General Reading - Books
The Art of the Italian Renaissance by 
A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art by
A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art provides a diverse, fresh collection of accessible, comprehensive essays addressing key issues for European art produced between 1300 and 1700, a period that might be termed the beginning of modern history. Presents a collection of original, in-depth essays from art experts that address various aspects of European visual arts produced from circa 1300 to 1700 Divided into five broad conceptual headings: Social-Historical Factors in Artistic Production; Creative Process and Social Stature of the Artist; The Object: Art as Material Culture; The Message: Subjects and Meanings; and The Viewer, the Critic, and the Historian: Reception and Interpretation as Cultural Discourse Covers many topics not typically included in collections of this nature, such as Judaism and the arts, architectural treatises, the global Renaissance in arts, the new natural sciences and the arts, art and religion, and gender and sexuality Features essays on the arts of the domestic life, sexuality and gender, and the art and production of tapestries, conservation/technology, and the metaphor of theater Focuses on Western and Central Europe and that territory's interactions with neighboring civilizations and distant discoveries Includes illustrations as well as links to images not included in the book
Galileo's Muse by
Peterson's book portrays Galileo in a wonderfully fresh perspective. Over several decades I have steeped myself in Galileo biographies, and it's really rare to find an account as intriguing as this one. -- Owen Gingerich Galileo's Muse explores a wealth of intriguing connections between the arts and the birth of modern science, presented with thought and verve. Mark Peterson's excitement shines through on every page -- Peter Pesic, author of Sky in a Bottle and Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning of Science Galileo's Muse is a brilliant study that lucidly explains the mathematics central to innovations in the Renaissance arts and sciences. Peterson's expertise as a mathematician and physicist gives this book a level of detail and insight that will offer much to historians of art, science, literature alike. -- Arielle Saiber, Associate Professor of Italian, Bowdoin College
Painting in Renaissance Siena by
The Sienese painters of the fifteenth century had to contend not only with their school's illustrious previous history but also with the pervasive and concurrent influence of the Florentine art. This catalog for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the distinctive approach utilized by the painters of Siena during this period and suggests that their art may be somewhat overlooked and underestimated. The wonderful colorplates certainly would seem to support such a view--a stunning sequence of paintings by names vaguely familiar to the reader. The editors supply a full background to this stage of Sienese painting and also give detailed commentaries and descriptions for each of the illustrations. Bibliography; index. --John Brosnahan
The Renaissance by
The Renaissance was the period of greatest splendor in European art, and every page in this dazzling and immensely useful book captures that beauty. It's large-sized, exquisitely produced, all in color, and filled with 600 unforgettable works from Donatello, da Vinci, Bosch, Michelangelo, Durer, Raffaello, Bruegel, El Greco, Botticelli, and other masters.
Renaissance by
The Renaissance was one of the great periods of creative and intellectual achievement. This "age of genius," from its origins in the thirteenth century to its zenith in sixteenth-century Rome, produced some of the most fascinating and dynamic artists of all time--Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. In his adventurous new book, lavishly illustrated with 125 color illustrations, acclaimed art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon takes a fresh look at this most exciting period in art history, challenging many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding the Renaissance.
The Italian scholars who first dreamed of a Renaissance wished to revive the spirit of classical antiquity after the darkness--as they saw it--of the medieval and Byzantine periods. Graham-Dixon argues, however, that the Renaissance represented a culmination rather than a complete rejection of those earlier influences. Starting in the Middle Ages with the impact of the Franciscan movement on painting in Italy, Graham-Dixon's reappraisal of the Renaissance takes us through the key moments of its development, focusing on the major artists and architects of the time: the Early Renaissance in Florence--Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, and Brunelleschi; the Northern Renaissance--D#65533;rer, Cranach, and Brueghel; Venice--Titian, Palladio, and Tintoretto; and the High Renaissance in Rome--Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael.
