In Studies in Iconology, the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies.

Drawing on recent research by established and emerging scholars of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art, this volume reconsiders the art and architecture produced after 1563 across the conventional geographic borders. Rather than considering this period a degraded afterword to Renaissance classicism or an inchoate proto-Baroque, the book seeks to understand the art on its own terms. By considering artists such as Federico Barocci and Stefano Maderno in Italy, Hendrick Goltzius in the Netherlands, Antoine Caron in France, Francisco Ribalta in Spain, and Bartolomeo Bitti in Peru, the contributors highlight lesser known "reforms" of art from outside the conventional centers. As the first text to cover this formative period from an international perspective, this volume casts new light on the aftermath of the Renaissance and the beginnings of "Baroque."

This up-to-date, well-illustrated, and thoughtful introduction to the life and works of one of the giants of Western Painting also surveys the golden age of Venetian Painting from Giovanni Bellini to Veronese and its place in the history of Western art. Bruce Cole, Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University and author of numerous books on Italian Renaissance art, begins with the life and work of Giovanni Bellini, the principal founder of Venetian Renaissance painting. He continues with the paintings of Giorgione and the young Titian whose work embodied the new Venetian style. Cole discusses and explains all of Titian's major works--portraits, religious paintings, and nudes--from various points of view and shows how Venetian painting of this period differed from painting in Florence and elsewhere in Italy and became a distinct and fully-developed style of its own.

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.

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. -- .

These classic studies on the interpretation of images are essential reading for all students of Renaissance art; they also take their rightful place as seminal texts that have themselves helped to shape the evolving discipline of art history. Many of the essays focus on the greatest artists of the Renaissance -- notably Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo -- and all reflect the author's deep and abiding concern with standards, values and problems of method. Yet Gombrich never loses sight of the works of art he is investigating, and he brings to all his analyses and interpretations an original and powerful intelligence, unfailing clarity of expression and immense learning.

These four volumes have a permanent value and represent a vitally important humanistic tradition in scholarship and criticism.

Have you ever dreamt of having your own private museum tour with one of the world's most-celebrated artists? Take a walk through art history in the company of one of the pre-eminent American painters of our time, Alex Katz. Describing his personal encounters with the work of over 90 key artists, Katz's observations offer a fluent, vivid and incisive view, making Looking at Art with Alex Katz the perfect guide both for those looking for an introduction to the world of visual art, and anyone looking for a fresh view on their favorite artist. Includes entries on: Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Paul Cezanne, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Doig, Alberto Giacometti, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Edvard Munch, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Rembrandt, Henri Rousseau, Titian, Luc Tuymans, Vincent van Gogh, Johannes Vermeer and more.

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.

Following the arc of Bellini's career, from his early devotional paintings to his later, occasionally secular works, this book offers an in-depth appreciation of the Venetian master who dominated the Early Renaissance. Featuring nearly every extant Bellini work, as well as those of his contemporaries, this book brims with gorgeous Renaissance art. Author Johannes Grave focuses on some of the artist's greatest works including Allegoria Sacra, the Brera Pieta, and the altarpiece of San Giobbe-to explore how Bellini excelled in tempera before mastering oil painting. Grave discusses how Bellini's precise lines, his delicate facial expressions, and the subtle effects of light and shadow were used in his religious paintings as well as his portraiture and late mythological depictions. This book examines Bellini's life, including his complex relationships with his father Jacopo, his brother Gentile, and his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. It considers the original contexts of Bellini's works, and elucidates the ways in which these paintings were meant to be perceived. The book also links Bellini's devotional paintings with the poetic creations of his pupil Giorgione. An important contribution to the scholarship of Renaissance art, this masterful book reaffirms Bellini's status as one of Venice's greatest painters.

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.

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.

