Once considered marginal members of the animal world (at best) or vile and offensive creatures (at worst), insects saw a remarkable uptick in their status during the early Renaissance. This quickened interest was primarily manifested in visual images--in illuminated manuscripts, still life paintings, the decorative arts, embroidery, textile design, and cabinets of curiosity. In "The Insect and the Image," Janice Neri explores the ways in which such imagery defined the insect as a proper subject of study for Europeans of the early modern period.

It was not until the sixteenth century that insects began to appear as the sole focus of paintings and drawings--as isolated objects, or specimens, against a blank background. The artists and other image makers Neri discusses deployed this "specimen logic" and so associated themselves with a mode of picturing in which the ability to create a highly detailed image was a sign of artistic talent and a keenly observant eye. "The Insect and the Image" shows how specimen logic both reflected and advanced a particular understanding of the natural world--an understanding that, in turn, supported the commodification of nature that was central to global trade and commerce during the early modern era.

Revealing how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists and image makers shaped ideas of the natural world, Neri's work enhances our knowledge of the convergence of art, science, and commerce today.

Who are the Medici brothers? And who is trying to assassinate them? Why was the Pitti Palace never completed? And what part did Leonardo play in all of this? Leonardo da Vinci is remembered as an artist and inventor. But who was he before anyone knew his name? This family-friendly novel explores the history and the legends of his early years in Florence. It also weaves a mystery of politics and power. This novel is the first in the series of historically based novels - The Life and Travels of Da Vinci (followed by Leonardo: Masterpieces in Milan and Leonardo: To Mantua and Beyond)

Witches and ghosts, dream medicine, women's carnivals, masquerade, monsters, rebel angels, the ship of fools and the dance of death: Carnivals and Dreams explores the extraordinary world of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Renaissance surrealist, student of folklore and painter of dreams. In the generation between Rabelais and Shakespeare, the Reformation shook the foundations of the collective imaginary. As the old visual cultures of carnival, dreams and the dead were fragmented and demonised in the minds of Europeans, Bruegel became the first artist to make popular culture the subject of serious art. In his hands, it became an inexhaustible medium through which he could address the new anxieties of his contemporaries. Louise Milne shows how Bruegel's inventions express the shifting mental landscapes of the sixteenth century, arguing that his art marks nothing less than the genesis of the modern nightmare in art and culture. This is a book that can be read on many levels, a ground-breaking cultural history of art and the visual imagination, explored in clear lucid prose, through a dazzling range of new sources. Louise S. Milne is a Lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University and Edinburgh College of Art. "Wonderfully rich and thought-provoking... Essential reading for anyone interested in culture in general and the work of Bruegel in particular." Lynne Holden, Cosmos "One of the most searching and imaginative studies of Pieter Bruegel's art ever published... Milne takes seriously the idea that art is or can be a kind of continuation of dreaming. Marvellous and long awaited." Christopher Wood, Yale University

Vasari's intellectual curiosity, enthusiasm, and artistic ability made it possible for him to put forth a new perspective on art which expresses a concern for success, a fascination for the antique, and a delight for virtuosity depicted in his religious and secular paintings. 192 pp.

One of the most troublesome questions about Utopia is Thomas More's reason for writing it. Some of the ideas in it, such as the ease of divorce, euthanasia and both married priests and female priests, seem to be polar opposites of his beliefs and those expected of the devout Catholic that he was. The concept of religious toleration seems to jar particularly with the information we have about him as Lord Chancellor: that he was a keen persecutor of Protestants. Similarly, the criticism of lawyers comes from a writer who, as Lord Chancellor, was arguably the most influential lawyer in England.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

What makes this book different from so many others about Leonardo da Vinci? In these 100 pages, Catherine has worked hard to make it interesting for those who may yet know nothing about him, but also for those who already know quite a bit It is written in a family-friendly way, with stories and details that appeal to a wide range of ages -- from kids through adults. Here Leonardo is placed in a framework of history and geography, so that his vast accomplishments can more easily be seen and understood. Catherine includes maps, pictures, charts, timelines, and more, to bring the ultimate Renaissance man to life You may also enjoy Catherine's historical fiction books about Leonardo da Vinci - The Life and Travels of Da Vinci. She has currently finished the first three novels in the series: Leonardo the Florentine, Leonardo: Masterpieces in Milan, and Leonardo: To Mantua and Beyond.

Painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, 28 years after Michelangelo completed the glorious and hopeful ceiling, "The Last Judgment" is full of stark images depicting the End of Days. Here, James Connor uncovers the secrets behind the fresco, and details the engrossing stories of conspiring kings, plotting popes, and murderous rivalries between noble families who were vying for control over Michelangelo and his art. This book combines enchanting storytelling with incisive historical detective work, demonstrating how Michelangelo was inspired by Copernicus and how the Counter-Reformation arose from the ashes of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance was a ground-breaking period in the history of drawing. Drawing became an art form in its own right rather than just being used in the preparation of other works of art. Prior to 1400 few drawings survive, and it is only in the fifteenth century that we can gain an understanding of how and why artists drew. The reasons for this are threefold: the growth in paper production meant it became more economical to draw; the demand by patrons for originality necessitated artists make more studies to explore new compositional ideas and poses; and, finally a widening interest in collecting meant that drawings were preserved. Drawing was an integral part of how Renaissance artists were trained. Thanks to this education artists were able to express their ideas with extraordinary fluency on paper. The spontaneity and rawness of many of the drawings in this arresting book reveal the minds and working practices of the artists. The use of a variety of drawing tools from red chalk to silverpoint shows how expressive a medium drawing could be. The drawings have been thematically arranged to demonstrate the major innovations that occurred during the Renaissance: artists captured movement, light, human pose and the natural world more convincingly than ever before. They also approached storytelling in a new way: the figures were infused with a new sense of humanity, and the development of perspective helped create realism.

"Medieval Renaissance Baroque" celebrates Marilyn Aronberg Lavin's breakthrough achievements in both the print and digital realms of art and cultural history. Fifteen friends and colleagues present tributes and essays that reflect every facet of Lavin's brilliant career. Tribute presenters include Ellen Burstyn, Langdon Hammer, Phyllis Lambert, and James Marrow. Contributors include Kirk Alexander, Horst Bredekamp, Nicola Courtright, David Freedberg, Jack Freiberg, Marc Fumaroli, David A. Levine, Daniel T. Michaels, Elizabeth Pilliod, Debra Pincus, and Gary Schwartz. 230 pages, 79 illustrations, bibliography of Marilyn Lavin's works, preface, index.

Compact and easy to use, this beautifully illustrated book looks at the major events in Leonardo's life: from his early childhood to his apprenticeship with Verrocchio and then the setting up of his own workshop in Florence, before leaving for Milan where his patron was Ludovico Sforza ('Il Moro' - the Moor). Packed with information about Leonardo's style of painting and drawing, as well as his work as a civil and military engineer, the book combines chapters on Leonardo's life with themed chapters that look at his inventions and key works, including such well-known paintings as the "Mona Lisa" and the "Last supper". It is augmented by the inclusion of 15 facsimile documents such as: numerous extracts from Leonardo's notebooks showing his famous 'mirror' writing and various sketches for inventions and studies for his works done from nature; Leonardo's letter to Ludovico Sforza; Leonardo's map of Imola; and, Leonardo's study of the organs and vascular system of a woman.

Pater's graceful essays discuss the achievements of Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and other artists. included is his celebrated discussion of the Mona Lisa in a study of Da Vinci. This book concludes with an uncompromising advocacy of hedonism, urging readers to experience life as fully as possible. His cry of "art for art's sake" became the manifesto of the Aesthetic Movement, and his assessments of Renaissance art have influenced generations of readers. Oscar Wilde called this collection of essays the "holy writ of beauty."

