This book is the first comprehensive study of images of rape in Italian painting at the dawn of the Renaissance. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Peter Bokody examines depictions of sexual violence in religion, law, medicine, literature, politics, and history writing produced in kingdoms (Sicily and Naples) and city-republics (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Bologna and Padua). Whilst misogynistic endorsement characterized many of these visual discourses, some urban communities condemned rape in their propaganda against tyranny. Such representations of rape often link gender and aggression to war, abduction, sodomy, prostitution, pregnancy, and suicide. Bokody also traces how the new naturalism in painting, introduced by Giotto, increased verisimilitude, but also fostered imagery that coupled eroticism and violation. Exploring images and texts that have long been overlooked, Bokody's study provides new insights at the intersection of gender, policy, and visual culture, with evident relevance to our contemporary condition.

The first half of this stunning new book explores Michelangelo's fascinating life through his family, friends, patrons and commissions. Born near Florence in 1475 Michelangelo grew up surrounded by new forms of architecture, painting and sculpture. His influences and achievements are explained clearly and comprehensively with informative and attractive illustrations throughout. The second half of the book contains a comprehensive gallery of over 300 of his major works of sculpture, painting and architecture. These superb reproductions are accompanied by thorough analysis of each artwork and its significance with the context of Michelangelo's life, his technique and his body of work as a whole.

An authoritative and comprehensive celebration of the life and work of one of the most prominent artists of the Venetian Renaissance Meticulously researched and luxuriously illustrated, this volume offers a comprehensive view of Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460/1466–1525/1526), whose work has been admired for centuries for its fantastical settings enriched with contemporary incident and detail. Capturing the sanctity and splendor of Venice at the turn of the sixteenth century, when the city controlled a vast maritime empire, Carpaccio combined careful observation of the urban environment with a taste for the poetic in his beloved narrative cycles and altarpieces. Providing a new lens through which to understand Carpaccio’s work, a team of distinguished scholars explores various aspects of his art, including his achievement as a draftsman. In addition to emphasizing the artist’s innovative techniques and contributions to the development of Venetian Renaissance painting, this study includes an in-depth consideration of the fluctuations in the reception of Carpaccio’s work in the five hundred years since the artist’s death. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Art, Washington (November 20, 2022–February 12, 2023) Palazzo Ducale, Venice (March 18–June 18, 2023)

For the affluent merchant class of fifteenth-century Florence, the education of future generations was a fundamental matter. Together with texts, images played an important role in the development of the young into adult citizens. In this book, Federico Botana demonstrates how illustrated manuscripts of vernacular texts read by the Florentine youth facilitated understanding and memorisation of basic principles and knowledge. They were an important means of acquiring skills then considered necessary to gain the respect of others, to prosper as merchants, and to participate in civic life. Botana focuses on illustrated texts that were widely read in Quattrocento Florence: the Fior di virtu (a moral treatise including a bestiary), the Esopo volgarizzato (Aesop's Fables in Tuscan), the Sfera by Goro Dati (a poem on cosmology and geography), and mathematical manuals known as libri d'abbaco. He elucidates, in light of original sources and medieval and modern cognitive theory, the mechanisms that empowered illustrations to transmit knowledge in the Italian Renaissance.

Italian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply "Il Divino" ("the divine one"). This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration and accessible texts, we explore the artist's extraordinary figuration and celebrated style of terribilita (momentous grandeur), which allowed human and biblical drama to exist in compelling scale and fervor. Through the power hubs of Renaissance Italy, we take in his major commissions and phenomenal capacity for compositional schemes, whether the famous Medici library in Florence, or the extraordinary 500-square-meter ceiling (1508-1512) in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. From the towering David to the aching grief and faith of The Pieta and the vivid drama of the Sistine Chapel's Last Judgment, this is a succinct, dependable reference to a true giant of art history and to some of the most famous artworks in the world. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

