This new volume in the series of National Gallery collection catalogues focuses on 16th-century Bologna and Ferrara. The Gallery holds the most important collection of these paintings outside Italy, including works by Garofalo representing his entire range as an artist; exquisite and grotesque miniature narratives by Mazzolino; a large masterpiece by the short-lived genius known as Ortolano; and some of the most dazzling paintings by the eccentric Dosso Dossi. There are two altarpieces by Lorenzo Costa along with his highly original Concert, and Francesco Francia's Buonvisi altarpiece. The book defines the special quality of works from the region, but also traces the influence of Perugino, Raphael, and Titian. New archival and technical research and provenance information reveal the fortunes of artists' reputations across a long arc in the history of taste. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

Raphael’s Ostrich begins with a little-studied aspect of Raphael’s painting—the ostrich, which appears as an attribute of Justice, painted in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican. Una Roman D’Elia traces the cultural and artistic history of the ostrich from its appearances in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to the menageries and grotesque ornaments of sixteenth-century Italy. Following the complex history of shifting interpretations given to the ostrich in scientific, literary, religious, poetic, and satirical texts and images, D’Elia demonstrates the rich variety of ways in which people made sense of this living “monster,� which was depicted as the embodiment of heresy, stupidity, perseverance, justice, fortune, gluttony, and other virtues and vices. Because Raphael was revered as a god of art, artists imitated and competed with his ostrich, while religious and cultural critics complained about the potential for misinterpreting such obscure imagery. This book not only considers the history of the ostrich but also explores how Raphael’s painting forced viewers to question how meaning is attributed to the natural world, a debate of central importance in early modern Europe at a time when the disciplines of modern art history and natural history were developing. The strangeness of Raphael’s ostrich, situated at the crossroads of art, religion, myth, and natural history, both reveals lesser-known sides of Raphael’s painting and illuminates major cultural shifts in attitudes toward nature and images in the Renaissance. More than simply an examination of a single artist or a single subject, Raphael’s Ostrich offers an accessible, erudite, and charming alternative to Vasari’s pervasive model of the history of sixteenth-century Italian art.

Immensely skillful and inventive, Hans Holbein molded his approach to art-making during a period of dramatic transformation in European society and culture: the emergence of humanism, the impact of the Reformation on religious life and the effects of new scientific discoveries. Most people have encountered Holbein's work - Henry VIII was forever defined for posterity by his memorable portrait - but little is widely known about the artist himself. This overview of Holbein looks at his art through the changes in the world around him. Offering insightful and often surprising new interpretations of visual and historical sources that have rarely been addressed, Jeanne Nuechterlein reconstructs what we know of the life of this elusive figure, illuminating the complexity of his world and the images he generated.

In Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy, Nino Zchomelidse examines the complex and dynamic roles played by the monumental ambo, the Easter candlestick, and the liturgical scroll in southern Italy and Sicily from the second half of the tenth century, when the first such liturgical scrolls emerged, until the first decades of the fourteenth century, when the last monumental Easter candlestick was made. Through the use of these objects, the interior of the church was transformed into the place of the story of salvation, making the events of the Bible manifest. By linking rites and setting, liturgical furnishings could be used to stage a variety of biblical events, in accordance with specific feast days. Examining the interaction of liturgical performance and the ecclesiastical stage, this book explores the creation, function, and evolution of church furnishings and manuscripts.