The Klesch portrait by Titian of Guidobaldo II with his son Francesco Maria represents the duke of Urbino in his full power as supreme commander of papal troops, with his heir next to him. This rare, full-length double portrait has only recently been attributed to Titian after undergoing extensive analyses and restoration, revealing a beautiful painting in non finito manner, with bravura impasto passages entirely characteristic of the master, all of which is illustrated and explained in this new book. Titian provided portraits for the greatest men and women of Europe, Charles V and Philip II of Spain primary among them. For years the Klesch portrait was dismissed as a workshop product - partly because poor condition hid its true quality, but also because it was not believed that Titian could have deigned to create one for Guidobaldo, whose father Guidobaldo della Rovere (1514-1574) and family had a long history of patronizing the artist. Recent research, however, has thrown Guidobaldo's geopolitical significance into relief. He was supreme commander of Venice, the Papal States and then Spain. He sent thousands of soldiers to the major conflicts of his day, particularly the defense of Malta (1565) and the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and his engineers were sought throughout Europe for their ingenuity. In this volume full of new research, Ian Verstegen reveals that Guidobaldo was not peripheral but central to Italian politics and was regarded at several points in history as a key figure who could bring peace or who could influence major conflicts on the Italian peninsula, particularly the War of Siena, and then Pope Paul IV's offensive war against Spain. Anne-Marie Eze gives the first comprehensive examination of the painting's provenance, outlining the portrait's vicissitudes and reception at different moments in its near 500-year history, reexamining received wisdom about its past ownership, and presenting new documentary evidence to expand on and fill gaps in our knowledge of its whereabouts. Finally, Matthew Hayes and Ian Kennedy reflect on the technique, date, recent conservation, and authorship of the painting, proving it to be a masterpiece that only the great Titian could have created.

This stunning catalogue presents The Courtauld's outstanding collection of works by Renaissance artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540). This catalogue accompanies a display of works by Parmigianino at The Courtauld, including his famous and enigmatic painting of the Virgin and Child, as well as drawn studies for his most ambitious projects such as the Madonna of the Long Neck and the frescoes of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. The latter was the last and most important commission of his life and would have been his triumphal homecoming. Instead, Parmigianino became entangled in his experimental processes and failed to complete it, leading to his brief imprisonment for breach of contract. Fundamentally a draftsman at heart, Parmigianino drew relentlessly during his relatively short life, and around a thousand of his drawings have survived. The Courtauld's collection comprises twenty-four sheets. In preparation for the catalogue, new photography and technical examinations have been carried out on all the works revealing two new drawings that were previously unknown, hidden underneath their historic mounts. They have also helped to better identify connections between some of the drawings and the finished paintings for which they were conceived. The catalogue illustrates the whole Courtauld collection, which also includes two paintings and more than ten prints. As a printmaker, Parmigianino is considered to have been the first to experiment with etching in Italy and was a pioneer of the chiaroscuro woodcut technique. His refined and graceful compositions were much appreciated by his contemporaries and exalted by the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-74). This catalogue and display have been curated by Gottardo and Rebecchini in collaboration with former and current research students at The Courtauld, and technical research has been conducted by members of The Courtauld Conservation Institute. A truly collaborative project, the catalogue sheds light on an artist who approached every technique with unprecedented freedom and produced innovative works which were studied and admired by artists and collectors for many years to come.

A never-before-seen presentation of art and architecture from the Renaissance era, in elegant, informative, and engaging three-dimensional form. Accompanied by stunning art and ingenious pop engineering, Renaissance Art Pop-Up Book presents the talent and imagination of some of the most influential artists in history. Ranging from the influences of Gothic art on the early Renaissance to the culmination of High Renaissance, this book follows the appearance of new forms in religious and secular painting and the burgeoning use of groundbreaking techniques, such as perspective and narrative in painting; new innovations in architecture; and the unique genius of artists from all over Europe. The book features the most outstanding artists, art, and architecture of the period, including the frescoes of Giotto, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and the works of Caravaggio, Botticelli, Titian, Durer, and Massacio, to name only a few. Innovative pop-ups include a working camera obscura; da Vinci's -flying machine-; Piero della Francesca's View of the Ideal City, with removable perspective lines; Brunelleschi's majestic Duomo in Florence; and a fold-out timeline of the Renaissance. Showcasing the artistic innovations of the era in interactive format, this book gives the reader a fresh perspective, thereby teaching the principles and history of the Renaissance in a new and unique way. Renaissance Art Pop-Up Book is a superb tour of the greatest achievements of the world's early masters, and is the perfect educational gift for art lovers of all ages.