Patronage studies are an important part of modern Italian Rnaissance art history. This book looks at how and why the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinit was made. What induced the patron to have it decorated, why did he choose the particular church and why as his chosen painter did he choose Domenico Ghirlandaio. The patrons interest in promoting his image both on earth and in heaven are important factors in any Renaissance patronage study none more so given the bitter rivalry for the favour of Lorenzo de Medici between Francesco Sassetti and his banking rival Giovanni Tornabuoni. These two conducted and extensive campaign for the right to have decorated the main chapel in Santa Maria Novella. Sassetti having failed in his bid, not least as he wanted his chapel dedicated to his name saint then had Ghirlandaio create one of the great Florentine fresco cycles.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Shakespeare's Globe was first built in 1599 and it burnt down in 1613. Almost four centuries later, in 1997, it was rebuilt again in London. This rebuilt Globe is not a reconstructed version of the first, but it is often regarded to typify the amphitheatres of Shakespeare's time. But do we know what the first Globe and its stage really looked like? Is it impossible to reconstruct its features? This work attempts to analyse some of the most trustworthy evidence in order to reconstruct the stage of the first Globe. Non-literary sources such as contracts and sketches give information regarding various stage features, but, most interestingly, some of Shakespeare's plays contain the most fascinating pieces of evidence. In this work, the author looks for these pieces of evidence in various sources making an attempt to find out how trustworthy they are.

I]n the streets of Milan... moved a people as fantastic, changeful, and dreamlike. To Leonardo least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers of sentiment which grew there. It was a life of brilliant sins and exquisite amusements...-from "Leonard Da Vinci"With his thoughtful sensibility and appreciation of the artistic experience, Walter Pater exerted a dramatic influence over the Aesthetics of the mid to late 19th century: a movement of creative intellectuals, from writer Oscar Wilder to painter James McNeill Whistler, who held that art should be sensual and beauty the highest ideal. Pater's "cult of beauty" also profoundly affected 20th-century arts, literary, and cultural criticism.Here, in a series of essays first reprinted in 1873 from the iconoclastic journal Fortnightly Review, Pater embraces and explores the works of Botticelli, Della Robbia, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and others. This collection, sometimes entitled Studies in the History of the Renaissance, is criticism as beautiful as the art it considers.Also available from Cosimo Classics: Pater's Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas.British essayist and critic WALTER HORATIO PATER (1839-94) was educated at Oxford University. He also wrote Imaginary Portraits (1887), Appreciations (1889), and the posthumously published Greek Studies (1895).

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

In the past half century scholars have downplayed the significance of Lorenzo de' Medici (1449--1492), called "the Magnificent," as a patron of the arts. Less wealthy than his grandfather Cosimo, the argument goes, Lorenzo was far more interested in collecting ancient objects of art than in commissioning contemporary art or architecture. His earlier reputation as a patron was said to be largely a construct of humanist exaggeration and partisan deference.

Although some recent studies have taken issue with this view, no synthesis of Lorenzo as art patron and art lover has yet emerged. In Lorenzo de' Medici and the Art of Magnificence historian F. W. Kent offers a new look at Lorenzo's relationship to the arts, aesthetics, collecting, and building -- especially in the context of his role as the political boss (maestro della bottega) of republican Florence and a leading player in Renaissance Italian diplomacy. As a result of this approach, which pays careful attention to the events of his short but dramatic life, a radically new chronology of Lorenzo's activities as an art patron emerges, revealing them to have been more extensive and creative than previously thought. Kent's Lorenzo was broadly interested in the arts and supported efforts to beautify Florence and the many Medici lands and palaces. His expertise was well regarded by guildsmen and artists, who often turned to him for advice as well as for patronage. Lorenzo himself was educated in the arts by such men, and Kent explores his aesthetic education and taste, taking into account what is known of Lorenzo's patronage of music and manuscripts, and of his own creative work as a major Quattrocento poet.

Richly illustrated withphotographs of Medici landmarks by Ralph Lieberman, Lorenzo de' Medici and the Art of Magnificence offers a masterful portrait of Lorenzo as a man whose achievements might have rivaled his grandfather's had he not died so young.

"Sixteenth-Century Italian Art" is a first-rate collection of the major classic and contemporary writings on the Italian Renaissance. Taking a thematic approach, the book exemplifies the traditional concerns of the field and presents arguments in a clear, accessible way.
A stellar collection of 23 classic and recent essays on the art and architecture of this fascinating period in art history
Brings together in a single volume, important literature on sixteenth-century Italian art from the last half century, highlighting major topics of recent art historical studies
Introduces major topics and debates in the field, including pagan mysteries, nature and artifice, the art of the body, and "reformations" of art, theory and practice
Includes new translations of texts never previously published in English
Organized thematically, and features substantial editorial introductions, making this anthology ideal for course use.