Renaissance also outlines the historical context of this time of great social as well as artistic change. It reveals the social climate in which these artists worked: the power struggles between the Renaissance rulers of the Italian city-states, the French invasions of Italy, the invention of printing, and the Protestant Reformation. Along with his vivid, highly original, and often extremely entertaining descriptions of the works themselves, Graham-Dixon not only reassesses but also brings to life one of the most glorious periods in history.
Renaissance Art by
The Renaissance began at the end of the 14th century in Italy and had extended across the whole of Europe by the second half of the 16th century. The rediscovery of the splendour of ancient Greece and Rome marked the beginning of the rebirth of the arts following the break-down of the dogmatic certitude of the Middle Ages. A number of artists began to innovate in the domains of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Depicting the ideal and the actual, the sacred and the profane, the period provided a frame of reference which influenced European art over the next four centuries. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Giorgione, Mantegna, Raphael, Dürer and Bruegel are among the artists who made considerable contributions to the art of the Renaissance.
The Medici by
A tale of one family's ambition and of Europe's struggle to emerge from the ravages of the Dark Ages. The Medici used charm, skill, and ruthlessness to garner unparalleled wealth and power, ruling Europe for more than 300 years.
April Blood by
One of the world's leading historians of Renaissance Italy brings to life here the vibrant--and violent--society of fifteenth-century Florence. His disturbing narrative opens up an entire culture, revealing the dark side of Renaissance man and politician Lorenzo de' Medici.On a Sunday in April 1478, assassins attacked Lorenzo and his brother as they attended Mass in the cathedral of Florence. Lorenzo scrambled to safety as Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor. April Blood moves outward in time and space from that murderous event, unfolding a story of tangled passions, ambition, treachery, and revenge. The conspiracy was led by one of the city's most noble clans, the Pazzi, financiers who feared and resented the Medici's swaggering new role as political bosses--but the web of intrigue spread through all of Italy. Bankers, mercenaries, the Duke of Urbino, the King of Naples, and Pope Sixtus IV entered secretly into the plot. Florence was plunged into a peninsular war, and Lorenzo was soon fighting for his own and his family's survival.The failed assassination doomed the Pazzi. Medici revenge was swift and brutal--plotters were hanged or beheaded, innocents were hacked to pieces, and bodies were put out to dangle from the windows of the government palace. All remaining members of the larger Pazzi clan were forced to change their surname, and every public sign or symbol of the family was expunged or destroyed.April Blood offers us a fresh portrait of Renaissance Florence, where dazzling artistic achievements went side by side with violence, craft, and bare-knuckle politics. At the center of the canvas is the figure of Lorenzo the Magnificent--poet, statesman, connoisseur, patron of the arts, and ruthless "boss of bosses." This extraordinarily vivid account of a turning point in the Italian Renaissance is bound to become a lasting work of history.
The Medici by
Among the families who light up the course of history none shines with greater brilliance than the Medici. Bankers, soldiers, popes, sovereigns, despots, patrons of art and learning --- by any measure they were remarkable and in some ways their achievements have never been equaled by the members of any other ruling house.
James Cleugh sifts through the legend, the half-truth and prejudice that surround the Medici name to arrive at the facts of a family who governed Florence for three hundred years and whose legacy has haunted, and sometimes ennobled, the mind of man for centuries.
