Download or read book The Gates of Paradise written by Gary M. Radke and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich account of the giant bronze doors created by Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti--so exquisite that Michelangelo proclaimed them suitable to serve as the Gates of Paradise.

Download or read book Lorenzo Ghiberti s Gates of Paradise written by Amy R. Bloch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 874 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the heretofore unsuspected complexity of Lorenzo Ghiberti's sculpted representations of Old Testament narratives in his Gates of Paradise (1425–52), the second set of doors he made for the Florence Baptistery and a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture. One of the most intellectually engaged and well-read artists of his age, Ghiberti found inspiration in ancient and medieval texts, many of which he and his contacts in Florence's humanist community shared, read, and discussed. He was fascinated by the science of vision, by the functioning of nature, and, above all, by the origins and history of art. These unusually well-defined intellectual interests, reflected in his famous Commentaries, shaped his approach in the Gates. Through the selection, imaginative interpretation, and arrangement of biblical episodes, Ghiberti fashioned multi-textured narratives that explore the human condition and express his ideas on a range of social, political, artistic, and philosophical issues.

Download or read book Images and Identity in Fifteenth century Florence written by Patricia Lee Rubin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of ways of looking in Renaissance Florence, where works of art were part of a complex process of social exchange Renaissance Florence, of endless fascination for the beauty of its art and architecture, is no less intriguing for its dynamic political, economic, and social life. In this book Patricia Lee Rubin crosses the boundaries of all these areas to arrive at an original and comprehensive view of the place of images in Florentine society. The author asks an array of questions: Why were works of art made? Who were the artists who made them, and who commissioned them? How did they look, and how were they looked at? She demonstrates that the answers to such questions illuminate the contexts in which works of art were created, and how they were valued and viewed. Rubin seeks out the meeting places of meaning in churches, in palaces, in piazzas--places of exchange where identities were taken on and transformed, often with the mediation of images. She concentrates on questions of vision and visuality, on "seeing and being seen." With a blend of exceptional illustrations; close analyses of sacred and secular paintings by artists including Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Filippino Lippi, and Botticelli; and wide-ranging bibliographic essays, the book shines new light on fifteenth-century Florence, a special place that made beauty one of its defining features.

Download or read book A Short History of Florence and the Florentine Republic written by Brian Jeffrey Maxson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The innovative city culture of Florence was the crucible within which Renaissance ideas first caught fire. With its soaring cathedral dome and its classically-inspired palaces and piazzas, it is perhaps the finest single expression of a society that is still at its heart an urban one. For, as Brian Jeffrey Maxson reveals, it is above all the city-state – the walled commune which became the chief driver of European commerce, culture, banking and art – that is medieval Italy's enduring legacy to the present. Charting the transition of Florence from an obscure Guelph republic to a regional superpower in which the glittering court of Lorenzo the Magnificent became the pride and envy of the continent, the author authoritatively discusses a city that looked to the past for ideas even as it articulated a novel creativity. Uncovering passionate dispute and intrigue, Maxson sheds fresh light too on seminal events like the fiery end of oratorical firebrand Savonarola and Giuliano de' Medici's brutal murder by the rival Pazzi family. This book shows why Florence, harbinger and heartland of the Renaissance, is and has always been unique.