From the acclaimed author of Blue, a beautifully illustrated history of yellow from antiquity to the present In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau-a renowned authority on the history of color and the author of celebrated volumes on blue, black, green, and red-now traces the visual, social, and cultural history of yellow. Focusing on European societies, with comparisons from East Asia, India, Africa, and South America, Yellow tells the intriguing story of the color's evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, and science. In Europe today, yellow is a discreet color, little present in everyday life and rarely carrying great symbolism. This has not always been the case. In antiquity, yellow was almost sacred, a symbol of light, warmth, and prosperity. It became highly ambivalent in medieval Europe: greenish yellow came to signify demonic sulfur and bile, the color of forgers, lawless knights, Judas, and Lucifer-while warm yellow recalled honey and gold, serving as a sign of pleasure and abundance. In Asia, yellow has generally had a positive meaning. In ancient China, yellow clothing was reserved for the emperor, while in India the color is associated with happiness. Above all, yellow is the color of Buddhism, whose temple doors are marked with it. Throughout, Pastoureau illuminates the history of yellow with a wealth of captivating images. With its striking design and compelling text, Yellow is a feast for the eye and mind.

346 in all: Old Testament, St. Jerome, Passion, Life of Virgin, Apocalypse, many others. Introduction by Campbell Dodgson. "...it was in woodcut design that the creative genius of Dürer reached its highest expression...The only available source for many of these works."-Antique Monthly.

This volume tells the singular story of an uncanny object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.� The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earliest extant ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to lore from the court of Philip II of Spain, the monk represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a humble Franciscan lay brother whose holy corpse was said to be agent to the miraculous cure of Spain’s crown prince as he lay dying in 1562. In tracking the origins of the monk and its legend, the authors visited archives, libraries, and museums across the United States and Europe, probing the paradox of a mechanical object performing an apparently spiritual act. They identified seven kindred automata from the same period, which, they argue, form a paradigmatic class of walking “prime movers,� unprecedented in their combination of visual and functional realism. While most of the literature on automata focuses on the Enlightenment, this enthralling narrative journeys back to the late Renaissance, when clockwork machinery was entirely new, foretelling the evolution of artificial life to come.

This book presents four case studies that interrogate how German fifteenth-century painted triptychs engage with, and ultimately blur, various boundaries. Some of the boundaries are internal to the triptych format, for example, transgressed frames between narrative scenes on triptych interiors, or interconnections between imagery on triptych interiors and exteriors. Other blurred boundaries are regional ones between the Netherlands and Cologne; metaphysical ones between heaven and earth; and artistic distinctions between the media of painting and sculpture. The book's case studies-which shed new light on Conrad von Soest, Stefan Lochner, and the Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece-illuminate the importance of German fifteenth-century painting, while providing a fresh assessment of relations between German triptychs and their more famous Netherlandish counterparts. The case studies also demonstrate the value of probing Medialitat, that is, the implications of format and medium for generating meaning. A coda assesses the triptych in the age of Durer.

The Renaissance, now in its third edition, engages with earlier and current debates about the Renaissance, especially concerning its 'modernity', its elitism and gender bias and its globalism. This new edition has been revised to include a discussion of Venice, Rome, Naples and Florence and their relationship with surrounding courts and smaller provincial towns. Brown provides a fresh insight into some of the main themes of the Renaissance, with humanism now being explored in relation to gender, the position of women and the response of religious reformers to the new ideas. The broad geographical scope, concluding with an examination of diffusion through trade with Constantinople, Portugal and Spain, allows students to fully explore how the Renaissance transformed into a global movement. Key themes, such as humanism, art and architecture, Renaissance theatre and the invention of printing, are illustrated with quotations and exempla, making this book an invaluable source for students of the Renaissance, early modern history and social and cultural history.

The book examines how increasing engagement with the rest of the world transformed European art, architecture and design. It considers how commercial activity and colonial ventures gave rise to new and diverse forms of visual and material culture across the globe. Drawing on a wide range of recent scholarship, it offers a new perspective that challenges Eurocentric approaches. -- .

