Everett Fahy's writings are of fundamental importance to the study of Tuscan Renaissance painting from the late 14th to the 16th century. An endeavour that lasted 50 years, starting with his 1965 essay on Piero di Cosimo and ending with his contributions for the 2015 Florentine exhibition on the same artist. In between Fahy wrote on some of the most acclaimed and loved artists (from Beato Angelico to Botticelli, from Ghirlandaio to the young Michelangelo), but also on lesser known masters such as Lorenzo di Nicolo, Spinello Aretino, the Master of the Campana panels, the Master of the Fiesole Adoration of the Magi, etc., and through his pioneering studies rediscovered minor artistic schools, such as the Lucca school. Fahy reconstruction of Fra Bartolomeo's early career is considered a classic of art historiography. The selected texts (vol. 1) are arranged in the order of appearance, while the plates (vol. 2), following chronological order, make up an atlas of two centuries of Tuscan painting. With texts in English (36), French (1), and Italian (10).

One of the most influential scholars of the Renaissance, Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) gained fame not only for his literary theory and poetry, but for his incredible collection of art and antiquities. Drawing on anecdotes from Bembo's letters and unpublished archival material, Susan Nalezyty analyzes how Bembo's collection functioned as a source of inspiration for artists like Titian and writers like Giovanni della Casa. As visitors to the collection marveled at the quality and variety of the displayed objects, Bembo encouraged investigations into the ways in which contemporary art compared with ancient objects. Often straddling the line between the visual and literary worlds, these critical discussions catalyzed artistic experiments that led to new modes of creative expression. This generously illustrated volume brings Bembo's collection to life and reveals its key role in the development of Renaissance artistic philosophy and historical study of the classical past.

Lorenzo de' Medici: The embodiment of Florence's most powerful family, a brutal man who ruled the city with an iron fist, whilst protecting it from the shifting mire of Italian politics. Fra Girolamo Savonarola: An unprepossessing provincial monk whose sermons, filled with Old Testament fury, resonated with the disenfranchised population of the city. The battle between these two men would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events - including a mighty foreign invasion, trial by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths - featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.

The "paragone"--the notion of competition and rivalry among the arts--has been a topic of debate for centuries. It erupted with great force in the Renaissance, with sculptors vying with painters for superiority, modern artists competing with the ancients, and painting challenging poetry. If the traces of this lively conversation are most evident in the literature, the remarkable scholarship presented here demonstrates how the "paragone" was rendered visible also in works of art.

The essays on Renaissance and Baroque art reveal the "paragone" to be a crucial motive and key to the interpretation of some of the most celebrated works of art such as Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece and Michelangelo's "Pieta" in St. Peter's Basilica. The author's incisive and erudite analysis of social history, biography, rhetoric, art theory, wordplay, and history illuminates these works anew, thus affording a modern audience a better understanding of the subtleties of their composition and meaning. Readers will find surprising insights and unsuspected drama in works of art they may have thought they knew.

'Quid est sacramentum?' Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700 investigates how sacred mysteries (in Latin, sacramenta or mysteria) were visualized in a wide range of media, including illustrated religious literature such as catechisms, prayerbooks, meditative treatises, and emblem books, produced in Italy, France, and the Low Countries between ca. 1500 and 1700. The contributors ask why the mysteries of faith and, in particular, sacramental mysteries were construed as amenable to processes of representation and figuration, and why the resultant images were thought capable of engaging mortal eyes, minds, and hearts. Mysteries by their very nature appeal to the spirit, rather than to sense or reason, since they operate beyond the limitations of the human faculties; and yet, the visual and literary arts served as vehicles for the dissemination of these mysteries and for prompting reflection upon them. Contributors: David Areford, AnnMarie Micikas Bridges, Mette Birkedal Bruun, James Clifton, Anna Dlabackova, Wim Francois, Robert Kendrick, Aiden Kumler, Noria Litaker, Walter S. Melion, Lars Cyril Norgaard, Elizabeth Pastan, Donna Sadler, Alexa Sand, Tanya Tiffany, Lee Palmer Wandel, Geert Warner, Bronwen Wilson, and Elliott Wise.