The Medici: a Great Florentine Family by 
St. George, Donatello
Donatello and His World by
This excellent new survey of quattrocento Italian sculpture, the first of a projected set of two, is the best in English since John Pope-Hennessy's Italian Renaissance Sculpture appeared in 1958. Poeschke's very readable history of this most crucial of centuries precedes an extensive section of plates, many in color, illustrating the reliefs and statues of 30 artists. Brief biographies, analyses of the pictured artworks, and a lengthy bibliography complete the book, making it an exceptionally well-documented appraisal of an era and a medium. While Poeschke's approach does give a great deal of weight to Donatello's influence, he does not neglect the many other geniuses of the age, including Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Michellozzo, and Verrocchio. The wholeness of his analysis and the impressive photography support his claim that the seeds of the artistic Renaissance lie not in painting or architecture but in the early carvings of these 15th-century Florentine masters. A superb acquisition for all libraries.-- Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Donatello by All the sculpture of Donatello by 
Fra Angelico by
Secluded within cloister walls, a painter and a monk, and brother of the order of the Dominicans, Angelico devoted his life to religious paintings. Little is known of his early life except that he was born at Vicchio, in the broad fertile valley of the Mugello, not far from Florence, that his name was Guido de Pietro, and that he passed his youth in Florence, probably in some bottegha, for at twenty he was recognised as a painter. In 1418 he entered in a Dominican convent in Fiesole with his brother. They were welcomed by the monks and, after a year’s novitiate, admitted to the brotherhood, Guido taking the name by which he was known for the rest of his life, Fra Giovanni da Fiesole; for the title of Angelico, the “Angel,” or Il Beato, “The Blessed,” was conferred on him after his death. Henceforth he became an example of two personalities in one man: he was all in all a painter, but also a devout monk; his subjects were always religious ones and represented in a deeply religious spirit, yet his devotion as a monk was no greater than his absorption as an artist. Consequently, though his life was secluded within the walls of the monastery, he kept in touch with the art movements of his time and continually developed as a painter. His early work shows that he had learned of the illuminators who inherited the Byzantine traditions, and had been affected by the simple religious feeling of Giotto’s work. Also influenced by Lorenzo Monaco and the Sienese School, he painted under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici. Then he began to learn of that brilliant band of sculptors and architects who were enriching Florence by their genius. Ghiberti was executing his pictures in bronze upon the doors of the Baptistery; Donatello, his famous statue of St. George and the dancing children around the organ-gallery in the Cathedral; and Luca della Robbia was at work upon his frieze of children, singing, dancing and playing upon instruments. Moreover, Masaccio had revealed the dignity of form in painting. Through these artists the beauty of the human form and of its life and movement was being manifested to the Florentines and to the other cities. Angelico caught the enthusiasm and gave increasing reality of life and movement to his figures.
Fra Angelico by 
Fra Angelico by
Called "Angelico" for his inimitable depictions of paradise, this artist (1400? -1455) and Dominican friar succeeded Masaccio as the foremost painter of the early Renaissance in Italy. Fra Angelico's painting has been beloved for centuries since as an emblem of the flowering genius of quattrocento Florence.
In his engaging new appraisal, John Spike reveals the unexpectedly innovative qualities of Angelico's art, including his use of linear and geometric perspective (even before the publication of Leon Battista Alberti's famous treatise). Another of Angelico's inventions was the Renaissance altarpiece known as the sacra conversazione (sacred conversation), in which the Virgin and Child and saints, formerly each rigidly enclosed in separate panels, now gesture and relate to each other within a clearly unified space.
Fra Angelico had a lifelong fascination with the written word, and as Spike persuasively demonstrates, the accuracy of his Greek, Latin, and Hebrew inscriptions reveal his participation in the linguistic studies that flourished in Florence and Rome in the first half of the fifteenth century. He created some of the most visionary and learned compositions of his century, from his Deposition for the private chapel of the humanist Palla Strozzi to the extensive commissions in Rome for the erudite Pope Nicholas v. In this volume Spike presents a major discovery: the secret program of the forty frescoes in the cells of the Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence. All previous studies of this artist had concluded that the subjects and arrangement of these frescoes, the artist's masterworks, were chosen at random, or by the friars themselves. Instead, as the author now shows, Fra Angelico drew upon the mystical writings of the early church fathers to construct a spiritual exercise organized into three ascending levels of enlightenment. The San Marco frescoes can finally be seen as not only the most extensive cycle of works by any single painter of this century, but indeed the most complete pictorial expression of Renaissance theology.
With fresh insights that will influence studies of quattrocento art for years to come, Spike uses his perceptive eye and judicious readings of documents to reassess the works of Angelico, his masters, and his assistants. This essential volume contains an extensive essay on the artist's life and work, followed by large color plates with detailed discussions of individual works. Finally, a catalog presents the artist's oeuvre, as revised by the author's new attributions. With lavish details of Angelico's works and an up-to-date bibliography, this volume is not only a feast for the eyes but an indispensable resource for anyone interested in this critical period of the Renaissance.
