Florence At The Dawn Of The Renaissance

Florence and the Renaissance have become virtually synonymous, bringing to mind names like Dante, Giotto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and many others whose creativity thrived during a time of unprecedented prosperity, urban expansion, and intellectual innovation. With more than 200 illustrations, Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance reveals the full complexity and enduring beauty of the art of this period, including panel paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and stained glass panels. The book considers not only the work of Giotto and other influential artists, including Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi, and Pacino di Bonaguida, but also that of the larger community of illuminators and panel painters who collectively contributed to Florence's artistic legacy. It places particular emphasis on those artists who worked in both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and presents new conservation research and scientific analyses that shed light on artists' techniques and workshop practices of the times. Reunited here for the first time are twenty-six leaves of the most important illuminated manuscript commission of the period: the Laudario of Sant' Agnese. The splendor of this book of hymns exemplifies the spiritual and artistic aspirations of early Renaissance Florence. A major exhibition on this subject will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum November 13, 2012, through February 10, 2013, and at the Art Gallery of Ontario March 16, 2013, through June 16, 2013. Contributors to this volume include Roy S. Berns, Eve Borsook, Bryan Keene, Francesca Pasut, Catherine Schmidt Patterson, Alan Phenix, Laura Rivers, Victor M. Schmidt, Alexandra Suda, Yvonne Szafran, Karen Trentelman, and Nancy Turner.

Joining the bestsellers Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, a lively and intriguing tale of two artists whose competitive spirit brought to life one of the world’s most magnificent structures and ignited the Renaissance The dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore, the great cathedral of Florence, is among the most enduring symbols of the Renaissance, an equal to the works of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Its designer was Filippo Brunelleschi, a temperamental architect and inventor who rediscovered the techniques of mathematical perspective. Yet the completion of the dome was not Brunelleschi’s glory alone. He was forced to share the commission with his archrival, the canny and gifted sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. In this lush, imaginative history—a fascinating true story of artistic genius and personal triumph—Paul Robert Walker breathes life into these two talented, passionate artists and the competitive drive that united and dived them. As it illuminates fascinating individuals from Donatello and Masaccio to Cosimo de’Medici and Leon Battista Alberti, The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance offers a glorious tour of 15th-century Florence, a bustling city on the verge of greatness in a time of flourishing creativity, rivalry, and genius.

The Italian sculptor known as Donatello helped to forge a new kind of art—one that came to define the Renaissance. His work was progressive, challenging, and even controversial. Using a variety of novel sculptural techniques and innovative interpretations, Donatello uniquely depicted themes involving human sexuality, violence, spirituality, and beauty. But to really understand Donatello, one needs to understand his changing world, marked by the transition from Medieval to Renaissance style and to an art that was more personal and representative of the modern self. Donatello was not just a man of his times, he helped shape the spirit of the times he lived in and profoundly influenced those that came after. In this beautifully illustrated book—the first thorough biography of Donatello in twenty-five years—A. Victor Coonin describes the full extent of Donatello’s revolutionary contributions, revealing how his work heralded the emergence of modern art.

Florence is justly named the 'cradle of the renaissance'. It was here that, inspired by the revival of interest in classical antiquity, fuelled by civic pride and fostered by the wealthy Medici family, a visual language was created that was to be spoken

This book examines the social history of Florence from the fourteenth through to sixteenth centuries.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city of Florence experienced the most creative period in her entire history. This book is an in-depth analysis of that dynamic community, focusing primarily on the years 1380-1450 in an examination of the city's physical character, its economic and social structure and developments, its political and religious life, and its cultural achievement. For this edition, Mr. Brucker has added "Notes on Florentine Scholarship" and a "Bibliographical Supplement."

An exploration of the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance that shows us how and why Florence became the center of the revival of Greek and Classical culture Written by a lover of Florence, The Heart of the Renaissance explores the Greek mythology and Christian traditions and legends shown in the great works of art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance. Richard Lloyd provides historical context to the stories of local saints and miraculous works of art, details the lives of the artists and their patrons, and gives precise locations to the city's works of art and notable buildings. Gorgeously illustrated, the book acts as a practical guide for art lovers exploring Florence, paying homage to the splendors of the city, its history, its art, and its architecture.

In late-Trecento Florence, the cradle of the Italian Renaissance, humanist and chancellor Coluccio Salutati found himself face to face with the “holy spirit” that was, to him, the influence of Augustine’s towering City of God – the Church Father’s masterly synthesis of late antique secular and religious thinking. Through an analysis of contextual elements and a close reading of Salutati’s major literary works, Sam Urlings brings to light the unexplored yet profoundly significant intertextual encounter that shaped Florentine thinking on the culpability of Lucretia, the active and contemplative life, divine foreknowledge, the nature of government, and the theological power of poetry. In doing so, Coluccio Salutati and Augustine’s City of God challenges previously held assumptions regarding Renaissance “Augustinianism” on the one hand, and the chancellor’s civically-engaged thinking on the other, proposing a new, synthetic vision that allows for Salutati to illuminate and defend his faith while engaging intensely with the pressing political issues of his time.