This generously illustrated volume on the work of Rembrandt makes the world's greatest art accessible to readers of every level of appreciation. Celebrated for his penetrating portraits, richly detailed landscapes, and evocative narrative paintings, the seventeenth century artist Rembrandt is generally considered one of Europe's greatest painters and printmakers, and the master of the Dutch School. His work is distinguished by broad brushwork, luminous palettes, and a sense of order and movement that recalls the finest Renaissance art. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book offers fullpage spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details--allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of the artist's technique and oeuvre. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historic events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, timeline, and suggestions for further reading.

Although fewer than eighty of Caravaggio's painted works exist, they represent a critical moment in the development of European painting as the Renaissance style gave way to that of the Baroque. This monograph explores the Italian master's entire life and career by focusing on the most important of his works. Readers will learn about his innovative use of light and shadow, his physical and psychological realism, and his radical technique of omitting initial drawings and creating straight onto the canvas. Along the way readers will learn details of the artist's colourful, and often troubled life, as well as the important role he played in the evolution of Western painting. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book offers full-page spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details - allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of the artist's technique and oeuvre. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historic events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, timeline, and suggestions for further reading.

Even in the Western world, which seems completely accustomed to a widespread appearance of risque images, an erotic painting from five hundred years ago can still manage to create a sensation. This book, the fifteenth title in the popular Guide to Imagery series, is a delightful romp through the portrayal of love and sexuality in art--age-old subjects depicted in all cultures. The volume surveys Western artworks illustrating more or less explicitly delicate or amorous subjects. The gamut of possibilities is vast, ranging from chaste tenderness to overwhelming frenzies of the senses, from Classical allusion to sexual fantasy.
A series of general themes is presented, with a detailed reading of the significance and symbolic content of the individual works illustrating each theme. In the paintings of the past, the reader will encounter gestures, objects, places, and situations that seem familiar and that offer the traditional setting of "love scenes" from every epoch. The volume closes with a chapter highlighting some of the most famous couples of all time."

This book offers a comprehensive review of the biology of snakes, focusing on Italian species. The snakes of Italy belong to the two families Colubridae and Viperidae, and for each species the systematic classification and chorology including distribution maps are presented. Furthermore, readers will learn how to carry out field studies, how to handle snakes and how to photograph them. The book concludes with a chapter on the iconography of historical Italian snakes and their importance in popular science, and one on myths and legends. This SpringerBriefs volume will appeal to herpetologists and technical staff. The section on iconography may also be of interest to museum staff.

Crowned the ‘Prince of Painters’ by Giorgio Vasari, Raphael (1483–1520) counts as one of the most popular artists of the Italian Renaissance. Famous for his serene and harmonious Madonnas and his work at the Vatican Palace, he was an extremely influential painter during and after his lifetime. Raphael was hired by Pope Julius II as his chief architect and his first commission was to decorate the papal apartments at the Vatican in 1509. Today these rooms attract visitors from all over the world. Raphael in Detail shows his masterpieces as never before, in beautiful details. Art historian and specialist of the Italian Renaissance Stefano Zuffi takes the reader on a surprising voyage into Raphael’s life and work, travelling from one detail to another. The book is organized thematically and includes a biography and an annotated list of works.

In the sixteenth century, the humanist values and admiration for classical antiquity that marked the early Renaissance spread from Italy throughout the rest of the continent, resulting in the development of a number of local artistic styles in other countries. Artists were highly valued and richly compensated during this period, with many receiving lucrative commissions from papal, royal, and private patrons. Among the sixty artists whose works are presented in this volume are towering figures of Western art, such as Michelangelo, Raphael, El Greco, and Titian. Venetian painters led the way, as oil on canvas supplanted fresco as the most popular medium. Italian Mannerists, such as Pontormo, deviated from classical forms, creating figures with elongated proportions and exaggerated poses. In countries that experienced the Protestant Reformation, such as England, many artists turned to portraiture and other secular subjects. This second volume in the "Art through the Centuries" series is divided into three sections that discuss the important people, concepts, and artistic centres of this innovative period. Important facts are summarized in the margins of each entry, and key facets of the illustrations are identified and discussed. New in the "Art Through the Centuries" series, it contains 400 full colour illustrations.

Influenced by a revival of interest in Greco-Roman ideals and sponsored by a newly prosperous merchant class, fifteenth-century artists produced works of astonishingly innovative content and technique. The International Gothic style of painting, still popular at the beginning of the century, was giving way to the influence of Early Netherlandish Flemish masters such as Jan van Eyck, who emphasized narrative and the complex use of light for symbolic meaning. Patrons favored paintings in oil and on wooden panels for works ranging from large, hinged altarpieces to small, increasingly lifelike portraits.
In the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice, and Mantua, artists and architects alike perfected existing techniques and developed new ones. The painter Masaccio mastered linear perspective; the sculptor Donatello produced anatomically correct but idealized figures such as his bronze nude of David; and the brilliant architect and engineer Brunelleschi integrated Gothic and Renaissance elements to build the self-supporting dome of the Florence Cathedral.
This beautifully illustrated guide analyzes the most important people, places, and concepts of this early Renaissance period, whose explosion of creativity was to spread throughout Europe in the sixteenth century.

This new series examines several highly regarded masterpieces in an attempt to unravel the mysteries that surround them. Through an innovative concept and a fresh approach, 'Art Mysteries', edited by Marco Carminati and Stefano Zuffi, presents an up-to-date and spectacular reading of famous paintings, investigating key clues that suggest previously unknown background information. 'The Stories of St Matthew' marked a turning point in Caravaggio's career, and in the history of painting itself. Behind their mystery lies an unprecedented creative process, characterised by choices and pentimenti revealed by detailed analyses. At the time, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an unruly thirty-year-old painter of small to medium-sized works,commissioned privately. Although at first Cardinal Mathieu Cointrel had no intention of involving Caravaggio in the decoration of his family chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, fate (a positive fate in the light of art history) offered the painter, through a series of contretemps and coincidences, the chance of a lifetime to become a publicly acclaimed master.

This new series examines several highly regarded masterpieces in an attempt to unravel the mysteries that surround them. Through an innovative concept and a fresh approach, 'Art Mysteries', edited by Marco Carminati and Stefano Zuffi, presents an up-to-date and spectacular reading of famous paintings, investigating key clues that suggest previously unknown background information. What we know about the life of Hieronymus Bosch gives us no inkling whatsoever of the explosion of fantasy, the weird and wonderful world, and the bizarre devilry in his oeuvre. The destination and function of his most important works are still a complete mystery. What was the purpose of the triptychs populated by seething masses of figures? Who could have immersed themselves in that world of symbols, references and allusions? The master's undisputed masterpiece, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights', is still linked to Gothic imagery but, at the same time, already embraces the extraordinary innovations of the sixteenth century, including the geographical discoveries in the Americas, from the Caribbean archipelago to Brazil, and in southern Africa.