Download or read book Giotto the Painter Volume 1 3 written by Michael Viktor Schwarz and published by Böhlau Wien. This book was released on 2023-04-17 with total page 1454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 1: Life Giotto (1334) is the first European artist about whom it is possible to write following the schema of "life and work". The situation of the sources, however, is complicated: On Giotto's life, there are – on the one hand – biographical accounts from the mid-fourteenth century onwards that responded to various ideological requirements (patriotism, humanism, Renaissance ideology, cult of the artist); on the other, there is extensive documentary material from Giotto's lifetime, which seems to reflect less the biography of an artist than that of a bourgeois businessman resolutely climbing the social ladder. The present volume focuses on this second aspect of the Giotto figure's double life relating it to the form of existence of the pre-modern artist. Vol. 2: Works The paintings examined and contextualised in this volume are those secured for Giotto through early written sources. These sources also help to reconstruct the sequence of his works and artistic inventions as is plausible in the context of media culture in the decades around and after 1300: while Giotto was spiritually and intellectually formed in the sphere of the Florentine Dominicans, his artistic path began in Rome in the shadow of the Curia. The breakthrough to his own artistic concept came immediately before and during his work in Padua. In addition to prominent churchmen, ecclesiastical institutions, and the King of Naples, his clients were predominantly members of Italy's urban and financial elites. The adoption and further development of his inventions by other - especially Sienese - painters pressured him in his later years to try new approaches again. Vol. 3: Survival Giotto is considered by many to be the founder of modern painting. This thesis is discussed and modified in the present volume on an empirical basis. What emerges is that Giotto's impact cannot be reduced simply to the introduction of the study of nature. Rather, his art was involved in the development of pictorial idioms that were attuned to the skills and interests of their audiences. The new approaches in his painting contributed in particular to the possibility of examining and communicating psychological, narrative and allegorical content of great complexity outside the media of language and text, which not only changed the face of European art but certainly contributed to the intellectual opening of Western societies.

Download or read book Giotto the Painter Volume 3 Survival written by Michael Viktor Schwarz and published by Böhlau Wien. This book was released on 2023-04-17 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giotto is considered by many to be the founder of modern painting. This thesis is discussed and modified in the present volume on an empirical basis. What emerges is that Giotto's impact cannot be reduced simply to the introduction of the study of nature. Rather, his art was involved in the development of pictorial idioms that were attuned to the skills and interests of their audiences. The new approaches in his painting contributed in particular to the possibility of examining and communicating psychological, narrative and allegorical content of great complexity outside the media of language and text, which not only changed the face of European art but certainly contributed to the intellectual opening of Western societies.

Download or read book Text and catalogue written by James H. Beck and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do smokers claim that the first cigarette of the day is the best? What is the biological basis behind some heavy drinkers' belief that the "hair-of-the-dog" method alleviates the effects of a hangover? Why does marijuana seem to affect ones problem-solving capacity? Intoxicating Minds is, in the author's words, "a grand excavation of drug myth." Neither extolling nor condemning drug use, it is a story of scientific and artistic achievement, war and greed, empires and religions, and lessons for the future. Ciaran Regan looks at each class of drugs, describing the historical evolution of their use, explaining how they work within the brain's neurophysiology, and outlining the basic pharmacology of those substances. From a consideration of the effect of stimulants, such as caffeine and nicotine, and the reasons and consequences of their sudden popularity in the seventeenth century, the book moves to a discussion of more modern stimulants, such as cocaine and ecstasy. In addition, Regan explains how we process memory, the nature of thought disorders, and therapies for treating depression and schizophrenia. Regan then considers psychedelic drugs and their perceived mystical properties and traces the history of placebos to ancient civilizations. Finally, Intoxicating Minds considers the physical consequences of our co-evolution with drugs--how they have altered our very being--and offers a glimpse of the brave new world of drug therapies.

Download or read book Depth of Field written by Donal Cooper and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume has its origins in 'Depth of Field: Relief in the Time of Donatello', a unique collaboration between the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and the first exhibition to focus specifically on relief sculpture.

Download or read book The Judgment of Sense written by David Summers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-02-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought.

