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Books : Arts & Photography : Schools, Periods & Styles : Renaissance
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In this swift, colorful narrative, R. A. Scotti brings to life the artists and the popes, the politics and the passions behind the audacious building of St. Peter's Basilica during the 14th and 15th centuries. Scotti turns sacred architecture into a spellbinding human epic of enormous daring, petty jealousy, and staggering genius.
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Five hundred years ago Michelangelo began work on a painting that became one of the most famous pieces of art in the world—the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Every year millions of people come to see Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest of Christianity's chapels; yet there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork.
The Sistine Secrets tells the fascinating story of how Michelangelo embedded messages of brotherhood, tolerance, and freethinking in his painting to encourage "fellow travelers" to challenge the repressive Roman Catholic Church of his time.
"Driven by the truths he had come to recognize during his years of study in private nontraditional schooling in Florence, truths rooted in his involvement with Judaic texts as well as Kabbalistic training that conflicted with approved Christian doctrine, Michelangelo needed to find a way to let viewers discern what he truly believed. He could not allow the Church to forever silence his soul. And what the Church would not permit him to communicate openly, he ingeniously found a way to convey to those diligent enough to learn his secret language."—from the Preface
Blech and Doliner reveal what Michelangelo meant in the angelic representations that brilliantly mocked his papal patron, how he managed to sneak unorthodox heresies into his ostensibly pious portrayals, and how he was able to fulfill his lifelong ambition to bridge the wisdom of science with the strictures of faith. The Sistine Secrets unearths secrets that have remained hidden in plain sight for centuries.
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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed arguably the greatest mind the world has ever known. Artist, draftsman, inventor, and philosopher, his contributions to modern society are profound and wide-reaching. Throughout his life, Leonardo kept dozens of notebooks, elegant studies on topics ranging from architecture to botany to philosophy—indeed nearly anything of which the human imagination could conceive.
Leonardo’s Notebooks collects a variety of the most fascinating of these studies and compiles them into one monumental volume that demystifies his insights and clearly illustrates his ideas, experiments, and observations with hundreds of his original sketches, line drawings, and paintings. Topics include Anatomy and the Movement of the Human Figure; Botany and Landscape; Engineering and Military Engineering; Physical Sciences; Aerodynamics and Flight; Geography—and more.
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These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance," was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael. This new translation, specially commissioned for the World's Classics series, contains thirty-six of the most important lives and is fully annotated.
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From armored tanks and gliders to "plastic glass" and drawing machines, this interactive book explores the incredible mind of Leonardo da Vinci through hands-on building projects and activities. Most of Leonardo's inventions were never made in his lifetime and remained sketches in his famous notebooks; kids examine some of these original sketches and learn about the models he made of his inventions. From there they delve into detailed step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and templates for each project, which are interspersed with historical facts, biographical anecdotes, and trivia. Most of the building can be done using simple household supplies: construction paper, tape, markers, glue, cardboard tubes, aluminum foil, and cardboard boxes. Background about the Renaissance as a period of remarkable achievement in art and science appears throughout the book.
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Frederick Hartt's unrivaled classic is a dazzling journey through four centuries of Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture. Its sumptuous color illustrations, fine writing, and in-depth scholarship bring into focus all the elements of this extraordinarily creative period and the remarkable personalities who gave it life. Highlights of this Fifth Edition include:
* a striking new design with more than half the artworks illustrated in full color
* new views of frescoes and sculptures photographed in their original locations that offer a dynamic insight into the way the art was originally experienced
* fresh views of great works of art that have been restored since the last edition
* extended captions that identify Renaissance patrons and provide details about historical context, emphasizing how the art was created and why
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Swirling with gargoyles, devils, dragons, griffins, and other images that haunt both dreams and nightmares, this otherworldly assortment features illustrations from a rare 19th-century volume. Images include cartouches, frames, doors, trophies, cabinets, friezes for textiles and wallpaper, decorative scutcheons, stone balustrades, arabesques, roof cornices, and much more.