This book offers nine new approaches toward a single work of art, Titian's Allegory of Marriage or Allegory of Alfonso d'Avalos, dated to 1530/5. In earlier references, the painting was named simply Allegory, alluding to its enigmatic nature. The work follows in a tradition of such ambiguous Venetian paintings as Giovanni Bellini's Sacred Allegory and Giorgione's Tempest. Throughout the years, Titian's Allegory has engendered a range of diverse interpretations. Art historians such as Hans Tietze, Erwin Panofsky, Walter Friedlaender, and Louis Hourticq, to mention only a few, promoted various explanations. This book offers novel approaches and suggests new meanings toward a further understanding of this somewhat abstruse painting.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), perhaps the most famous of all German artists, embodies the modern ideal of the Renaissance man--he was a remarkable painter, printmaker, draftsman, designer, theoretician, and even a poet. More is known about his thoughts and his life than about any other Northern European master of his time, since he wrote extensively about himself, his family's history, his travels, and his friends. His woodcuts and engravings were avidly collected and copied across Europe, and they quickly established his reputation as a master. Praised in life and elegized in death by such thinkers as Martin Luther and Erasmus, he served Emperor Maximilian and other leading church and secular princes in the Holy Roman Empire.Although there is a vast specialized literature on the Nuremberg master, "The Essential Durer" fills the need for a foundational book that covers the major aspects of his career. The essays included in this book, written by leading scholars from the United States and Germany, provide an accessible, up-to-date examination of Durer's art and person as well as his posthumous fame. The essays address an array of topics, from separate and detailed studies of his paintings, drawings, printmaking, and sculpture, to broader concerns such as his visits to and interactions with Venice and the Netherlands, his personal relationships, and his relationships with other artists. Collectively these stimulating essays explore the brilliance of Durer's creativity and the impact he had on his world, exposing him as an artist fully engaged with the tumultuous intellectual and religious challenges of his time.

Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, European society confronted rapid monetization, a process that has been examined in depth by economic historians. Less well understood is the development of architecture to meet the needs of a burgeoning mercantile economy in the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. In this volume, Lauren Jacobi explores some of the repercussions of early capitalism through a study of the location and types of spaces that were used for banking and minting in Florence and other mercantile centers in Europe. Examining the historical relationships between banks and religious behavior, she also analyzes how urban geographies and architectural forms reveal moral attitudes toward money during the onset of capitalism. Jacobi's book offers new insights into the spaces and locations where pre-industrial European banking and minting transpired, as well as the impact of religious concerns and financial tools on those sites.

A revisionist history of the early life and career of Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini Widely recognized as one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini is revered for his mastery of color, atmosphere and light. However, his early life and career remain something of a mystery. Daniel Wallace Maze expands on groundbreaking research that argues Jacopo Bellini was not Giovanni Bellini's father, but rather his half-brother, and that Giovanni was born between 1424-26, up to fifteen years earlier than current scholars' estimates. In light of this, Young Bellini explores the artist's early life, including his birth, his unusual upbringing in Venice, and his first-known works of art. Presenting a clear narrative of his early career, and offering a number of newly attributed paintings, Maze provides answers to longstanding questions about Bellini, and poses new questions that will frame future research on the artist's contribution to the Renaissance.

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.

Leo Steinberg was one of the most original art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretive risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures that ranged from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His writings, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital reading. For half a century, Steinberg delved into Michelangelo's work, revealing the symbolic structures underlying the artist's highly charged idiom. This volume of essays and unpublished lectures elucidates many of Michelangelo's paintings, from frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter, the artist's lesser-known works in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel; also included is a study of the relationship of the Doni Madonna to Leonardo. Steinberg's perceptions evolved from long, hard looking. Almost everything he wrote included passages of old-fashioned formal analysis, but always put into the service of interpretation. He understood that Michelangelo's rendering of figures, as well as their gestures and interrelations, conveys an emblematic significance masquerading under the guise of naturalism. Michelangelo pushed Renaissance naturalism into the furthest reaches of metaphor, using the language of the body to express fundamental Christian tenets once expressible only by poets and preachers. Michelangelo's Paintings is the second volume in a series that presents Steinberg's writings, selected and edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz.

