggle--a tragic arc
running from the cultural heights of republican idealism in the
early fifteenth century, through the aesthetic flowerings and civic
vicissitudes of the age of the Medici and Savonarola, to the
brooding meditations of Machiavelli and Michelangelo over the fate
of the dying republic.
Winner of the 2022 Prose Award (Art History & Criticism) from
the Association of American Publishers This groundbreaking book
seeks to explain why women artists were far more numerous, diverse,
and successful in early modern Bologna than elsewhere in Italy.
They worked as painters, sculptors, printmakers, and embroiderers;
many obtained public commissions and expanded beyond the portrait
subjects to which women were traditionally confined. Babette Bohn
asks why that was the case in this particular place and at this
particular time. Drawing on extensive archival research, Bohn
investigates an astonishing sixty-eight women artists, including
Elisabetta Sirani and Lavinia Fontana. The book identifies and
explores the factors that facilitated their success, including
local biographers who celebrated women artists in new ways, an
unusually diverse system of artistic patronage that included
citizens from all classes, the impact of Bologna’s venerable
university, an abundance of women writers, and the frequency of
self-portraits and signed paintings by many women artists. In
tracing the evolution of Bologna’s female artists from
nun-painters to working professionals, Bohn proposes new
attributions and interpretations of their works, some of which are
reproduced here for the first time. Featuring original
methodological models, innovative and historically grounded
insights, and new documentation, this book will be a crucial
resource for art historians, historians, and women’s studies
scholars and students.
The Venetian painter known as Giorgione or "big George" died at a
young age in the dreadful plague of 1510, possibly having painted
fewer than twenty-five works. But many of these are among the most
mysterious and alluring in the history of art. Paintings such as
The Three Philosophers and The Tempest remain compellingly elusive,
seeming to deny the viewer the possibility of interpreting their
meaning. Tom Nichols argues that this visual elusiveness was
essential to Giorgione's sensual approach and that ambiguity is the
defining quality of his art. Through detailed discussions of all
Giorgione's works, Nichols shows that by abandoning the more
intellectual tendencies of much Renaissance art, Giorgione made the
world and its meanings appear always more inscrutable.
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.
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.
The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/30-1569)
were marked by stark cultural conflict. He witnessed religious
wars, the Duke of Alba's brutal rule as governor of the
Netherlands, and the palpable effects of the Inquisition. To this
day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know
neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early
scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and
graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to
its humanistic content. Starting out as a print designer for
publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series
that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and
virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape
panoramas. He would eventually increasingly turn to painting,
working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels. This
monograph is a testament to Bruegel's evolution as an artist, one
who bravely confronted the issues of his day all the while
proposing new inventions and solutions. Rather than idealizing
reality, he addressed the horrors of religious warfare and took a
critical stand against the institution of the Church. To this end,
he developed his own pictorial language of dissidence, lacing
innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to
escape repercussions. To produce this XXL-sized collection, TASCHEN
undertook a comprehensive photographic campaign, capturing all the
breadth and splendid detail of Bruegel's oeuvre like never before.
The result gathers all 40 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 engravings
in pristine reproductions-each piece a unique witness to both the
religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel's time.
Marking the 450th anniversary of his death and his first ever
monographic exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna,
this volume is the most immersive journey into Bruegel's unique
visual universe.
This collection of essays by 26 Renaissance scholars from Europe
and the United States represents the outcome of an international
conference which took place at The National Museum of Denmark and
the castles of Kronborg and Frederiksborg on 28 September 1 October
2006 as part of the Danish Renaissance Festival 2006 ("Renossance
2006"). The agenda of the conference was to reevaluate and
re-present art and architecture in the Danish realms during the
16th and early 17th century for an international audience, given
the fact that this material has often been left in the blind spot
of interest in general surveys of the Renaissance. Moreover, it was
essential to integrate the cases presented into recent discourses,
aiming at resetting the theoretical or methodological frameworks of
the field. Accordingly, the contributions represent different
approaches, ranging from more universal issues to close readings of
individual problems or monuments with emphasis on examples produced
for circles, preferentially the elites, in the former monarchy of
Denmark-Norway, yet including to no less extent works of art,
agencies and activities related to areas, individuals or parallel
initiatives beyond the narrow national frames. From an overall
perspective several of the articles thus seek to open for a more
European or even Global vision of the periods artistic physiognomy,
basically questioning as well the notion of a specific 'Danish
Renaissance', anchored in the art historical tradition of the 19th
century. The general introduction is followed by 25 essays,
arranged in four sections: "Reframing the Frames", "Lutheran
Rhetorics", "Catalysts to Change" and "Rex Triumphans: The
Unsurpassed
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