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Renaissance man: Michelangelo as never seen before. Before reaching the tender age of thirty, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) had already sculpted David and Pieta, two of the most famous sculptures in the entire history of art. Like fellow Florentine Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a shining star of the Renaissance and a genius of consummate virtuosity. His achievements as a sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect are unique- no artist before or after him has ever produced such a vast, multi-faceted, and wideranging oeuvre. Only a handful of other painters and sculptors have attained a comparable social status and enjoyed a similar artistic freedom. This is demonstrated not only by the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel but also by Michelangelo's monumental sculptures and his unconventional architectural designs, whose forms went far beyond the accepted vocabulary of his day. Such was his talent that Michelangelo was considered a demigod by his contemporaries and was the subject of two biographies during his lifetime. Adoration of this remarkable man's work has only increased on the intervening centuries. Following the success of our XL title Leonardo da Vinci, TASCHEN brings you this massive tome that explores Michelangelo's life and work in more depth and detail then ever before. The first part concentrates on the life of Michelangelo via an extensive and copiously illustrated biographical essay; the main body of the book presents his owrk in four parts providing a complete analytical inventory of Michelangelo's paintings, sculptures, buildings and drawings. Grorgeous, full page reproductions and enlarged details bring readers up close to the works. This sumptuous tome also takes account, to a previously unseen extent, of Michelangelo's more personal traits and circumstances, such as his solitary nature, his thirst for money and commissions, his miserliness, his immense wealth, and his skill as a property investor. In addition, the book tackles the controversial issue of the attribution of Michelangelo drawings, an area in which decisions continue to be steered by the interests of the art market and the major collections. This is the definitive volume about Michelangelo for generations to come.
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Discover the art of the Northern and Italian Renaissance, from the 14th to the 16th century.
Here is a beautiful, thought-provoking and highly informative guide to understanding the Renaissance. Superb color reproductions of paintings, sculptures and sketches, clear artworks and authoritative text from an established art historian offer a fresh "eyewitness" insight into appreciation of the momentous and influential art of the Renaissance era.
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The Dynamics of Military Revolution bridges a major gap in the emerging literature on revolutions in military affairs. It suggests that two very different phenomena have been at work over the past centuries: "military revolutions," which are driven by vast social and political changes, and "revolutions in military affairs," which military institutions have directed, although usually with great difficulty and ambiguous results. MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray provide a conceptual framework and historical context for understanding the patterns of change, innovation, and adaptation that have marked war in the Western world since the fourteenth century--beginning with Edward III's revolution in medieval warfare, through the development of modern military institutions in seventeenth-century France, to the military impact of mass politics in the French Revolution, the cataclysmic military-industrial struggle of 1914-1918, and the German Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. Case studies and a conceptual overview offer an indispensible introduction to revolutionary military change,--which is as inevitable as it is difficult to predict. Macgregor Knox is the Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Common Destiny (Cambridge, 2000) and Hitler's Italian Allies (Cambridge, 2000). Knox and Murray are co-editors of Making of Strategy (Cambridge, 1996). Willamson Murray is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defense Analysis. He is the co-editor of Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, 1996) and author of A War to Be Won (Harvard University Press, 2000).
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The Book of the Courtier (1528) is a series of fictional conversations by courtiers of the Duke of Urbino that takes place in 1507, while Castiglione was himself attaché to the Duke. Today the Book remains the most reliable and illuminating account of Renaissance court life and of what it took to be the "Perfect Courtier" and "Court Lady." The Singleton translation—the most acclaimed and accurate available—is accompanied by annotations."Criticism" features ten essays on The Book of the Courtier, which represent the best interpretations from the United States, Italy, and England including the backgrounds-rich essays by Amedeo Quondam and James Hankins. A Selected Bibliography, a Chronology, and an Index are included.