Quinten Massys’ An Old Woman (‘The Ugly Duchess’) is one of the Renaissance’s most famous faces. In a fresh review of the iconic image, this book unveils the painting’s original context: its status as a pioneering work of satirical art, its debt to Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesque drawings, and what it tells us about the period’s complex attitudes towards women, age and normative beauty.  The painting and its partner, An Old Man, are parodic portraits that mock the supposed lust and vanity of older women. Yet a closer look also reveals a figure defiantly flouting conventions and a painter subverting artistic expectations.  The publication traces the eventful afterlife and enduring power of this seminal image: how she gained her nickname ‘The Ugly Duchess’ and inspired John Tenniel’s much-loved illustrations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), capturing the imagination of generations of readers.  Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press  Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London, 16 March–11 June 2023

Leonardo da Vinci is often presented as the 'transcendent genius', removed from or ahead of his time. This book, however, attempts to understand him in the context of Renaissance Florence. Larry J. Feinberg explores Leonardo's origins and the beginning of his career as an artist. While celebrating his many artistic achievements, the book illuminates his debt to other artists' works and his struggles to gain and retain patronage, as well as his career and personal difficulties. Feinberg examines the range of Leonardo's interests, including aerodynamics, anatomy, astronomy, botany, geology, hydraulics, optics, and warfare technology, to clarify how the artist's broad intellectual curiosity informed his art. Situating the artist within the political, social, cultural, and artistic context of mid- and late-fifteenth-century Florence, Feinberg shows how this environment influenced Leonardo's artistic output and laid the groundwork for the achievements of his mature works.

Skira Mini ARTbooks is a pocket-sized series, conveniently priced, very practical and with lots of images dedicated to single international artists, artistic movements and painting genres. The genius of Italian painting, symbol of grace and beauty, is considered one of the greatest and most popular artists of all time. An introduction to the life of the artist, with his masterpieces.

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.

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.

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.

No period has been more discussed, dissected and argued over than the Renaissance, and every age has reconstructed it in its own image. Today's emphasis is on its complexity - the way ideas, politics, religion, society, art and science depended upon and affected one another. The Renaissance Complete does away with watertight divisions by means of a lucid, innovatory system of cross-references and brings the image to centre stage. The fascinating range of topics covered includes the revival of classical learning, the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, philosophy and the role of women. The scope is all-embracing: Italy, France, Spain, Britain, Germany and the northern countries; courts and patrons, painters and sculptors, churchmen and traders, men, women and children. Over 1,000 illustrations are carefully focused on over 100 key topics, subject-matter taking precedence over art history. An impressive information resource provides biographies, timelines, bibliography, a gazetteer of museums and galleries and an illustrated glossary.

The Erotics of Looking: Early Modern Netherlandish Art presents a collection of provocative essays that explore the material qualities of early Dutch art to reveal ways new forms of visual imagery solicit a beholder s involvement. * Explores how descriptive pictures during the early modern Dutch art period operated as social things and were designed to pleasurably engage the eye and prompt discussion and debate * Shows how these works potentially raised ethical and political questions about the interconnectedness of engaging with pictures and the material world * Represents a major contribution to the field of early modern Netherlandish art and to general debates about the status and functions of descriptive art * Features essays addressing a variety of aspects of the field, from the historiography of Dutch art to closely attentive readings of particular works * Crafts an original theoretical framework by applying recent insights about the making of early modern publics and the study of material things to the analysis of Netherlandish art

Phaidon's classic illustrated monograph on Raphael, updated with an elegantly crafted design for today's burgeoning art aficionados. Reviving a much beloved group of artist monographs from the Phaidon archive, the new Phaidon Classics bring to life the fine craftsmanship and design of Phaidon books of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Updated with a contemporary "classic" design, full color images and new introductions by leading specialists on the work of each artist, these elegantly crafted volumes revive the fine bookmaking of the first half of the twentieth century, making Phaidon Classics instant collectors' items. A magnificent study of Raphael (1438-1520), one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, whose brief career produced such masterpieces as The School of Athens and The Three Graces. The large-format images bring to life Raphael's radiant colors and brushwork in the religious paintings of the Madonna and saints, mythological paintings, and portraits ranging from Pope Julius II to Baldassare Castiglione.