Download or read book The Place of Narrative written by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990-12-15 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at more than two hundred Italian medieval and Renaissance mural cycles, Lavin examines—with the aid of computer technology—the "rearranged" chronologies of familiar religious stories found therein. "Like many masterpieces, Lavin's book builds upon a simple idea . . . it is possible to do a computer analysis of . . . visual narratives. . . . This is the first computer-based study of the visual arts of which I am aware that illustrates how those technologies can utterly transform the study of old master art. An extremely important book, one likely to become the most influential recent study of art of this period, The Place of Narrative is also a beautiful artifact."—David Carrier, Leonardo "Covering over a millennium and dealing with the whole of Italy, Lavin makes pioneering use of new methodology employing a computer database . . . [and] novel terminology to describe the disposition of scenes of church and chapel walls. . . . We should recognize this as a book of high seriousness which reaches out into new areas and which will fruitfully stimulate much thought on a neglected subject of very considerable significance."—Julian Gardner, Burlington Magazine

Download or read book Renaissance Rivals written by Rona Goffen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For sixteenth-century Italian masters, the creation of art was a contest. They knew each other's work and patrons, were collegues and rivals. Survey of this artistic rivalry, the emotional and professional circumstances of their creations.

Download or read book Voices from the Italian Renaissance written by Lisa Kaborycha and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-25 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Italian Renaissance was a period of intense cultural transformations when the ancient world was being rediscovered and a New World had been literally discovered. Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, traditional beliefs were being challenged as people across the Italian Peninsula explored new ways of thinking about religion, politics, and society and introduced startling innovations in the arts. This book contains more than hundred selections of primary sources—the historian’s raw material in the form of memoirs, letters, treatises, sermons, stories, poems, drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here are eyewitness accounts of cold-blooded murders, lavish court pageants, the Sack of Rome, and the Black Death; first views of Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes and glimpses of the surface of the moon through Galileo’s telescope. These sources bring the reader into direct contact with the creators of the great Renaissance works of art, literature, philosophy, and science, as well as lesser-known people, who in their own words express emotions of love, loss, and spiritual yearning. Selected to accompany and supplement A Short History of Renaissance Italy, the primary sources in this book make it an ideal course reader for students of history or art history. Yet this volume can be equally read well on its own; each selection is clearly introduced, annotated, and provided with references for further reading. These sources reach out to an audience beyond the classroom—the general reader, or the traveler to Italy—anyone curious to learn more about the Italian Renaissance will find themselves swept into conversation with these vibrant voices from the past.

Download or read book Piero Della Francesca written by Judith Veronica Field and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studie over de wiskundige kennis van de renaissanceschilder (ca. 1416-1492) en over het belang van de exacte wetenschap in de betreffende kunstperiode.

Download or read book Chaucer s England written by Barbara Hanawalt and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Represents the first time that disciples of history and English literature have joined forces to present new interpretations of late fourteenth-century English society.

Download or read book Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes written by Vincent Ilardi and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 2007 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three cent. later. "By the end of the 16th cent. eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today." Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small bus. During the 15th cent. two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th cent. Illus.

Download or read book Leonardo da Vinci s Paragone written by Claire Farago and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1992-05-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci's arguments for the supremacy of painting over the arts of poetry, music, and sculpture address issues that have been relevant to debates over the nature of representation since the time Plato discussed imitation until today, maintains Claire Farago in this wide-ranging critical analysis of the first important modern contribution to the comparison of the arts. This study systematically examines 46 passages compiled in the mid-sixteenth century from eighteen of Leonardo's notebooks and their relationship to the artist's holograph writings on painting, providing a critical transcription newly made from the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270 and a new English translation with extensive notes that take into account Leonardo's scientific terminology, the highly contrived form of his rhetorical argumentation, and the role played by his original editors.

Download or read book Millard Meiss American Art History and Conservation written by Jennifer Cooke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A member of the art history generation from the golden age of the 1920s and 1930s, Millard Meiss (1904–1975) developed a new and multi-faceted methodological approach. This book lays the foundation for a reassessment of this key figure in post-war American and international art history. The book analyses his work alongside that of contemporary art historians, considering both those who influenced him and those who were receptive to his research. Jennifer Cooke uses extensive archival material to give Meiss the critical consideration that his extensive and important art historical, restoration and conservation work deserves. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, historiography and heritage management and conservation.