Fra Angelico by 
Paolo Uccello by
This new, splendidly illustrated study rediscovers the genius of Uccello. A fully illustrated catalogue raisonne bring together all his surviving works.
Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, Andrea del Castagno by
Very little is known about the lives of Uccello, Veneziano and del Castagno, and there are few works which can be attributed with absolute certainty to the three masters. However, these three artists have a profound synthetic tie and lived in on of the richest and most complex centuries in the history of the Italian civilization. They were influenced by the works of Masaccio, Donatello and Brunelleschi, although these influences sometimes yielded unique results. Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano & Andrea Del Castagno explores the influences and works of these three artists, reproduced in full colour.
Masaccio by
Includes magnificent color reproductions of the entire body of the artist's work & a detailed analysis of each painting, along with an extensive biography of the artist.
Masaccio by 
Masaccio by
Masaccio was born at San Giovanni Valdarno on 21st December 1401, and moved to Florence in 1417, where he quickly became known as a painter. Masaccio was above all involved in the humanistic avant-garde of Brunelleschi and Donatello. The tendency of both these artists to exalt human value in every way and to restore dignity to the vulgar tongue is already evident in Masaccio's first known painting, the San Giovenale Triptych, dated 23rd April 1422. Masaccio explores the works of this painter in full, concentrating on the Brancacci Chapel and famous works such as the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and the Tribute Money.
Filippo Lippi by
Fra Filippo Lippi was an eccentric artist, whose behaviour was disreputable and dishonoured the monk's habit that he had worn ever since he was little more than a child. Lippi quarrelled with clients and workshop assistants, was constantly in trouble for being late in delivering his paintings, and was threatened with excommunication several times. Filippo Lippi examines the life of this controversial figure, citing the opinions of his contemporaries and patrons, such as Cosimo de'Medici. The critical appraisal of Fra Filippo is discussed at length, followed by an examination of his works, including his great fresco cycles in Prato and Spoleto, and the influence on his work of Flemish Art.
Piero Della Francesca by Piero della Francesca by Andrea del Castagno and His Patrons by 
Masaccio's 'Trinity' by
Masaccio's "Trinity" examines one of the most influential paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Renowned for the grandeur of its characterizations and for the perspectival illusion of its architectural setting, the fresco was famous from the time it was painted in the 1420s, and remembered despite its having been hidden from view for nearly two centuries. This volume considers the "Trinity" in its historical and spiritual contexts, and describes the significance of Masaccio's innovative depictions of time and space.
Giovanni Bellini by
Giovanni Bellini was probably born around 1432-3, and became active as an artist around 1445/1450. Two artistic influences, the Byzantine and the Flemish, important in Venice as a result of its economic and commercial life, would always from the basis of many of his ideas, as were the works of Donatello left in Padua as a result of his 10-year residence there. Giovanni Bellini explores the life and works of this artist, including his Mantegnesque phase, which comprises several fundamental works, and the paintings of Bellini's mature years.
Andrea Mantegna by
Mantegna; humanist, geometrist, archaeologist, of great scholastic and imaginative intelligence, dominated the whole of northern Italy by virtue of his imperious personality. Aiming at optical illusion, he mastered perspective. He trained in painting at the Padua School where Donatello and Paolo Uccello had previously attended. Even at a young age commissions for Andrea’s work flooded in, for example the frescos of the Ovetari Chapel of Padua. In a short space of time Mantegna found his niche as a modernist due to his highly original ideas and the use of perspective in his works. His marriage with Nicolosia Bellini, the sister of Giovanni, paved the way for his entree into Venice. Mantegna reached an artistic maturity with his Pala San Zeno. He remained in Mantova and became the artist for one of the most prestigious courts in Italy – the Court of Gonzaga. Classical art was born. Despite his links with Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna refused to adopt their innovative use of colour or leave behind his own technique of engraving.