Innovation, technology, and spectacle combine in wondrous works of decorative art and furniture that embody the splendor and luxury of the royal courts of Europe At once beautiful works of art and technological wonders, the objects featured in Making Marvels demonstrate how European royalty from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment signaled their status through their collections of ingeniously crafted inventions. Featuring 150 exemplary objects ranging from mechanical toys to scientific instruments, timepieces to automata, this groundbreaking study brings to life a glorious period when luxury, a quest for knowledge, scientific invention, and political power combined to produce remarkable works of art. More than frivolous playthings, these works inspired technical innovations that influenced a broad spectrum of activities, including astronomy, engineering, and artisanal craftsmanship. This remarkable volume explores works in a wide range of materials, including precious metals, gemstones, pietra dura, marble, ivory, wood, bone, shell, glass, and paper. The book's compelling essays address the layered historical context in which these objects were fashioned and gathered into cabinets of wonder at courts throughout Europe; elucidate their complex blending of art and science; and provide fascinating details about the patrons who commissioned them and the specialists who made them. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (November 25, 2019-March 1, 2020)

In this influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance, Burckhardt explores the political and psychological forces that marked the beginning of the modern world.

Starting with Brunelleschi’s invention of perspective and Galileo’s invention of the telescope—two inaugural moments in the history of vision, from two apparently distinct provinces, art and science—this volume of essays by noted art, architecture, science, philosophy, and literary historians teases out the multiple strands of the discourse about sight in the early modern period. Looking at Leonardo and Gallaccini, at botanists, mathematicians, and artists from Dante to Dürer to Shakespeare, and at photography and film as pointed modern commentaries on early modern seeing, Vision and Its Instruments revisits the complexity of the early modern economy of the image, of the eye, and of its instruments. The book explores the full range of early modern conceptions of vision, in which mal’occhio (the evil eye), witchcraft, spiritual visions, and phantasms, as well as the artist’s brush and the architect’s compass, were seen as providing knowledge equal to or better than newly developed scientific instruments and practices (and occasionally working in conjunction with them). The essays in this volume also bring a new dimension to the current discourse about image production and its cultural functions.

Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe examines the role of cultural objects in the lyric poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega, the premier poet of sixteenth-century Spain. As a pioneer of the "new poetry" of Renaissance Europe, aligned with the court, empire, and modernity, Garcilaso was fully attuned to the collection and circulation of luxury artefacts and other worldly goods. In his poems, a variety of objects, including tapestries, paintings, statues, urns, mirrors, and relics participate in lyric acts of discovery and self-revelation, reveal memory as contingent and unstable, expose knowledge of the self as deceptive, and show how history intersects with the ideology of empire.

Mary E. Barnard's study argues persuasively that the material culture of early sixteenth-century Europe embedded within Garcilaso's poems offers a key to understanding the interplay between objects and texts that make those works such vibrant inventions.

Most modern historians perpetuate the myth that Giuliano de' Medici (1479-1516), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was nothing more than an inconsequential, womanizing hedonist with little inclination or ability for politics. In the first sustained biography of this misrepresented figure, Josephine Jungic re-evaluates Giuliano's life and shows that his infamous reputation was exaggerated by Medici partisans who feared his popularity and respect for republican self-rule. Rejecting the autocratic rule imposed by his nephew, Lorenzo (Duke of Urbino), and brother, Giovanni (Pope Leo X), Giuliano advocated restraint and retention of republican traditions, believing his family should be "first among equals" and not more. As a result, the family and those closest to them wrote him out of the political scene, and historians - relying too heavily upon the accounts of supporters of Cardinal Giovanni and the Medici regime - followed suit. Interpreting works of art, books, and letters as testimony, Jungic constructs a new narrative to demonstrate that Giuliano was loved and admired by some of the most talented and famous men of his day, including Cesare Borgia, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Niccolo Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael. More than a political biography, this volume offers a refreshing look at a man who was a significant patron and ally of intellectuals, artists, and religious reformers, revealing Giuliano to be at the heart of the period's most significant cultural accomplishments.

