The Basilica of Saint John Lateran to 1600

The Basilica of Saint John Lateran to 1600
Author: L. Bosman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1108839762

The first inter-disciplinary study to examine the construction and development of the world's first cathedral from its origins to 1600.

Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century

Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century
Author: National Gallery of Art (U.S.)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Painting
ISBN: 9780894683053

The National Gallery of Art collection of Italian fifteenth-century paintings, the finest in any American museum, has not been published in its entirety since the 1979 Catalogue of Italian Paintings by Fern Rusk Shapley. Among the altarpieces, devotional works, portraits, and allegorical scenes are many world-famous masterpieces. In addition to Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, paintings by Domenico Veneziano, Castagno, Sassetta, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Perugino, Botticelli, and Ghirlandaio make this a book of major masters of the Renaissance.

The Art of Devotion

The Art of Devotion
Author: Katherine Renell Smith Abbott
Publisher: Middlebury College Press
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2009
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Generously illustrated exhibition catalogue explores the demand for and production of devotional works in early fifteenth-century Italy

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy
Author: Michael Baxandall
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1988
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780192821447

An introduction to 15th century Italian painting and the social history behind it, arguing that the two are interlinked and that the conditions of the time helped fashion distinctive elements in the painter's style.

Groundwork

Groundwork
Author: David Young Kim
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0691231176

An illuminating look at a fundamental yet understudied aspect of Italian Renaissance painting The Italian Renaissance picture is renowned for its depiction of the human figure, from the dramatic foreshortening of the body to create depth to the subtle blending of tones and colors to achieve greater naturalism. Yet these techniques rely on a powerful compositional element that often goes overlooked. Groundwork provides the first in-depth examination of the complex relationship between figure and ground in Renaissance painting. “Ground” can refer to the preparation of a work’s surface, the fictive floor or plane, or the background on which figuration occurs. In laying the material foundation, artists perform groundwork, opening the ground as a zone that can precede, penetrate, or fracture the figure. David Young Kim looks at the work of Gentile da Fabriano, Giovanni Bellini, Giovanni Battista Moroni, and Caravaggio, reconstructing each painter’s methods to demonstrate the intricacies involved in laying ground layers whose translucency and polychromy permeate the surface. He charts significant transitions from gold ground painting in the Trecento to the darkened grounds in Baroque tenebrism, and offers close readings of period texts to shed new light on the significance of ground forms such as rock face, wall, and cave. This beautifully illustrated book reconceives the Renaissance picture, revealing the passion and mystery of groundwork and discovering figuration beyond the human figure.

Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters

Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters
Author: Giovanni Andrea Gilio
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-04-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606065564

Giovanni Andrea Gilio’s Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters (1564) is one of the first treatises on art published in the post-Tridentine period. It remains a key primary source for the discussion of the reform of art as it unfolded at the time of the Council of Trent and the Catholic Reformation. Relatively little is known about Gilio himself, a cleric from Fabriano, Italy. He was evidently familiar with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s lively court circle in Rome and dedicated his book to the cardinal. His text—available here in English in full for the first time—takes the form of a spirited dialogue among six protagonists, using the voices of each to present different points of view. Through their dialogue Gilio grapples with a host of issues, from the relationship between poetry and painting, to the function of religious images, to the effects such images have on viewers. The primary focus is the proper representation of history, and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel is the exemplary case. Indeed, Michelangelo’s painting is both praised and condemned as an example of the possibilities and limits of art. Although Gilio’s dialogue is often quoted by art historians to point out the more controlling view of art and artists by the Roman Catholic Church, the unabridged text reveals the nuanced and provisional debates happening during this critical era.

1000 Paintings of Genius

1000 Paintings of Genius
Author: Victoria Charles
Publisher: Parkstone International
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2014-11-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1783104031

From the early Renaissance through Baroque and Romanticism to Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop, these canonical works of Western Art span eight centuries and a vast range of subjects. Here are the sacred and the scandalous, the minimalist and the opulent, the groundbreaking and the conventional. There are paintings that captured the feeling of an era and those that signaled the beginning of a new one. Works of art that were immediately recognised for their genius, and others that were at first met with resistance. All have stood the test of time and in their own ways contribute to the dialectic on what makes a painting great, how notions of art have changed, to what degree art reflects reality, and to what degree it alters it. Brought together, these great works illuminate the changing preoccupations and insights of our ancestors, and give us pause to consider which paintings from our own era will ultimately join the canon.