This book is the first major essay volume in over a decade to focus on Tudor and Jacobean painting. Its interdisciplinary approach reflects the dynamic state of research in the field, utilising a range of methodologies in order to answer key art historical questions about the production and consumption of art in Britain in the 16th and early 17th century. The introduction sets the tone for the interdisciplinary approach that is taken throughout the volume .It brings together a discussion of the context for the production of painted images in Tudor and Jacobean England with a selection of technical images of twenty paintings that span the period and demonstrate the information that can be gained from material analysis of paintings. In further chapters, leading exponents of painting conservation and conservation science discuss the material practices of the period, using and explaining a range of analytical techniques, such as infrared reflectography and dendochronology. Questions of authorship and aspects of workshop practice are also discussed. As well as looking at specific artists and their studios, the authors take a broader view in order to capture information about the range of artistic production during the period, stretching from the production of medieval rood screens to the position of heraldic painters. The final section of the book addresses artistic patronage, from the commissioning of works by kings and courtiers, to the regional networks that developed during the period and the influence of a developing antiquarianism on the market for paintings. The book is lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, with reproductions of whole paintings and many details selected to amplify the text. It will be an essential source for those working in the fields of art history, conservation and material science, and of interest to lovers of British Tudor and Stuart painting.

Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 offers a fresh perspective on the art of Venice and the Veneto. The volume brings together the contributions of scholars and curators specialist on a wide variety of artists and art forms including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture. Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 takes disegno as its central theme, that in its plurality of meaning allows for a consideration of the conceptual role of design and the act of drawing. The relationship between disegno and Renaissance Venetian art has historically been a problematic one, with emphasis instead being placed on the Venetian predilection for colore. This volume is reflective of an ongoing challenge to this perspective and draws attention to the importance of Venetian disegno and the study of drawings for understanding various art forms. The book commences with a critical study of what constitutes disegno in Venetian art. It does so through questioning the historiography of Venetian artistic scholarship and the restrictive framework and preconceptions that have emerged before setting out the merits of a broader, more inclusive approach. Disegno is applied in its multifaceted nature to address the physical act of drawing, the tangible drawn object and the role of design in artistic practice. The term ‘Venetian’ is taken to encompass both Venice and its mainland territories not least because of the mobility of artists across and beyond the region. Contributions are divided into five thematic sections. The first, entitled ‘Peripheries’, frames the art of Venice within a wider discourse on the movement of ideas across and beyond the Veneto in locations including Padua, Verona and Rome. A section on Media considers the origins and innovations that took place in the use of materials such as blue paper, oil and coloured chalks. In another, the theories that have developed on Venetian notions of disegno are brought under scrutiny, addressing topics such as the long upheld perspective that Venetian artists did not draw, the role of sculpture in Tintoretto’s drawing practice and the interrelation between the written and drawn line in Palma Giovane’s draftsmanship. The section on Invention reflects on the technical innovations that were facilitated through the uptake of printmaking and the intellectual freedom granted by humanist patrons. Finally, Function gets to the heart of the practical purpose of disegno. Contributions focus on the workshops of the Bellini family and Titian to consider the diverse ways they used drawing within their artistic practices with an emphasis on technical analysis. These sections are all preceded by introductions that provide an overview on each theme while the volume is bookended by two reflections on the state of research into Venetian disegno and the potential for further progress. Sumptuously illustrated with over 100 images with a comprehensive bibliography, Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 represents a significant contribution to scholarship on the art of Venice, Renaissance workshops and drawing studies.

