This evocative history reviews both the artistic production of the European Renaissance, and the social and economic soil in which it flourished.

This is a beautifully presented and lavishly illustrated history which brings together all Renaissance arts throughout Europe - plays, music, literature and philosophy. With Italy at its center, but encompassing the visual and literary arts throughout Renaissance Europe, it examines the familiar literary and artistic giants of the time and also pays attention to less recognized artists and craftsmen, and examines the crafts of marquetry, silver-work and architectural ornamentation which were central to that period.

The remarkable career of the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is largely due to an extraordinary moment of prosperity in the Veneto mainland, both in the city and in the countryside: a boom due in large measure to a little-studied revolution in manufacturing. This book brings to light for the first time the architecture of these early industries, especially the production of textiles (wool, silk), mining and metalworking, paper manufacture, ceramics, sawmilling and leather-tanning. The huge surge in patent applications to the Venetian Senate in the period highlights the parallel technological improvements in both efficiency and quality. Former proto-industrial buildings across the Veneto, studied at first-hand, reveal the efficiency of hydraulic power and smooth-running mechanical processes. Water-power, a clean, renewable energy source, and structures made of natural, traditional materials, have much to teach today’s civilisation.

A chance discovery provided the author with the key to unlocking the centuries old enigma of Botticelli's Primavera, a masterpiece painted for the private viewing of a Medici. Its pagan figures in a paradisical spring meadow illuminated the cryptic world of the Renaissance pagan revival. Botticelli's allegory emerged to address its personal message to a young Medici. Botticelli's cleverly disguised message for Lorenzo Minore, is to be found on the right side of La Primavera, where Chloris draws Zephyr's attention to it. This book is extremely well researched and beautifully produced with eighty color plates. Lane-Spollen clearly explains the fusion of Christian and pagan imagery which is reflected in La Primavera, placing it in the wider context of Italy's religion and politics. The author employs a readable style which will make this book suitable for those familiar with this period looking for more detail about a beloved painting, and those who are new to the Renaissance and Art History. Lane-Spollen gives a clear overview of why and how Botticelli conveyed his message in disguise. An esteemed circle of scholars around the Medici, disillusioned with a worldly and corrupted medieval Church, searched for a purer, unadulterated Christianity in the pre-Christian foundations of their faith. This was a sensitive occupation in a society where the reach of the Church was present in all matters public and private. In 1460 a manuscript was brought to Cosimo de'Medici. Its author, Hermes, was revered by Augustine and the early Church Fathers. Its revelations on the true nature of Man held the evidence they were seeking and stood in stark contrast to the medieval Church view in which the lowly humble sinner must throw himself on the mercy of the Church for his redemption. The Hermetic corpus which so inspired the Medici circle, saw Man as unique among all species, of unlimited potential and possessing a 'spark of the Divine'. As Burckhardt noted, "it became the breath of life for all the most instructed minds of Europe". For medieval man, it heralded his rebirth, his Renaissance. Expressing this newly discovered 'God-like' being in art stimulated the creative imagination of Renaissance artists like Botticelli, Leonardo, and Raffaello. Lane-Spollen gives a clear overview of why and how Botticelli conveyed his message in code: An esteemed circle of scholars around the Medici, disillusioned with a worldly and corrupted medieval Church, searched for a purer, unadulterated Christianity in the pre-Christian foundations of their faith. This was a dangerous occupation in a society where the reach of the Church was present in all matters public and private. In 1460 a manuscript was brought to Cosimo de'Medici. Its author, Hermes, was revered by Augustine and the early Church Fathers. Its revelations on the true nature of Man held the evidence they were seeking and stood in stark contrast to the teachings of the medieval church and had no place for man as a lowly humble sinner who must throw himself on the mercy of the Church. Neoplatonism and the Hermetic corpus which so inspired the Medici circle, saw Man as unique among all species and possessing a 'spark of the divine'.Though heretical and blasphemous in the extreme, this philosophy had a profound effect and spread rapidly. As Burckhardt noted, 'it became the breath of life for all the most instructed minds of Europe'. Convinced by its impeccable provenance, the Medici circle of philosophers and poets strived to merge the three great but competing religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, into a single religion in harmony with their original pre-Christian foundations. Expressing this newly discovered 'God-like' being in art stimulated the creative imagination of the early Renaissance as artists like Botticelli, Leonardo, Michaelangelo and Raphaello strove to express 'divine' Man's dignity, his innate capability and the profound depths of his potential for greatness.

