Franklin's unprecedented examination of Vasari's work as a painter in relation to his vastly better-known writings fully illuminates these dual strands in Florentine art and offers us a clearer understanding of sixteenth-century painting in Florence than ever before." "The volume focuses on twelve painters: Perugino, Leonardo de Vinci, Piero di Cosimo, Michelangelo, Fra Bartolomeo, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, Rosso Fiorentino, Jacopo da Pontormo, Francesco Salviati and Giorgio Vasari."--BOOK JACKET.

This survey of Italian Renaissance art, from a new and different perspective, shows how art was a vital part of society and how all types of art and artists reflected the needs and aspirations of the culture from which they arose. Most books on Renaissance art are based on a chronological study of the major artists and their works. In this book, Bruce Cole covers the major types of art from c. 1250 to c. 1550, discusses their origins and development, documents their use and function, and describes their form and how and why the artists shaped them that way. Art is thus firmly connected with the life and society of the Renaissance rather than viewed as a separate entity: painting and sculpture are seen in their proper context. After a wide-ranging introduction, there are chapters on Italian Renaissance art in relation to domestic life, worship, civic life, death and afterlife, and Renaissance images and ideals.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

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.

Tracing the history of St. Antoninus' cult and burial from the time of his death in 1459 until his remains were moved to their final resting place in 1589, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates that the saint's relic cult was a key element of Florence's sacred cityscape. The works of art created in his honor, as well as the rituals practiced at his fifteenth- and sixteenth-century places of burial, advertised Antoninus' saintly power and persona to the people who depended upon his intercessory abilities to negotiate life's challenges. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary visual, literary, and archival sources, this volume explores the ways in which shifting political, familial, and ecclesiastical aims and agendas shaped the ways in which St. Antoninus' holiness was broadcast to those who visited his burial church. Author Sally Cornelison foregrounds the visual splendor of the St. Antoninus Chapel, which was designed, built, and decorated by Medici court artist Giambologna and his collaborators between 1579 and 1591. Her research sheds new light on the artist, whose secular and mythological sculptures have received far more scholarly attention than his religious works. Cornelison draws on social and religious history, patronage and gender studies, and art historical and anthropological inquiries into the functions and meanings of images, relics, and ritual performance, to interpret how they activated St. Antoninus' burial sites and defined them in ways that held multivalent meanings for a broad audience of viewers and devotees. Among the objects for which she provides visual and contextual analyses are a banner from the saint's first tomb, early printed and painted images, and the sculptures, frescoes, panel paintings, and embroidered textiles made for the present St. Antoninus Chapel.