This absorbing book explores the crown jewel of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's collection of rare books and manuscripts: Jean Bourdichon's Boston Hours. As court artist to King Francois I of France, Bourdichon produced paintings, books and even parade floats for the sovereign and his entourage. This publication accompanies the museum's first ever exhibition dedicated to this spectacular illuminated manuscript. Painter to two kings, Jean Bourdichon remains today one of the most celebrated artists of the French Renaissance. By age twenty-four, he was already serving as "peintre du roy," a title which Bourdichon held for the rest of his life. His illustrious career at the French royal court led to a wide range of commissions - from portraits to wall maps to stained glass - but he is remembered principally for astonishing illuminated manuscripts. The peerless Grandes Heures for Queen Anne of Brittany remains the touchstone of this group which includes some of the most lavishly painted books of hours ever produced. One of these masterpieces - Bourdichon's Boston Hours - in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is the subject of this book. Bourdichon's only intact book of hours in the United States was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1890 and became the crown jewel of her collection of rare books and manuscripts. Leading scholars Nicholas Herman and Anne-Marie Eze explore its history in depth, shedding new light on the book's patronage and provenance - from the shelves of a wealthy Catholic landowner in Lincolnshire to the shop of a Venetian art and antiques dealer. This book is the latest in the Gardner's Close Up series, each installment focusing on an individual, outstanding work of art in the collection. This publication is the first dedicated to this rare treasure, and precedes an exhibition opening in summer 2022.

Mining the rich documentary sources housed in Tuscan archives and taking advantage of the breadth and depth of scholarship produced in recent years, the seventeen essays in this Companion to Cosimo I de' Medici provide a fresh and systematic overview of the life and career of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, with special emphasis on Cosimo I's education and intellectual interests, cultural policies, political vision, institutional reforms, diplomatic relations, religious beliefs, military entrepreneurship, and dynastic concerns. Contributors: Maurizio Arfaioli, Alessio Assonitis, Nicholas Scott Baker, Sheila Barker, Stefano Calonaci, Brendan Dooley, Daniele Edigati, Sheila ffolliott, Catherine Fletcher, Andrea Galdy, Fernando Loffredo, Piergabriele Mancuso, Jessica Maratsos, Carmen Menchini, Oscar Schiavone, Marcello Simonetta, and Henk Th. van Veen.

The idea of the book was central throughout the western European and the eastern Mediterranean world in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. From the beginning, the word for 'book'-sefer in Hebrew, biblia in Greek, and liber in Latin-was identified with sacred writings--the Holy Scriptures of Jews and Christians, who were known as 'people of the book'. The centrality of the book to medieval thought is reflected materially in the countless images of books that appear in the manuscripts of the era, be they in the most treasured, highly decorated, sacred texts or in devotional and secular works as well. In Penned & Painted, Lucy Freeman Sandler, one of one of the world's most respected authorities on medieval art, takes us on a personal but highly insightful exploration of some of the British Library's most precious manuscript holdings and describes the many uses and meanings of these 'books in books'. Through the fascinating face-to-face discovery of 60 manuscripts, she investigates the various types and forms of books as depicted in the era. How were they produced and what did they look like? What do they tell us of the lives and skills of the scribes and illuminators? What did these books record and signify? How were they displayed, consumed and how did some of these objects of supreme beauty even come to be wantonly destroyed? Penned & Painted is presented in full-colour throughout and includes a high number of images specially photographed for this volume.

The interplay between nature, science, and art in antiquity and the early modern period differs significantly from late modern expectations. In this book scholars from ancient studies as well as early modern studies, art history, literary criticism, philosophy, and the history of science, explore that interplay in several influential ancient texts and their reception in the Renaissance. The Natural History of Pliny, De Architectura of Vitruvius, De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, Automata of Hero, and Timaios of Plato among other texts reveal how fields of inquiry now considered distinct were originally understood as closely interrelated. In our choice of texts, we focus on materialistic theories of nature, knowledge, and art that remain underappreciated in ancient and early modern studies even today.

Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? Art historians have been fiercely debating this question for decades. This book starts with Ficino's views on the imagination as a faculty of the soul, and shows how these ideas were part of a long philosophical tradition and inspired fresh insights. This approach, combined with little known historical material, offers a new understanding of whether, how and why Ficino's Platonic conceptions of the imagination may have been received in the art of the Italian Renaissance. The discussion explores Ficino's possible influence on the work of Botticelli and Michelangelo, and examines the appropriation of Ficino's ideas by early modern art theorists.

Making Copies in European Art 1400-1600 comprises sixteen essays that explore the form and function, manner and meaning of copies after Renaissance works of art. The authors construe copying as a method of exchange based in the theory and practice of imitation, and they investigate the artistic techniques that enabled and facilitated the production of copies. They also ask what patrons and collectors wanted from a copy, which characteristics of an artwork were considered copyable, and where and how copies were stored, studied, displayed, and circulated. Making Copies in European Art, in addition to studying many unfamiliar pictures, incorporates previously unpublished documentary materials.