Sydney J. Freedberg presents an interpretive analysis and a full Catalogue Raisonne of Andrea del Sarto's achievement. The interpretive work includes an account of Andrea's career as a painter, illustrations of all his authentic paintings and many of his drawings, a brief biography, and a selective bibliography. The painter's style and its place in the history of Italian painting are discussed in detail. The author questions current concepts of a sudden "triumph of Mannerism" in Florence after 1520 and presents a more balanced interpretation of this era. The Catalogue Raisonne includes a complete critical catalogue of Andrea's paintings and drawings, an inventory of lost works, and a full account of paintings and drawings attributed to the artist. Documentary information on Andrea's life and the details of dating and attribution which are the basis for the interpretive text are also included. The illustrations in this volume supplement those in the interpretive work and will be of particular interest to scholars and art historians.

Why did Renaissance art come to matter so much, so widely, and for so long? Patricia Emison's answer depends on a recalibrated view of the long Renaissance from 1300 to 1600 synthesizing the considerable evolution in our understanding of the epoch since the foundational 19th-century studies of Burckhardt and Wolfflin. Demonstrating that the imitation of nature and of antiquity must no longer define its limits, she exposes Renaissance style's self-consciously modern aspect. She sets the art against the literary and political interests of the time, and analyzes works both of very familiar artists Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael and of lesser-known figures, including Cima and Barocci. An understanding emerges of both the period's long-standing fame and its various historical debts. Moving beyond the Renaissance, Emison unfolds the varying and layered significance it has held from the Old Master era through Impressionism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism.

Why is the history of art so often construed as a history of artists, when its alleged focus is art? This book responds to this question by examining Giorgio Vasari's Lives and the artist it features most centrally, Michelangelo. Printed in Florence in 1550 and republished in a substantially enlarged form in 1568, the Lives is a compendium of biographies of the most noteworthy artists, from the late Middle Ages to Vasari's time. Perhaps no other text has exerted such a formidable influence on the discipline of art history, shaping its historical and conceptual categories-principally as an effect of its biographical format and the biological model it follows, charting artistic development from birth through decline. More than any other artist in the Lives, Michelangelo exemplifies art as an expression of the individual. Yet at the same time, as this book aims to show, the Lives fashions Michelangelo as the founder of a new academic era in which art develops collectively as a discipline. Paradoxically, Vasari's celebration of Michelangelo mobilizes a conception of art as teachable and transmissible that is antithetical to Michelangelo's aesthetic ideals and unique style. Each of the five chapters of this book examines the notion of "art without an author," whereby art is teachable and not the inimitable product of a genius, or a corporate rather than an individualistic venture. By tracing Vasari's transformation of Michelangelo from an artist into a figure who legitimates a new age in art, the book bridges a longstanding dichotomy in our understanding not only of Vasari but also of Renaissance culture and art. The claims Art Without an Author makes are integrally supported by art historical research and textual/philological analysis. By way of close study, this book reaches entirely new conclusions about Michelangelo, the production and significance of Vasari's Lives, and the role "authorial" values play in Italian Renaissance culture.

Albert Durer was born in Nuremberg on 21 May 1471. He began his career under the tutelage of Michael Wolgemut, the eminent German painter and printmaker, before travelling through Germany and to parts of Italy. In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg, where he remained until his death on 6 April 1528. Although an artist and a fluent and engaging writer, it is Durer's woodcuts and engravings that most demonstrate his enviable creative skills. Indeed, the editor of this volume, T. D. Barlow, argues that Durer can indeed be reckoned one of the all-time masters of his craft. Within this 1926 volume, Barlow has chronologically catalogued almost 300 of Durer's engravings; it is the result of many years' work. The finished product will be of great interest as a reference work for scholars engaged in the study of Durer's work and in the distribution of his impressions and their reproductions.