Although his popularity is eclipsed by Rembrandt today, Peter Paul Rubens was revered by his contemporaries as the greatest painter of his era, if not of all history. His undeniable artistic genius, bolstered by a modest disposition and a reputation as a man of tact and discretion, made him a favorite among monarchs and political leaders across Europe--and gave him the perfect cover for the clandestine activities that shaped the landscape of seventeenth-century politics.
In "Master of Shadows," Mark Lamster brilliantly recreates the culture, religious conflicts, and political intrigues of Rubens's time, following the painter from Antwerp to London, Madrid, Paris, and Rome and providing an insightful exploration of Rubens's art as well as the private passions that influenced it.

With an engaging text by renowned Michelangelo scholar William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, Architecture brings together in one exquisite volume the powerful sculptures, the awe-inspiring paintings, and the classical architectural works of one of the greatest artists of all time. Including everything from his sculptures Pietàs and David to his beautiful paintings of the Sistine Chapel and the Doni Tondo, the book provides an opportunity to view Michelangelo’s work as never before, and to more fully understand the artist who, through his work, spoke of his life and times. The frescoes are specially printed on onion skin paper to recreate the actual appearance of light reflecting off of the plaster walls. The stunning black-and-white photography of the sculptures is printed in four colors to bring out the rich details of the marble.

Raffaello Borghini's Il Riposo (1584) is the most widely known Florentine document on the subject of the Counter-Reformation content of religious paintings. Despite its reputation as an art-historical text, this is the first English-language translation of Il Riposo to be published. A distillation of the art gossip that was a feature of the Medici Grand Ducal court, Borghini's treatise puts forth simple criteria for judging the quality of a work of art. Published sixteen years after the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's Vite, the text that set the standard for art-historical writing during the period, Il Riposo focuses on important issues that Vasari avoided, ignored, or was oblivious to. Picking up where Vasari left off, Borghini deals with artists who came after Michaelangelo and provides more comprehensive descriptions of artists who Vasari only touched upon such as Tintoretto, Veronese, Barocci, and the artists of Francesco I's Studiolo. This text is also invaluable as a description of the mid-sixteenth century reaction against the style of the 'maniera,' which stressed the representation of self-consciously convoluted figures in complicated works of art.The first art treatise specifically directed toward non-practitioners, Il Riposo gives unique insight into the early stages of art history as a discipline, late Renaissance art and theory, and the Counter-Reformation in Italy.

The Italian Renaissance is a pivotal episode in the history of Western culture. Artists such as Masaccio, Donatello, and Fra Angelico created some of the most influential and exciting works in a variety of artistic fields at this time. Evelyn Welch presents a fresh picture of this period in the light of new scholarship and by recreating the experience of contemporary Italians - the patrons, the viewing public and the artists. The book discusses a wide range of works from across Italy, examines the issues of materials, workshop practices and artist-patron relationships, and explores the ways in which visual imagery related to contemporary sexual, social and political behaviour.

Francisco de Hollanda completed Da pintura antigua in 1548, eight years after the young Portuguese humanist, painter, and architect had spent two years in Italy. Book I is the first Portuguese treatise on the theory and practice of painting. In contrast to Italian texts on artistic theory, which define painting as the imitation of nature, Hollanda’s treatise, influenced by Neoplatonism, develops a theory of the painter as an original creator guided by divine inspiration. Book II, “Dialogues in Rome,� is a record of three conversations with Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and members of their circle and a fourth with Giulio Clovio. It is the most informative and intimate intellectual portrait of Michelangelo before the biographies by Vasari and Condivi.

