Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a painter, architect, inventor and student of all things scientific. His natural genius crossed so many disciplines that he epitomized the term 'Renaissance man'. Today he remains best known for his art, including two paintings that remain among the world's most famous and admired, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. This book features six meticulously crafted pop-ups of his most famous works: Self portrait; Annunciation; Ornithopter; Virgin & Child; Architecture - an overview of his drawings and designs; and Vitruvian Man.

"Renaissance Art Reconsidered" showcases the aesthetic principles and the workaday practices guiding daily life through these years of extraordinary human achievement.
A major new anthology, bringing to life the places, works, media, and issues that define Renaissance art
Ideal for use on Renaissance studies courses and for reference by students of art history
Moves beyond the borders of Italy to consider European, Mediterranean, and post Byzantine art, widening the traditional focus of Renaissance art
Includes letters, treatises, contracts, inventories, and other public documents, many of which are translated into English for the first time in this volume
Showcases the aesthetic principles and the workaday practices guiding daily life through these years of extraordinary human achievement, providing crucial insight into the art and the context in which it was produced.

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.

Renaissance Theory presents an animated conversation among art historians about the optimal ways of conceptualizing Renaissance art, and the links between Renaissance art and contemporary art and theory. This is the first discussion of its kind, involving not only questions within Renaissance scholarship, but issues of concern to art historians and critics in all fields. Organized as a virtual roundtable discussion, the contributors discuss rifts and disagreements about how to understand the Renaissance and debate the principal texts and authors of the last thirty years who have sought to reconceptualize the period. They then turn to the issue of the relation between modern art and the Renaissance: Why do modern art historians and critics so seldom refer to the Renaissance? Is the Renaissance our indispensable heritage, or are we cut off from it by the revolution of modernism? The volume includes an introduction by Rebecca Zorach and two final, synoptic essays, as well as contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers on Renaissance art including Stephen Campbell, Michael Cole, Frederika Jakobs, Frank Fehrenbach, Claire Farago, and Matt Kavaler.

Focusing on artists and architectural complexes which until now have eluded scholarly attention in English-language publications, Apostolic Iconography and Florentine Confraternities in the Age of Reform examines through their art programs three different confraternal organizations in Florence at a crucial moment in their histories. Each of the organizations that forms the basis for this study oversaw renovations that included decorative programs centered on the apostles. At the complex of GesA(1) Pellegrino a fresco cycle represents the apostles in their roles as Christ's disciples and proselytizers. At the oratory of the company of Santissima Annunziata a series of frescoes shows their martyrdoms, the terrible price the apostles paid for their mission and their faith. At the oratory of San Giovanni Battista detta dello Scalzo a sculptural program of the apostles stood as an example to each confratello of how Christian piety had its roots in collective effort. Douglas Dow shows that the emphasis on the apostles within these corporate groups demonstrates how the organizations adapted existing iconography to their own purposes. He argues that their willful engagement with apostolic themes reveals the complex interaction between these organizations and the church's program of reform.

This volume brings together new research by some of the world's leading experts, exploring the artistic production and cultural context of Renaissance sculpture from Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise to the small bronzes of Giambologna and his followers. The essays cover a range of sculptural materials and forms to cast fresh light on the artists, their creative and collaborative processes, and those who commissioned, owned and responded to their work. The papers were originally presented at a conference at the V&A in 2010 as part of the Robert H. Smith Renaissance Sculpture Programme.

In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. But is it a real da Vinci? In a thrilling narrative built on formidable research, Ben Lewis tracks the extraordinary journey of a masterpiece lost and found, lied and fought over across the centuries. In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci's small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as saviour of the world is 'the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived'. Its dazzling price also makes it the world's most expensive painting. For two centuries art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo's assistants in the first half of the sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie's auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings and sheikhs. Lewis takes us to Leonardo's studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Holland, Moscow and Louisiana; to the galleries, salerooms and restorer's workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly, emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across five centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, where we're never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth.

