Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Michael Baxandell is Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition, Warburg Institute, University of London.

Of interest not only to Art Historians, but to anyone concerned with the material culture of the Renaissance.

• Part 1 Conditions of trade: Introduction; contracts and the client's control; art and matter; the value of skill; perception of skill. Part 2 The period eye: Relative perception; pictures and knowledge; the cognitive style; the function of images; "Istoria"; the body and its language; figure patterns; the value of colours; volumes; intervals and proportions; the moral eye. Part 3 Pictures and categories: Words and pictures; Giovanni Santi's twenty-five painters; Cristoforo Landino; categories, including nature, relief, purity, ease, perspective, grace, ornateness, variety, composition, colouring, design, difficulty, foreshortening, promptness, blitheness, devotion; conclusion. Texts and references. Index.