The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life.

After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he’d had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments.

Including beautiful full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape—current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude—and shed further light on the present world around us.

Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916), art critic, poet and homme de lettres, was a man whose vision transcended his native Belgium. With close ties to Mallarme in France and Rilke in Germany, Verhaeren, a peripatetic student of the arts, readily traveled to Paris, Berlin, Cassel, Vienna and Amsterdam. From the mid-1880s until his death in 1916, his many trips abroad resulted in a raft of essays and short monographs on the arts of the Northern Renaissance. Yet, despite the insights, scholarship and markedly precise and revealing descriptions of these studies, they have long been neglected in art historical circles, overshadowed, perhaps, by Verhaeren's own poetic outpourings and his numerous essays on contemporary art. In this book, Albert Alhadeff translates, edits, annotates and contextualizes these often brilliant and always revealing studies on artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Memling, Bruegel and Grunewald, masters from the North who worked mostly in Flanders, Holland and Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Alhadeff reveals, Verhaeren's studies of the masters of old in Germany, Flanders and the newly born Dutch Republic are as much about Verhaeren the man as they are about the subjects of his inquiries.

Michelangelo's masterpiece The Dream ( Il Sogno) has been described as one of the finest of all Italian Renaissance drawings and is amongst The Courtauld Gallery's greatest treasures. Executed in c. 1533, The Dream exemplifies Michelangelo's unrivalled skill as draftsman. Accompanying an exhibition at the Courtauld in 2010, this catalogue examines this celebrated work in the context of a group of closely related drawings by Michelangelo, as well as some of his original letters and poems and works by his contemporaries. The Dream is one of Michelangelo's 'presentation drawings', a magnificent and famous group of highly refined compositions which the artist gave to his closest friends. These beautiful and complex works transformed drawings into an independent art form and are amongst Michelangelo's very finest creations in any medium. The Dream was probably one of a superb group made for a young Roman nobleman with whom Michelangelo was in love, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, who was celebrated for his outstanding beauty, gracious manners and intellect. This group is studied in the book and includes The Punishment of Tityus, The Fall of Phaeton, A Bacchanal of Children and The Rape of Ganymede. In his Life of Michelangelo (1568) the biographer and artist Giorgio Vasari praised these exceptional works as "drawings the like of which have never been seen" - and they are still regarded as amongst the greatest single series of drawings ever made.

This book tells the story of one dynasty's struggle with water, to control its flow and manage its representation. The role of water in the art and festivals of Cosimo I and his heirs, Francesco I and Ferdinando I de' Medici, informs this richly-illustrated interdisciplinary study. Else draws on a wealth of visual and documentary material to trace how the Medici sought to harness the power of Neptune, whether in the application of his imagery or in the control over waterways and maritime frontiers, as they negotiated a place in the unstable political arena of Europe, and competed with foreign powers more versed in maritime traditions and aquatic imagery.

Shedding new light on the renowned Renaissance artist, this book examines all of da Vinci's known paintings using recent advances in technology and the latest art historical research. While Leonardo da Vinci is one of history's most studied and renowned artists, there are many myths surrounding his work. Beginning with his birth and early maturity in the workshops of the Florentine masters, Alessandro Vezzosi delves into the provenance of disputed works such as Madonna Litta and La Bella Principessa. He demonstrates how recent advances in technology have aided researchers in studying and restoring da Vinci's art--including uncovering forgeries--and he explores the artist's scientific achievements in the fields of optics and paint composition. An exquisitely produced plate section looks at the most significant aspects of da Vinci's work, and offers numerous comparative examples in the form of archival documents, preparatory studies, and contemporary paintings. A fitting tribute to da Vinci, this wide ranging book applies 21st-century knowledge to help answer centuries-old questions about the Renaissance genius.

A reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance, examining the complex and layered temporalities of Renaissance images and artifacts. In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians offer a subtle and profound reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood examine the meanings, uses, and effects of chronologies, models of temporality, and notions of originality and repetition in Renaissance images and artifacts. Anachronic Renaissance reveals a web of paths traveled by works and artists-a landscape obscured by art history's disciplinary compulsion to anchor its data securely in time. The buildings, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and medals discussed were shaped by concerns about authenticity, about reference to prestigious origins and precedents, and about the implications of transposition from one medium to another. Byzantine icons taken to be Early Christian antiquities, the acheiropoieton (or "image made without hands"), the activities of spoliation and citation, differing approaches to art restoration, legends about movable buildings, and forgeries and pastiches: all of these emerge as basic conceptual structures of Renaissance art. Although a work of art does bear witness to the moment of its fabrication, Nagel and Wood argue that it is equally important to understand its temporal instability: how it points away from that moment, backward to a remote ancestral origin, to a prior artifact or image, even to an origin outside of time, in divinity. This book is not the story about the Renaissance, nor is it just a story. It imagines the infrastructure of many possible stories.

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.

This volume directs a transdisciplinary gaze on the field of Renaissance Studies as currently practised in Europe, North America and beyond. The concept of the Renaissance as applied to a particular time and place is still regarded as being of central importance to the history of thought and culture. The essays collected here raise the question of the contemporary relevance of the Renaissance. What is the significance of doing Renaissance Studies now, not only in terms of the field per se, but in terms of what the field has to say to contemporary society? In the past, the field of Renaissance Studies has drawn themes and orientations from particular concerns of the moment, without losing its rigorous focus, and has given back crucial insights to those studying it. Could the same be said today? To facilitate a multifaceted answer, this book attempts to cover some of the principal areas of this interdisciplinary field within the humanities and social sciences. Contributors include specialists in history, languages and literatures, the history of science, cultural studies, art history, philosophy, sociology and politics.

A visionary scientist, a supreme painter, a man of eccentricity and ambition: Leonardo da Vinci had many lives. Born from a fleeting affair between a country girl and a young notary, Leonardo was never legitimized by his father and received no formal education. While this freedom from the routine of rigid and codified learning may have served to stimulate his natural creativity, it also caused many years of suffering and an insatiable need to prove his own worth. It was a striving for glory and an obsessive thirst for knowledge that prompted Leonardo to seek the protection and favour of the most powerful figures of his day, from Lorenzo de' Medici to Ludovico Sforza, from the French governors of Milan to the pope in Rome, where he could vie for renown with Michelangelo and Raphael. In this revelatory account, Antonio Forcellino draws on his expertise - both as historian and as restorer of some of the world's greatest works of art - to give us a more detailed view of Leonardo than ever before. Through careful analyses of his paintings and compositional technique, down to the very materials used, Forcellino offers fresh insights into Leonardo's artistic and intellectual development. He spans the great breadth of Leonardo's genius, discussing his contributions to mechanics, optics, anatomy, geology and metallurgy, as well as providing acute psychological observations about the political dynamics and social contexts in which Leonardo worked. Forcellino sheds new light on a life all too often overshadowed and obscured by myth, providing us with a fresh perspective on the personality and motivations of one of the greatest geniuses of Western culture.

Very few artists can claim such lasting and worldwide fame and importance as Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). The nickname il divino ("the divine one") has been applied to him since the 1530s right through to today: his achievements as a sculptor, painter, and architect remain unparalleled and his creations are among the best-known artworks in the world. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition is devoted to the artist's graphic work, a testimony to his masterly command of line, form, and detail, from architectural studies to anatomically perfect figures. The book brings together some of the artist's finest drawings from museums and collections around the world as well as some of his own notes and revisions, offering stunning proximity not only to the ambition and scope of Michelangelo's practice but also his working process. A chapter with a compilation of newly attributed and reattributed drawings provides further insights into Michelangelo's varied graphic oeuvre and the ongoing exploration of his genius. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