About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
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The Renaissance holds an undying place in the human imagination, and its great heroes remain our own, from Michelangelo and Leonardo to Dante and Montaigne. This period of profound evolution in European thought is credited with transforming the West from medieval to modern; reviving the city as the center of human activity and the acme of civilization; and, of course, producing the most astonishing outpouring of artistic creation the world has ever known. Perhaps no era in history was more revolutionary, and none has been more romanticized. What was it? In The Renaissance, the great historian Paul Johnson tackles that question with the towering erudition and imaginative fire that are his trademarks.
Johnson begins by painting the economic, technological, and social developments that give the period its background. But, as Johnson explains, "The Renaissance was primarily a human event, propelled forward by a number of individuals of outstanding talent, in some cases amounting to genius." It is the human foreground that absorbs most of the book's attention. "We can give all kinds of satisfying explanations of why and when the Renaissance occurred and how it transmitted itself," Johnson writes. "But there is no explaining Dante, no explaining Chaucer. Genius suddenly comes to life, and speaks out of a vacuum. Then it is silent, equally mysteriously. The trends continue and intensify, but genius is lacking." In the four parts that make up the heart of the book--"The Renaissance in Literature and Scholarship," "The Anatomy of Renaissance Sculpture," "The Buildings of the Renaissance," and "The Apostolic Successions of Renaissance Painting"--Johnson chronicles the lives and works of the age's animating spirits. Finally, he examines the spread and decline of the Renaissance, and its abiding legacy. A book of dazzling riches, The Renaissance is a compact masterpiece of the historian's art.
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TASCHEN's 25th anniversary - Special edition! Special bestseller price Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed one of the greatest minds of all time; his importance and influence are inestimable. This XXL-format comprehensive survey is the most complete book ever made on the subject of this Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and all-around genius. With huge, full-bleed details of Leonardo's masterworks, this highly original publication allows the reader to inspect the subtlest facets of his brushstrokes. * Part I explores Leonardo's life and work in ten chapters. All of his paintings are interpreted in depth, with The Annunciation and The Last Supper featured on large double-spreads. * Part II comprises a catalogue raisonn? of Leonardo's paintings, which covers all of his surviving and lost painted works and includes texts describing their states of preservation. * Part III contains an extensive catalogue of his drawings (numbering in the thousands, they cannot all be reproduced in one book); 663 are presented, arranged by category (architecture, technical, anatomical, figures, proportion, cartography, etc). This sumptuous TASCHEN offering is the most thorough and beautifully produced Leonardo book ever published, and this special edition offers it for a third of the usual price.
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This book traces the rich history of the northern Italian city of Mantua, from its mythic origins in Dante's Inferno, to its cultural heyday during the Renaissance under the patronage of the powerful Gonzaga family, to its eventual decline and annexation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The fortunes of Mantua rose and fell with those of the Gonzaga family, who ruled as imperial vicars from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth century. They transformed the city into a major cultural center by commissioning works from the master architects and artists of the day such as Leon Battista Alberti, Giulio Romano, Titian, Rubens, and Guercino. However, Andrea Mantegna--who served as the court painter from 1460 to 1506 and whose technical mastery revolutionized painting--is the artist most identified with the city.
Although most of Mantua's artistic treasures were sold or claimed as war spoils upon the decline of the Gonzaga family, the rich cultural legacy of this fascinating city lives on in the collections of many of the world's premier museums.
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New from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, GIFTS OF THE MAGI is a wonderful Christmas time keepsake that explores the first Christmas gifts. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh - these were the precious gifts offered to the infant Jesus by the Magi, the three wise men who followed a star to the humble dwelling where the Christ child was born. But who were these men, and why did they chose those gifts? Why were frankincense and myrrh considered in biblical times to be as valuable as gold? This book tells the story of the Magi and their journey and explains the symbolism and the significance of their gifts. In addition, it discusses how frankincense and myrrh were grown, harvested, and transported in antiquity and their use in various cultures of the ancient world. The package includes a gift - 24-karat-gold in a glass bottle and frankincense and myrrh in mesh bags that allow their exotic fragrance to emanate.