The first book to explore the role of images in philosophical thought and teaching in the early modern period Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, The Art of Philosophy shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction. From frontispieces of books to monumental prints created by philosophers in collaboration with renowned artists, Susanna Berger examines visual representations of philosophy and overturns prevailing assumptions about the limited function of the visual in European intellectual history. Rather than merely illustrating already existing philosophical concepts, visual images generated new knowledge for both Aristotelian thinkers and anti-Aristotelians, such as Descartes and Hobbes. Printmaking and drawing played a decisive role in discoveries that led to a move away from the authority of Aristotle in the seventeenth century. Berger interprets visual art from printed books, student lecture notebooks, alba amicorum (friendship albums), broadsides, and paintings, and examines the work of such artists as Pietro Testa, Leonard Gaultier, Abraham Bosse, Durer, and Rembrandt. In particular, she focuses on the rise and decline of the "plural image," a genre that was popular among early modern philosophers. Plural images brought multiple images together on the same page, often in order to visualize systems of logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, or moral philosophy. Featuring previously unpublished prints and drawings from the early modern period and lavish gatefolds, The Art of Philosophy reveals the essential connections between visual commentary and philosophical thought.

Artists like Botticelli, Holbein, Leonardo, Durer, and Michelangelo and works such as the Last Supper fresco and the monumental marble statue of David, are familiar symbols of the Renaissance. But who were these artists, why did they produce such memorable images, and how would their original beholders have viewed these objects? Was the Renaissance only about great masters and masterpieces, or were women artists and patrons also involved? And what about the "minor" pieces that Renaissance men and women would have encountered in homes, churches and civic spaces? This Very Short Introduction answers such questions by considering both famous and lesser-known artists, patrons, and works of art within the cultural and historical context of Renaissance Europe. The volume provides a broad cultural and historical context for some of the Renaissance's most famous artists and works of art. It also explores forgotten aspects of Renaissance art, such as objects made for the home and women as artists and patrons. Considering Renaissance art produced in both Northern and Southern Europe, rather than focusing on just one region, the book introduces readers to a variety of approaches to the study of Renaissance art, from social history to formal analysis.

Dürer's Lost Masterpiece tracks the history of a turning point in the career of the celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), when he stopped painting altarpieces after arguing with a merchant patron over payment. As an eloquent homage to Dürer´s life, it brings us closer to the creation and meaning of his paintings than ever before. Dürer's Lost Masterpiece considers the celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), his time and his legacy. It tracks the history of a crucial, and often overlooked, turning point in his career, when Dürer stopped painting altarpieces after falling out with the Frankfurt merchant Jacob Heller over a commission. The story of this painting, as Dürer´s lost masterpiece, functions as a lens through which to view the new relationship developing between art, collecting and commerce in Europe up to the Thirty Years´ War (1618-1648) when global trade and cultural exchanges were increasing. At the heart of the book is the argument that merchants, and their mentalities, were crucial for the making of Renaissance art and its legacy for modern art. The book draws on a decade of research, and uniquely draws the reader into the rich emotional worlds of three merchants each of whom typified the evolving relationship between art and commerce in that entrepreneurial, and often ruthless, age. It brings to life Dürer´s determined fight for creative makers to be adequately paid and explores the big questions about how European societies came to value the arts and crafts that remain relevant to our time.

16th-century Europe was a time of unprecedented economic expansion, cross-cultural trade, religious upheaval, warring empires, and scientific advancement. With unfettered access to the court of Henry VIII, Hans Holbein had a front-row seat to the royal drama and intrigue, and his detailed, highly narrative portaits tell us much about aristocracy. This volume features dozens of full-page reproductions of Holbein's key works accompanied by extensive commentary that explores his masterful portraits of prominent European figures such as Thomas More, Erasmus, and Thomas Cromwell. It also reveals the artist's talent in other media, such as woodcuts, frescoes, jewelry, and metalwork. Reproductions of these items, as well as Holbein's exquisite, palm-sized miniatures and his highly detailed studies in pencil, chalk, and ink illuminate an artist of unparalleled versatility and impressive commercial acumen.

The first comprehensive look at the origins and diffusion across Europe of the etched print during the late 15th and early 16th centuries The etching of images on metal, originally used as a method for decorating armor, was first employed as a printmaking technique at the end of the 15th century. This in-depth study explores the origins of the etched print, its evolution from decorative technique to fine art, and its spread across Europe in the early Renaissance, leading to the professionalization of the field in the Netherlands in the 1550s. Beautifully illustrated, this book features the work of familiar Renaissance artists, including Albrecht Durer, Jan Gossart, Pieter Breughel the Elder, and Parmigianino, as well as lesser known practitioners, such as Daniel Hopfer and Lucas van Leyden, whose pioneering work paved the way for later printmakers like Rembrandt and Goya. The book also includes a clear and fascinating description of the etching process, as well as an investigation of how the medium allowed artists to create highly detailed prints that were more durable than engravings and more delicate than woodblocks. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (October 23, 2019-January 19, 2020)