Leonardo da Vinci: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works covers all aspects of his life and work, beginning with his paintings, including several he never completed, that form the core of his artistic oeuvre. The extensive A to Z section includes several hundred entries. The bibliography provides a comprehensive list of publications concerning his life and work *Includes a detailed chronology detailing Leonardo Da Vinci's life, family, and work. *The A to Z section includes Leonardo's main patrons, the major places he worked, and the artists and scholars whose work and ideas played an important role in the formation of his career. *The bibliography includes a list of publications concerning his life and work. *The index thoroughly cross-references the chronological and encyclopedic entries.

Originally published in 2000. Fashioning Identities analyses some of the different ways in which identities were fashioned in and with art during the Renaissance, taken as meaning the period c.1300-1600. The notion of such a search for new identities, expressed in a variety of new themes, styles and genres, has been all-pervasive in the historical and critical literature dealing with the period, starting with Burckhardt, and it has been given a new impetus by contemporary scholarship using a variety of methodological approaches. The identities involved are those of patrons, for whom artistic patronage was a means of consolidating power, projecting ideologies, acquiring social prestige or building a suitable public persona; and artists, who developed a distinctive manner to fashion their artistic identity, or drew attention to aspects of their artistic personality either in self portraiture, or the style and placing of their signature, or by exploiting a variety of literary forms.

The importance of place - as a unique spatial identity - has been recognized since antiquity. Ancient references to the 'genius loci', or spirit of place, evoked not only the location of a distinct atmosphere or environment, but also the protection of this location, and implicitly, its making and construction. This volume examines the concept of place as it relates to architectural production and building knowledge in early modern Europe (1400-1800). The places explored in the book's ten essays take various forms, from an individual dwelling to a cohesive urban development to an extensive political territory. Within the scope of each study, the authors draw on primary source documents and original research to demonstrate the distinctive features of a given architectural place, and how these are related to a geographic location, social circumstances, and the contributions of individual practitioners. The essays underscore the distinct techniques, practices and organizational structures by which physical places were made in the early modern period.

In this book, Robert Maniura explores the role and importance of the miraculous image in the art and devotional practices of Renaissance Italy. Using the records of Giuliano Guizzelmi, a Tuscan lawyer, he focuses on his stories of miracles of local shrines, including Santa Maria delle Carceri, a painting of the Virgin Mary on a wall of the town prison, and the relic of her belt in the Prato Cathedral. Guizzelmi's stories build a powerful picture of the visual culture of the period, involving images that were kissed, worn and applied to sick bodies in rituals of healing. They also place his devotional activity in the context of his everyday life. Moreover, the paintings of Guizzelmi's burial chapel also engage with contemporary pictorial conventions and show how his concerns can inform our understanding of contemporary art, notably the works of his late fifteenth-century contemporaries, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Filippino Lippi.

This book is an edited record of the papers given at the two-day symposium 'Italian Maiolica and Europe' held in Oxford on 22 and 23 September 2017. It is, in effect, a celebration of his long service in the Ashmolean Museum as the Keeper of Western Art. Museum collections develop their great strengths in one of two ways: through gifts of private collections and through the knowledge and enthusiasm of curators. The Ashmolean's renowned and important collection of Italian Maiolica owes its foundation to the former and the bequest of C.D.E. Fortnum. But it has grown and developed in remarkable ways over the last three decades thanks to the energy and expertise of Professor Timothy Wilson. During his 27 years as Keeper of Western Art, Tim was responsible for a truly extraordinary range and number of important acquisitions across the fine and decorative arts. As one of the world's leading scholars of Italian Maiolica, it was only natural that he would continue to build on Fortnum's legacy.