Mantegna by 
Andrea Mantegna by
The catalogue of the major exhibition of the work of early Renaissance Italian artist Mantegna (1431-1506) at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (January-April 1992) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (May-July 1992). In addition to a detailed catalogue of the 154 remarkable works in the exhibition, the book contains essays that introduce the reader to this often misunderstood artist, his life and surroundings, his influential work as a printmaker, his painting techniques, and major influences on his work.
Mantegna by Early Florentine designers and engravers: Maso Finiguerra, Baccio Baldini, Antonio Pollaiuola, Sandro Botticelli [and] Francesco Rosselli by Verrocchio by c.1470-1475 David
Della Robbia by
Luca della Robbia was born in Florence in 1399 or 1400, to a well-to-do family of wool merchants that owned land and real estate in the Valdarno. In 1432 della Robbia entered the guide of the Stone-Masons and Wood-Carvers. He produced a coat of arms for that Guild around 1450m which was mounted in Orsanmichele. In 1446 Luca and his brother bought a house on via Guelfa, which was to become the location of the della Robbia kiln and workshop, from where generations of the Della Robbia family created their masterpieces of sculpture. Della Robbia examines the life and works of Luca della Robbia, the founder of the della Robbia kiln and workshop, including the introduction of glazed terracotta to Florence during the Renaissance, and of his nephew and successor, Andrea di Marco della Robbia.
Botticelli by
He was the son of a citizen in comfortable circumstances, and had been, in Vasari’s words, “instructed in all such things as children are usually taught before they choose a calling.” However, he refused to give his attention to reading, writing and accounts, continues Vasari, so that his father, despairing of his ever becoming a scholar, apprenticed him to the goldsmith Botticello: whence came the name by which the world remembers him. However, Sandro, a stubborn-featured youth with large, quietly searching eyes and a shock of yellow hair – he has left a portrait of himself on the right-hand side of his picture of the Adoration of the Magi – would also become a painter, and to that end was placed with the Carmelite monk Fra Filippo Lippi. But he was a realist, as the artists of his day had become, satisfied with the joy and skill of painting, and with the study of the beauty and character of the human subject instead of religious themes. Botticelli made rapid progress, loved his master, and later on extended his love to his master’s son, Filippino Lippi, and taught him to paint, but the master’s realism scarcely touched Lippi, for Botticelli was a dreamer and a poet. Botticelli is a painter not of facts, but of ideas, and his pictures are not so much a representation of certain objects as a pattern of forms. Nor is his colouring rich and lifelike; it is subordinated to form, and often rather a tinting than actual colour. In fact, he was interested in the abstract possibilities of his art rather than in the concrete. For example, his compositions, as has just been said, are a pattern of forms; his figures do not actually occupy well-defined places in a well-defined area of space; they do not attract us by their suggestion of bulk, but as shapes of form, suggesting rather a flat pattern of decoration. Accordingly, the lines which enclose the figures are chosen with the primary intention of being decorative. It has been said that Botticelli, “though one of the worst anatomists, was one of the greatest draughtsmen of the Renaissance.” As an example of false anatomy we may notice the impossible way in which the Madonna’s head is attached to the neck, and other instances of faulty articulation and incorrect form of limbs may be found in Botticelli’s pictures. Yet he is recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen: he gave to ‘line’ not only intrinsic beauty, but also significance. In mathematical language, he resolved the movement of the figure into its factors, its simplest forms of expression, and then combined these various forms into a pattern which, by its rhythmical and harmonious lines, produces an effect upon our imagination, corresponding to the sentiments of grave and tender poetry that filled the artist himself. This power of making every line count in both significance and beauty distinguishes the great master- draughtsmen from the vast majority of artists who used line mainly as a necessary means of representing concrete objects.
Botticelli by 
Botticelli by 
Domenico Ghirlandaio by
An account of the life and work of Domenico Ghirlandaio, who worked in a variety of media, including panel paintings, wall murals, mosaic and manuscript illumination, in 15th-century Florence. It views him primarily as an artisan active within the craft traditions and guild structure of his day.
Ghirlandaio by 
Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds, 1485