Religion, Renaissance, and Reformation-these three ideologies shaped the world of 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543), a pivotal figure of the Northern Renaissance, whose skills took him to Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and England, and garnered patrons and subjects as prestigious as Henry VIII, Thomas More, Anne of Cleves, and Reformation advocate Thomas Cromwell. This book brings together key Holbein paintings to explore his illustrious and international career as well as the courtly drama and radical religious change that informed his work. With rich illustration, we survey the masterful draftsmanship and almost supernatural ability to control details, from the textures of luxurious clothing to the ornament of a room, that secured Holbein's place as one of the greatest portraitists in Western art history. His probing eye was matched with a draftsman. Along the way, we see how he combined meticulous mimesis with an inspired amalgam of regional painterly traits, from Flemish-style realism to late medieval German composition and Italian formal grandeur. During his time in England, Holbein became official court painter to Henry VIII, producing both reformist propaganda and royalist paintings to bolster Henry's status as monarch and as the new Supreme Head of the Church following the English Reformation. His portrait of Henry from 1537 is regarded not only as a portraiture pinnacle but also as an iconic record of this transformative monarch and the Tudor dynasty. Through this turbulent period, Holbein also produced anticlerical woodcuts, and sketched and painted Lutheran merchants, visiting ambassadors, and Henry's notorious succession of wives. 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

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.

Originally published in 1918, this book contains a comprehensive history of the root causes and the products of the Renaissance in France. Tilley covers topics such as changes in education, sculpture, painting and architecture with many vintage photographs illustrating important pieces and buildings, including several that were destroyed in WWI. This thoroughly researched book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of French art.

In this book, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers the first systematic study of Pythagoras and his influence on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, religion, medicine, music, the occult, and social life as well as on architecture and art in the late medieval and early modern eras. Following the threads of admiration for this ancient Greek sage from the fourteenth century to Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth, this book demonstrates that Pythagoras s influence in intellectual circles Christian, Jewish, and Arab was more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. Joost-Gaugier shows that during this period Pythagoras was respected by many intellectuals in different areas of Europe. She also shows how this admiration was reflected in ideas that were applied to the visual arts by a number of well known architects and artists who sought, through the use of a visual language inspired by the memory of Pythagoras, to obtain perfect harmony in their creations. Among these were Alberti, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Thus did, she suggests, some of the greatest art works in the Western world owe their modernity to an inspirational force that, paradoxically, had been conceived in the distant past."

An accomplished painter, architect and diplomat, Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) is best known for Lives of the Artists, his classic account of the great masters-an extraordinary book that invented the genre of artistic biography, single-handedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art and founded the cults of Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo that persist to this day. Vasari positioned art as an intellectual pursuit instead of just a technical skill, teaching us to view artists as geniuses and visionaries rather than as simple craftsmen. Immersing readers in the world of the Medici and the popes, Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney show the great works of Western culture taking shape amid the thrilling culture of Renaissance Italy.

Michelangelo s extant correspondence is the most abundant of any artist. Spanning 67 years, it comprises roughly 1,400 letters, of which 500 were written by Michelangelo himself. Biographers and art historians have combed the letters for insight into Michelangelo s views on art, his contractual obligations, and his relationships. Literary scholars have explored parallels between the letters and Michelangelo s poetry. Nevertheless, this is the first book to study the letters for their intrinsically literary qualities. In this volume, Deborah Parker examines Michelangelo s use of language as a means of understanding the creative process of this extraordinary artist. His letters often revel in witticisms, rhetorical flourishes, and linguistic ingenuity. Close study of his mastery of words and modes of self-presentation shows Michelangelo to be a consummate artist who deploys the resources of language to considerable effect."

The architecture of the Italian Renaissance, theorized by artists such as Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti, influenced styles and trends of the following centuries throughout Europe and beyond. This volume offers a comprehensive compilation of Italian Renaissnace architecture--richly documented, illustrated, arranged by region, and including a glossary.

