Making Renaissance Art

This book explores key themes in the making of Renaissance painting, sculpture, architecture, and prints: the use of specific techniques and materials, theory and practice, change and continuity in artistic procedures, conventions and values. It also reconsiders the importance of mathematical perspective, the assimilation of the antique revival, and the illusion of life. Embracing the full significance of Renaissance art requires understanding how it was made. As manifestations of technical expertise and tradition as much as innovation, artworks of this period reveal highly complex creative processes--allowing us an inside view on the vexed issue of the notion of a renaissance.

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.

Displays the American National Gallery's important research into the underdrawings of 15th and 16th century paintings. These preliminary drawings beneath the paint layers can often be made visible by the technique of infra-red reflectography, an area of study which the Gallery has played a leading role.

This book focuses on the values, priorities, and motives of patrons and the purposes and functions of art works produced north and south of the Alps and in post-Byzantine Crete. It begins by considering the social range and character of Renaissance patronage and ends with a study of Hans Holbein the Younger and the reform of religious images in Basle and England. Viewing Renaissance Art considers a wide range of audiences and patrons from the rulers of France to the poorest confraternities in Florence. The overriding premise is that art was not a neutral matter of stylistic taste but an aspect of material production in which values were invested--whether religious, cultural, social, or political.

Works in the Museum's collection that embody the Renaissance interest in classical learning, fame, and beautiful objects are illustrated and discussed in this resource and will help educators introduce the richness and diversity of Renaissance art to their students. Primary source texts explore the great cities and powerful personalities of the age. By studying gesture and narrative, students can work as Renaissance artists did when they created paintings and drawings. Learning about perspective, students explore the era's interest in science and mathematics. Through projects based on poetic forms of the time, students write about their responses to art. The activities and lesson plans are designed for a variety of classroom needs and can be adapted to a specific curriculum as well as used for independent study. The resource also includes a bibliography and glossary.

Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante—together these artists created some of the most glorious treasures of the Vatican, viewed daily by thousands of tourists. But how many visitors understand the way these artworks reflect the passions, dreams, and struggles of the popes who commissioned them? For anyone making an artistic pilgrimage to the High Renaissance splendors of the Vatican, George L. Hersey's book is the ideal guide. Before starting the tour of individual works, Hersey describes how the treacherously shifting political and religious alliances of sixteenth-century Italy, France, and Spain played themselves out in the Eternal City. He offers vivid accounts of the lives and personalities of four popes, each a great patron of art and architecture: Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III. He also tells of the complicated rebuilding and expanding of St. Peter's, a project in which Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo all took part. Having set the historical scene, Hersey then explores the Vatican's magnificent Renaissance art and architecture. In separate chapters, organized spatially, he leads the reader through the Cortile del Belvedere and Vatican Museums, with their impressive holdings of statuary and paintings; the richly decorated Stanze and Logge of Raphael; and Michelangelo's Last Judgment and newly cleaned Sistine Chapel ceiling. A fascinating final chapter entitled "The Tragedy of the Tomb" recounts the vicissitudes of Michelangelo's projected funeral monument to Julius II. Hersey is never content to simply identify the subject of a painting or sculpture. He gives us the story behind the works, telling us what their particular themes signified at the time for the artist, the papacy, and the Church. He also indicates how the art was received by contemporaries and viewed by later generations. Generously illustrated and complete with a useful chronology, High Renaissance Art in St. Peter's and the Vatican is a valuable reference for any traveler to Rome or lover of Italian art who has yearned for a single-volume work more informative and stimulating than ordinary guidebooks. At the same time, Hersey's many anecdotes and intriguing comparisons with works outside the Vatican will provide new insights even for specialists.

Verrocchio worked in an extraordinarily wide array of media and used unusual practices of making to express ideas.

Sansovino successively dismantled and reconstituted the categories of art-making. Hardly capable of sustaining a program of reform, the experimental art of this period was succeeded by a new era of cultural codification in the second half of the sixteenth century. --