In The World Upside Down in 16th Century French Literature and Visual Culture Vincent Robert-Nicoud offers an interdisciplinary account of the topos of the world upside down in early modern France. To call something 'topsy-turvy' in the sixteenth century is to label it as abnormal. The topos of the world upside down evokes a world in which everything is inside-out and out of bounds: fish live in trees, children rule over their parents, and rivers flow back to their source. The world upside down proves to be key in understanding how the social, political, and religious turmoil of sixteenth-century France was represented and conceptualised, and allows us to explore the dark side of the Renaissance by unpacking one of its most prevalent metaphors.

In early modern times scholars and architects investigated age-old buildings in order to look for useful sources of inspiration. They too, occasionally misinterpreted younger buildings as proofs of majestic Roman or other ancient glory, such as the buildings of the Carolingian, Ottonian and Stauffer emperors. But even if the correct age of a certain building was known, buildings from c. 800-1200 were sometimes regarded as 'Antique' architecture, since the concept of 'Antiquity' was far more stretched than our modern periodisation allows. This was a Europe-wide phenomenon. The results are rather diverse in style, but they all share an intellectual and artistic strategy: a conscious revival of an 'ancient' architecture - whatever the date and origin of these models. Contributors: Barbara Arciszewska, Lex Bosman, Ian Campbell, Eliana Carrara, Bianca de Divitiis, Krista De Jonge, Emanuela Ferretti, Emanuela Garofalo, Stefaan Grieten, Hubertus Gunther, Stephan Hoppe, Sanne Maekelberg, Kristoffer Neville, Marco Rosario Nobile, Konrad Ottenheym, Stefano Piazza, and Richard Schofield.

In this paradigm shifting study, developed through close textual readings and sensitive analysis of artworks, Clare Lapraik Guest re-evaluates the central role of ornament in pre-modern art and literature. Moving from art and thought in antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, she examines the understandings of ornament arising from the Platonic, Aristotelian and Sophistic traditions, and the tensions which emerged from these varied meanings. The book views the Renaissance as a decisive point in the story of ornament, when its subsequent identification with style and historicism are established. It asserts ornament as a fundamental, not an accessory element in art and presents its restoration to theoretical dignity as essential to historical scholarship and aesthetic reflection.

The life-like depiction of the body became a central interest and defining characteristic of the European Early Modern period that coincided with the establishment of which images of the body were to be considered 'decent' and representable, and which disapproved, censored, or prohibited. Simultaneously, artists and the public became increasingly interested in the depiction of specific body parts or excretions. This book explores the concept of indecency and its relation to the human body across drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, and texts. The ten essays investigate questions raised by such objects about practices and social norms regarding the body, and they look at the particular function of those artworks within this discourse. The heterogeneous media, genres, and historical contexts north and south of the Alps studied by the authors demonstrate how the alleged indecency clashed with artistic intentions and challenges traditional paradigms of the historiography of Early Modern visual culture.

In The Globalization of Renaissance Art: A Critical Review, Daniel Savoy assembles an interdisciplinary group of scholars to evaluate the global discourse on early modern European art. Over the course of eleven chapters and a roundtable, the contributors assess the discourse's goal of transcending Eurocentric boundaries, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of current terms, methods, theories, and concepts. Although it is clear that the global perspective has exposed the artistic and cultural pluralism of early modern Europe, it is found that more work needs to be done at the epistemological level of art history as a whole. Contributors: Claire Farago, Elizabeth Horodowich, Lauren Jacobi, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Jessica Keating, Stephanie Leitch, Emanuele Lugli, Lia Markey, Sean Roberts, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, and Marie Neil Wolff.

This generously illustrated volume on the work of Botticelli makes the world's greatest art accessible to readers of every level of appreciation. The Florentine painter Botticelli personifies the Golden Age of the early Renaissance. Best known for The Birth of Venus and Primavera, Botticelli painted with an expressive poeticism that eschewed formal realism. He used line and color to gorgeous effect, creating some of the most beloved and familiar images of all time. 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. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historic events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, timeline, and suggestions for further reading.