Understanding late medieval pictorial representations of violence. Destroyed faces, dissolved human shapes, invisible enemies: violence and anonymity go hand in hand. The visual representation of extreme physical violence makes real people nameless exemplars of horror-formless, hideous, defaced. In Defaced, Valentin Groebner explores the roots of the visual culture of violence in medieval and Renaissance Europe and shows how contemporary visual culture has been shaped by late medieval images and narratives of violence. For late medieval audiences, as with modern media consumers, horror lies less in the "indescribable" and "alien" than in the familiar and commonplace. From the fourteenth century onward, pictorial representations became increasingly violent, whether in depictions of the Passion, or in vivid and precise images of torture, execution, and war. But not every spectator witnessed the same thing when confronted with terrifying images of a crucified man, misshapen faces, allegedly bloodthirsty conspirators on nocturnal streets, or barbarian fiends on distant battlefields. The profusion of violent imagery provoked a question: how to distinguish the illegitimate violence that threatened and reversed the social order from the proper, "just," and sanctioned use of force? Groebner constructs a persuasive answer to this question by investigating how uncannily familiar medieval dystopias were constructed and deconstructed. Showing how extreme violence threatens to disorient, and how the effect of horror resides in the depiction of minute details, Groebner offers an original model for understanding how descriptions of atrocities and of outrageous cruelty depended, in medieval times, on the variation of familiar narrative motifs.

Leonardo's greatest work of science beautifully reproduced for the 500th anniversary of his death. This edition offers a high-quality facsimile reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester, a collection of his scientific writings. Named after Thomas Coke (later Earl of Leicester) who purchased it in 1719, Codex Leicester holds the record as the most expensive book ever when it was bought by Bill Gates in 1994. Consisting of 72 pages, it was handwritten in Italian by Leonardo using his characteristic mirror writing, and is supported by drawings and diagrams. The Codex Leicester is an extraordinary mixture of Leonardo's observations and theories. Topics include his explanation of why fossils can be found on mountains; the flow of water in rivers; and the luminosity of the moon which Leonardo attributed to its surface being covered by water which reflects light from the sun. The facsimile reproduction is complemented by three further volumes that include a new transcription and translation, accompanied by a paraphrase in modern language, a page-by-page commentary, and a series of interpretative essays. These four volumes together introduce important new research into the interpretation of the texts and images, on the setting of Leonardo's ideas in the context of ancient and medieval theories, and above all into the notable fortunes of the Codex within the sciences of astronomy, water, and the history of the earth, opening a new field of research into the impact of Leonardo as a scientist after his death.

This probing analysis of three works by Giotto and the patrons who commissioned them goes far beyond the cliches of Giotto as the founding figure of Western painting. It traces the interactions between Franciscan friars and powerful bankers, illuminating the complex interplay between mercantile wealth and the iconography of poverty.

Political strife and religious faction lacerated fourteenth-century Italy. Giotto s commissions are best understood against the background of this social turmoil. They reflected the demands of his patrons, the requirements of the Franciscan Order, and the restlessly inventive genius of the painter. Julian Gardner examines this important period of Giotto s path-breaking career through works originally created for Franciscan churches: "Stigmatization of Saint Francis" from San Francesco at Pisa, now in the Louvre, the Bardi Chapel cycle of the "Life of St. Francis" in Santa Croce at Florence, and the frescoes of the crossing vault above the tomb of Saint Francis in the Lower Church of San Francesco at Assisi.

These murals were executed during a twenty-year period when internal tensions divided the friars themselves and when the Order was confronted by a radical change of papal policy toward its defining vow of poverty. The Order had amassed great wealth and built ostentatious churches, alienating many Franciscans in the process and incurring the hostility of other Orders. Many elements in Giotto s frescoes, including references to St. Peter, Florentine politics, and church architecture, were included to satisfy patrons, redefine the figure of Francis, and celebrate the dominant group within the Franciscan brotherhood.

A gifted yet controversial anatomical teacher, Robert Knox (1791-1862) published this remarkable study in 1852. It explores the influence of anatomy on evolutionary theories and fine art respectively. The first part of the work discusses the lives and scientific insights of the eminent French naturalists Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844). Rejecting the explanations offered by natural theology, Knox maintains that descriptive anatomy can give answers to questions surrounding the origin and development of life in the natural world. The latter part of the book is concerned with the relation that anatomy bears to fine art, specifically the painting and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. Entering the debate about the importance of anatomical knowledge in art, Knox focuses on 'the immortal trio' of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Henry Lonsdale's sympathetic biography of Knox has also been reissued in this series.