Craving pleasure as well as knowledge, Raphael Sanzio was quick to realize that his talent would only be truly appreciated in the liberal, carefree and extravagantly sensual atmosphere of Rome during its golden age under Julius II and Leo X. Arriving in the city in 1508 at the age of twenty-five, he was entranced and seduced by life at the papal court and within a few months had emerged as the most brilliant star in its intellectual firmament. His art achieved a natural grace that was totally uninhibited and free from subjection. His death, at just thirty-seven, plunged the city into the kind of despair that follows the passing of an esteemed and much loved prince. In this major new biography Antonio Forcellino retraces the meteoric arc of Raphael s career by re-examining contemporary documents and accounts and interpreting the artist s works with the eye of an expert art restorer. Raphael s paintings are vividly described and placed in their historical context. Forcellino analyses Raphael s techniques for producing the large frescos for which he is so famous, examines his working practices and his organization of what was a new kind of artistic workshop, and shows how his female portraits expressed and conveyed a new attitude to women. This rich and nuanced account casts aside the misconceptions passed on by those critics who persistently tried to undermine Raphael s mythical status, enabling one of the greatest artists of all time to re-emerge fully as both man and artist.

This is an authoritative account of the Italian painter, architect and draughtsman, Raphael, one of the most influential artists of the High Renaissance. It is a lively study that examines his life, the areas of Italy that shaped his work and the historical context of the times. It explores his innovative style and his compassionate depictions of Madonna and child groups, his portraits and his works based on Bible stories and myths. It features a wonderful gallery of his paintings and drawings with expert analysis, and descriptions of his style and technique. It includes beautiful illustrations of Raphael's great works, those of the painters who influenced him, as well as artists who were inspired by him in turn. Artist, architect and draughtsman, one of the great masters and one of the most influential painters of the High Renaissance, Raphael produced a huge body of work during his short working life. His artistic development took place in Umbria, Rome and Florence, where he met Michelangelo and Leonardo, and was influenced by their dynamic and evocative images. Some of his subsequent work reflected his admiration for them. In Rome, he painted The School of Athens, a major fresco depicting the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the past and present. His beautiful style is reflected in the second part of the book in a gallery of around 300 of Raphael's major paintings and drawings, with an analysis of each in the context of his life, his technique and oeuvre. Raphael was one of the greatest artists of all time; his death in 1520 marked the end of the 16th century.

An illuminating look at a fundamental yet understudied aspect of Italian Renaissance painting The Italian Renaissance picture is renowned for its depiction of the human figure, from the dramatic foreshortening of the body to create depth to the subtle blending of tones and colors to achieve greater naturalism. Yet these techniques rely on a powerful compositional element that often goes overlooked. Groundwork provides the first in-depth examination of the complex relationship between figure and ground in Renaissance painting. "Ground" can refer to the preparation of a work's surface, the fictive floor or plane, or the background on which figuration occurs. In laying the material foundation, artists perform groundwork, opening the ground as a zone that can precede, penetrate, or fracture the figure. David Young Kim looks at the work of Gentile da Fabriano, Giovanni Bellini, Giovanni Battista Moroni, and Caravaggio, reconstructing each painter's methods to demonstrate the intricacies involved in laying ground layers whose translucency and polychromy permeate the surface. He charts significant transitions from gold ground painting in the Trecento to the darkened grounds in Baroque tenebrism, and offers close readings of period texts to shed new light on the significance of ground forms such as rock face, wall, and cave. This beautifully illustrated book reconceives the Renaissance picture, revealing the passion and mystery of groundwork and discovering figuration beyond the human figure.

Singing the Resurrection brings music to the foreground of Reformation studies, as author Erin Lambert explores song as a primary mode for the expression of belief among ordinary Europeans in the sixteenth century, for the embodiment of individual piety, and the creation of new communities of belief. Together, resurrection and song reveal how sixteenth-century Christians-from learned theologians to ordinary artisans, and Anabaptist martyrs to Reformed Christians facing exile-defined belief not merely as an assertion or affirmation but as a continuous, living practice. Thus these voices, raised in song, tell a story of the Reformation that reaches far beyond the transformation from one community of faith to many. With case studies drawn from each of the major confessions of the Reformation-Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, and Catholic-Singing the Resurrection reveals sixteenth-century belief in its full complexity.

