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.

Very few artists can claim such lasting and worldwide fame and importance as Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). The nickname il divino ("the divine one") has been applied to him since the 1530s right through to today: his achievements as a sculptor, painter, and architect remain unparalleled and his creations are among the best-known artworks in the world. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition is devoted to the artist's graphic work, a testimony to his masterly command of line, form, and detail, from architectural studies to anatomically perfect figures. The book brings together some of the artist's finest drawings from museums and collections around the world as well as some of his own notes and revisions, offering stunning proximity not only to the ambition and scope of Michelangelo's practice but also his working process. A chapter with a compilation of newly attributed and reattributed drawings provides further insights into Michelangelo's varied graphic oeuvre and the ongoing exploration of his genius. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

Presents exciting, original conclusions about Leonardo da Vinci's early life as an artist and amplifies his role in Andrea del Verrocchio's studio This groundbreaking reexamination of the beginnings of Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) life as an artist suggests new candidates for his earliest surviving work and revises our understanding of his role in the studio of his teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488). Anchoring this analysis are important yet often overlooked considerations about Verrocchio's studio-specifically, the collaborative nature of most works that emerged from it and the probability that Leonardo must initially have learned to paint in tempera, as his teacher did. The book searches for the young artist's hand among the tempera works from Verrocchio's studio and proposes new criteria for judging Verrocchio's own painting style. Several paintings are identified here as likely the work of Leonardo, and others long considered works by Verrocchio or his assistant Lorenzo di Credi (1457/59-1536) may now be seen as collaborations with Leonardo sometime before his departure from Florence in 1482/83. In addition to Laurence Kanter's detailed arguments, the book features three essays presenting recent scientific analysis and imaging that support the new attributions of paintings, or parts of paintings, to Leonardo. Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery (06/29/18-10/07/18)

One of the greatest biographies of an artist ever written, and a key document of the Renaissance. Written by a friend, fellow painter and fellow Florentine. Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564) is perhaps the greatest artist in the entire Western tradition. In painting, sculpture and architecture he created works that went beyond anything imagined before. The David - miraculously created, as Vasari describes, out of a piece of marble botched by another sculptor - the Sistine Ceiling, the Sistine Last Judgement, before which the Pope knelt in terrified prayer when it was first unveiled: these works have lost none of their awe-inspiring power. Michelangelo's impact was immediate, and he achieved a level of fame and influence that was unprecedented. It is not surprising, therefore, that the painter Giorgio Vasari should have made him the culmination of his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, the first true work of art history. Vasari was a close colleague as well as a fellow-artist and fellow- Florentine. The biography printed here, from Vasari's much improved second edition, draws a picture of Michelangelo the man and the artist that has an immediacy and an authority that have not been surpassed. The introduction by David Hemsoll situates this great work in the context of 16th century Italian art.

In "The Vanishing" Christopher Pye combines psychoanalytic and cultural theory to advance an innovative interpretation of Renaissance history and subjectivity. Locating the emergence of the modern subject in the era's transition from feudalism to a modern societal state, Pye supports his argument with interpretations of diverse cultural and literary phenomena, including Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "King Lear, "witchcraft and demonism, anatomy theaters, and the paintings of Michelangelo.
Pye explores the emergence of the early modern subject in terms of a range of subjectivizing mechanisms tied to the birth of a modern conception of history, one that is structured around a spatial and temporal horizon--a vanishing point. He also discusses the distinctly economic character of early modern subjectivity and how this, too, is implicated in our own modern modes of historical understanding. After explaining how the aims of New Historicist and Foucauldian approaches to the Renaissance are inseparably linked to such a historical conception, Pye demonstrates how the early modern subject can be understood in terms of a Lacanian and Zizekian account of the emerging social sphere. By focusing on the Renaissance as a period of remarkable artistic and cultural production, he is able to illustrate his points with discussions of a number of uniquely fascinating topics--for instance, how demonism was intimately related to a significant shift in law and symbolic order and how there existed at the time a "demonic" preoccupation with certain erotic dimensions of the emergent social subject.
Highly sophisticated and elegantly crafted, "The Vanishing" will be of interest to students of Shakespeare and early modern culture, Renaissance visual art, and cultural and psychoanalytic theory.

A significant new interpretation of the emergence of Western pictorial realism When Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) completed the revolutionary Ghent Altarpiece in 1432, it was unprecedented in European visual culture. His novel visual strategies, including lifelike detail, not only helped make painting the defining medium of Western art, they also ushered in new ways of seeing the world. This highly original book explores Van Eyck's pivotal work, as well as panels by Rogier van der Weyden and their followers, to understand how viewers came to appreciate a world depicted in two dimensions. Through careful examination of primary documents, Noa Turel reveals that paintings were consistently described as au vif: made not "from life" but "into life." Animation, not representation, drove Van Eyck and his contemporaries. Turel's interpretation reverses the commonly held belief that these artists were inspired by the era's burgeoning empiricism, proposing instead that their "living pictures" helped create the conditions for empiricism. Illustrated with exquisite fifteenth-century paintings, this volume asserts these works' key role in shaping, rather than simply mirroring, the early modern world.

The Italian sculptor known as Donatello helped to forge a new kind of art - one that defines the Renaissance. His work was progressive, innovative, challenging and even controversial. Using a variety of novel sculptural techniques and perspectives, Donatello depicted human sexuality, violence, spirituality and beauty. But to really understand Donatello one needs to understand a changing world, a transition from Medieval to Renaissance and to an art more personal and part of the modern self. Donatello was not just a man of his times, he helped create the spirit of the times he lived in, and those to come. In this beautifully illustrated book, the first monograph on Donatello for 25 years, A. Victor Coonin describes the full extent of Donatello's revolutionary contribution and shows how his work heralded the emergence of modern art.

The first publication to consider the relationship between these two major artists of the High Renaissance Through most of Michelangelo's working life, one of his closest colleagues was the great Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo (1485 -1541). The two men met in Rome in 1511, shortly after Sebastiano's arrival from his native city, and while Michelangelo was based in Florence from 1516 to 1534 Sebastiano remained one of his Roman confidants, painting several works after partial designs by him. This landmark publication is about the artists' extraordinary professional alliance and the friendship that underpinned it. It situates them in the dramatic context of their time, tracing their evolving artistic relationship through more than three decades of creative dialogue. Matthias Wivel and other leading scholars investigate Michelangelo's profound influence on Sebastiano and the Venetian artist's highly original interpretation of his friend's formal and thematic concerns. The lavishly illustrated text examines their shared preoccupation with the depiction of death and resurrection, primarily in the life of Christ, through a close analysis of drawings, paintings, and sculpture. The book also brings the austerely beautiful work of Sebastiano to a new audience, offering a reappraisal of this less famous but most accomplished artist. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The National Gallery, London (03/15/17-06/25/17)