When Europeans came to the American continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were confronted with what they perceived as sacrificial practices. Representations of Tupinamba cannibals, Aztecs slicing human hearts out, and idolatrous Incas flooded the early modern European imagination. But there was no less horror within European borders; during the early modern period no region was left untouched by the disasters of war. Sacrifice and Conversion in the Early Modern Atlantic World illuminates a particular aspect of the mutual influences between the European invasions of the American continent and the crisis of Christianity during the Reform and its aftermaths: the conceptualization and representation of sacrifice. Because of its centrality in religious practices and systems, sacrifice becomes a crucial way to understand not only cultural exchange, but also the power struggles between American and European societies in colonial times. How do cultures interpret sacrificial practices other than their own? What is the role of these interpretations in conversion? From the central perspective of sacrifice, these essays examine the encounter between European and American sacrificial conceptions-expressed in texts, music, rituals, and images-and their intellectual, cultural, religious, ideological, and artistic derivations.

Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati-gorgeously dressed and adorned men-to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power. Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall's investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials. This groundbreaking study of masculinity makes an important intervention in the history of male ornamentation and fashion by examining a period when the public display of splendid men not only supported but also constituted authority. It will appeal to specialists in art history and fashion history as well as scholars working at the intersections of gender and politics in quattrocento Italy.

Scholars have traditionally viewed the Italian Renaissance artist as a gifted, but poorly educated craftsman whose complex and demanding works were created with the assistance of a more educated advisor. These assumptions are, in part, based on research that has focused primarily on the artist's social rank and workshop training. In this volume, Angela Dressen explores the range of educational opportunities that were available to the Italian Renaissance artist. Considering artistic formation within the history of education, Dressen focuses on the training of highly skilled, average artists, revealing a general level of learning that was much more substantial than has been assumed. She emphasizes the role of mediators who had a particular interest in augmenting artists' knowledge, and highlights how artists used Latin and vernacular texts to gain additional knowledge that they avidly sought. Dressen's volume brings new insights into a topic at the intersection of early modern intellectual, educational, and art history.

The Kunstkammer in Dresden's Royal Palace houses a fascinating variety of collected objects from the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. It owes its unique collection of plain and ornate tools, for example, to the founder of the Kunstkammer, Elector August (1526-1586). They range from gardening equipment to goldsmithing, carpentry and ironworking tools and even to so-called Brechzeugen (tools for prising or breaking things open). In addition, the museum guide presents elaborately decorated art-room cabinets, two richly embellished Augsburg cabinets, tables inlaid with iridescent mother-of-pearl, precious board games, and musical instruments alongside filigree woodturned pieces, items of decorative art, and objects from distant cultures. Numerous previously unpublished masterpieces from the Kunstkammer in Dresden's Royal Palace

Anxious about the threat of Ottoman invasion and a religious schism that threatened Christianity from within, sixteenth-century northern Europeans increasingly saw their world as disharmonious and full of mutual contradictions. Examining the work of four unusual but influential northern Europeans as they faced Europe’s changing identity, Jennifer Nelson reveals the ways in which these early modern thinkers and artists grappled with the problem of cultural, religious, and cosmological difference in relation to notions of universals and the divine. Focusing on northern Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century, this book proposes a complementary account of a Renaissance and Reformation for which epistemology is not so much destabilized as pluralized. Addressing a wide range of media—including paintings, etchings and woodcuts, university curriculum regulations, clocks, sundials, anthologies of proverbs, and astrolabes—Nelson argues that inconsistency, discrepancy, and contingency were viewed as fundamental features of worldly existence. Taking as its starting point Hans Holbein’s famously complex double portrait The Ambassadors, and then examining Philipp Melanchthon’s measurement-minded theology of science, Georg Hartmann’s modular sundials, and Desiderius Erasmus’s eclectic Adages, Disharmony of the Spheres is a sophisticated and challenging reconsideration of sixteenth-century northern European culture and its discomforts. Carefully researched and engagingly written, Disharmony of the Spheres will be of vital interest to historians of early modern European art, religion, science, and culture.