The comprehensive study of the Italian Renaissance altarpiece from the 13th to the early 17th century The altarpiece is one of the most distinctive and remarkable art forms of the Renaissance period. It is difficult to imagine an artist of the time-whether painter or sculptor, major or minor-who did not produce at least one. Though many have been displaced or dismembered, a substantial proportion of these works still survive. Despite the volume of material available, no serious attempt has ever been made to examine the whole subject in depth until now. The Italian Renaissance Altarpiece is the first comprehensive study of the genre to examine its content and subject matter in real detail, from the origins of the altarpiece in the 13th century to the time of Caravaggio in the early 1600s. It discusses major developments in the history of these objects throughout Italy, covers the three key categories of Renaissance altarpiece-"immagini" (icons), "historie" (narratives), and "misteri" (mysteries)-and is illustrated with 250 beautiful reproductions of the artworks.

An enticing history of food and drink in Western art and culture Eating and drinking can be aesthetic experiences as well as sensory ones. The Hungry Eye takes readers from antiquity to the Renaissance to explore the central role of food and drink in literature, art, philosophy, religion, and statecraft. In this beautifully illustrated book, Leonard Barkan provides an illuminating meditation on how culture finds expression in what we eat and drink. Plato's Symposium is a timeless philosophical text, one that also describes a drinking party. Salome performed her dance at a banquet where the head of John the Baptist was presented on a platter. Barkan looks at ancient mosaics, Dutch still life, and Venetian Last Suppers. He describes how ancient Rome was a paradise of culinary obsessives, and explains what it meant for the Israelites to dine on manna. He discusses the surprising relationship between Renaissance perspective and dinner parties, and sheds new light on the moment when the risen Christ appears to his disciples hungry for a piece of broiled fish. Readers will browse the pages of the Deipnosophistae-an ancient Greek work in sixteen volumes about a single meal, complete with menus-and gain epicurean insights into such figures as Rabelais and Shakespeare, Leonardo and Vermeer. A book for anyone who relishes the pleasures of the table, The Hungry Eye is an erudite and uniquely personal look at all the glorious ways that food and drink have transfigured Western arts and high culture.

The book explores the subject of Russian icons and their changes as well as the discussion on art that unfolded in Russia in the 15th and 16th centuries. Taking the representation of the Old Testament Trinity, attributed to Andrei Rublev, as its point of departure, it discusses and analyses the key issues of the iconography of the Holy Trinity and the process of the emergence and the dissemination of the imagery of God the Father and the New Testament Trinity in Russia. These issues are framed in the context of the debate that took place at the time within the Muscovite Orthodoxy, which concerned heresy, the relations with other denominations, the identity of the Russian Orthodox Church and the place of the icons in the existing canon.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder is one of the world's most original artists who founded a dynasty of painters. His most popular works include Children's Games, Hunters in the Snow and Peasant Wedding Feast. He collaborated with Rubens on several important works. The first part of the book tells the story of the Bruegel family, including his sons Pieter the Younger and Jan theElder. The second part is a glorious wide-ranging gallery of their work. Unlike other Old Masters, the Bruegels focused on ordinary people: farmers, workers, children, dancing, celebrating, working. Their work, often surprisingly modern in tone, still speaks to us today.

Think of the Renaissance and you might only picture the work of fine artists such as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Van Eyck. Or architecture could spring to mind and you might think of St Peter's in Rome and the Doge's Palace in Venice. Or you might consider scientists like Galileo and Copernicus. But then let's not forget the contribution of thinkers like Machiavelli, Thomas More or Erasmus. Someone else, though, might plump for music or poets and dramatists - after all, there was Dante and Shakespeare. Because when it comes to the Renaissance, there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from. From art to architecture, music to literature, science to medicine, political thought to religion, The Renaissance expertly guides the reader through the cultural and intellectual flowering that Europe witnessed from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Ranging from the origins of the Renaissance in medieval Florence to the Counter- Reformation, the book explains how a revival in the study in Antiquity was able to flourish across the Italian states, before spreading to Iberia and north across Europe. Nimbly moving from perspective in paintings to Copernicus's understanding of the Universe, from Martin Luther's challenge to the Roman Catholic Church to the foundations of modern school education, The Renaissance is a highly accessible and colourful journey along the cultural contours of Europe from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period.