A poetic new essay collection in which the symbols of the tarot brush up against life in a changing world.

The Tarot de Marseille is a 16th-century set of playing cards, the deck on which the occult use of tarot was originally based. When Jessica Friedmann bought her first pack, the unfamiliar images sparked a deep immersion in the art, symbols, myths, and misrepresentations of Renaissance-era tarot.

Over the years that followed, and as tarot became a part of her daily rhythm, Friedmann’s life was touched by floods and by drought, by devastating fires and a pandemic, creating an environment in which the only constant was change.

Twenty-Two Impressions: notes from the Major Arcana uses the Tarot de Marseille as a touchstone, blending historical research, art history, and critical insights with personal reflections. In these essays, Friedmann demonstrates how the cards of the Major Arcana can be used as a lens through which to examine the unexpectedness — and subtle beauty — of 21st-century life.

Campbell and Cole, respected teachers and active researchers, draw on traditional and current scholarship to present complex interpretations in this new edition of their engaging account of Italian Renaissance art. The book's unique decade-by-decade structure is easy to follow, and permits the authors to tell the story of art not only in the great centres of Rome, Florence and Venice, but also in a range of other cities and sites throughout Italy, including more in this edition from Naples, Padua and Palermo. This approach allows the artworks to take centre-stage, in contrast to the book's competitors, which are organized by location or by artist. Other updates for this edition include an expanded first chapter on the Trecento, and a new `Techniques and Materials' appendix that explains and illustrates all of the major art-making processes of the period. Richly illustrated with high-quality reproductions and new photography of recent restorations, it presents the classic canon of Renaissance painting and sculpture in full, while expanding the scope of conventional surveys by offering a more thorough coverage of architecture, decorative and domestic arts, and print media.

In this volume, Rebekah Compton offers the first survey of Venus in the art, culture, and governance of Florence from 1300 to 1600. Organized chronologically, each of the six chapters investigates one of the goddess's alluring attributes - her golden splendor, rosy-hued complexion, enchanting fashions, green gardens, erotic anatomy, and gifts from the sea. By examining these attributes in the context of the visual arts, Compton uncovers an array of materials and techniques employed by artists, patrons, rulers, and lovers to manifest Venusian virtues. Her book explores technical art history in the context of love's protean iconography, showing how different discourses and disciplines can interact in the creation and reception of art. Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence offers new insights on sight, seduction, and desire, as well as concepts of gender, sexuality, and viewership from both male and female perspectives in the early modern era.

Dress became a testing ground for masculine ideals in Renaissance Italy. With the establishment of the ducal regime in Florence in 1530, there was increasing debate about how to be a nobleman. Was fashionable clothing a sign of magnificence or a source of mockery? Was the graceful courtier virile or effeminate? How could a man dress for court without bankrupting himself? This book explores the whole story of clothing, from the tailor's workshop to spectacular court festivities, to show how the male nobility in one of Italy's main textile production centers used their appearances to project social, sexual, and professional identities. Sixteenth-century male fashion is often associated with swagger and ostentation but this book shows that Florentine clothing reflected manhood at a much deeper level, communicating a very Italian spectrum of male virtues and vices, from honor, courage, and restraint to luxury and excess. Situating dress at the heart of identity formation, Currie traces these codes through an array of sources, including unpublished archival records, surviving garments, portraiture, poetry, and personal correspondence between the Medici and their courtiers. Addressing important themes such as gender, politics, and consumption, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence sheds fresh light on the sartorial culture of the Florentine court and Italy as a whole.

Francesco di Giorgio Martini is one of the few fifteenth century Sienese artists who became known outside his native city. Working at the courts of Urbino, Naples and Milan, he was a typical Renaissance uomo universale but his major achievements were in military and civil architecture, complemented by the composition of a theoretical treatise. The collection of essays does not offer a comprehensive study of the artist's architectural oeuvre, but rather emphasizes the partial nature of the scholarly endeavor so far undertaken. The essays discuss Francesco's theory, his drawings from the antique, the individual characteristics of his practice, and the reception of his work. They share a common idea: invention, which emerges as a valid theoretical framework, possibly the only one capable of encompassing Francesco di Giorgio's versatile accomplishments.

2013 will mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of the artist Mattia Preti (1613-1699), who spent forty years of his working life in Malta. Midsea Books, in collaboration with the Department of History of Art at the University of Malta, are working together to publish an outstanding book that discusses critically the artist s oeuvre in Malta. Research for this superb book is co-ordinated by Professor Keith Sciberras, who is also the author of the two critical essays which compose the first part of the book. Over 150 catalogue entries are co-authored by Professor Sciberras and Ms Jessica Borg M.A. The book will include over 270 paintings. The images of the paintings in Malta are being taken purposely for this book by master photographer Mr Joe P. Borg. Born in Taverna, Calabria, in 1613, Mattia Preti emerged as a leading exponent of the forceful Baroque of mid-17th century Italy, working in a tradition which brilliantly captured the characteristics of monumental dynamism and theatrical appeal. An extraordinary draughtsman and painterly virtuoso, he was quick with his brush and produced hundreds of pictures which spanned a career of some seventy years. His life-story can be easily and neatly divided in an early training and first maturity in Rome, his mid-years in Naples, and the nearly four decades that he spent on Malta between 1661 and his death in 1699. An artist-knight, his life was also conditioned by his membership in the chivalric Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Malta. Preti s works for St John s Conventual Church inspired a major transformation within the church. The Baroque re-decoration programme which Preti was to direct transformed the interior of the Conventual Church into one of the most important nodes of Baroque art South of Rome. Preti was to assume responsibility of painting the entire ceiling and many altar paintings and lunettes. Moreover, he produced designs for the carved decoration that spread throughout the church walls, the inlaid marble slabs for the flooring and ephemera. Preti s residency on the island did not go unnoticed and his circle of admirers grew beyond the circle of the Knights of Malta. The church and private patrons were attracted to his work. Owning a painting by the artist grew to become a desideratum. The artist s technique and method of painting was fast and he could rapidly execute large scale works. His inventive genius kept up with the pace of his technique and the artist thus produced a large corpus of paintings. This lavish publication, which will mark the 400th anniversary from the master s birth, will be another outstanding contribution to all enthusiast of Maltese art and history."

"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 this renowned scholar'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. 79 illustrations, bibliography of Marilyn Lavin's works, index.

A fascinating collection of writings from the great polymath of the Italian Renaissaince, Leonardo da Vinci. There are sections covering the great man's thoughts on life, art and science. Maurice Baring trawled the available manuscripts to distil da Vinci's writings on these subjects into a single, accessible tome, which will be of interest to students of da Vinci, the Renaissance and the history of both art and science.