Renaissance Lives – serie

Artemisia Gentileschi is by far the most famous woman artist of the pre-modern era. Her art addresses issues that resonate today, such as sexual violence and women’s problematic access to political power. Her forceful paintings with their vigorous female protagonists have excited modern audiences, especially feminists.This book breaks new ground by placing the artist in the context of women’s political history, and the feminist protest that was bubbling in early modern Europe. Mary D. Garrard discusses recently discovered paintings, offers fresh perspectives on known works and examines the artist anew in the context of early modern feminism. This beautifully illustrated book, now in paperback, gives a full portrait of a strong woman and a great artist who fought back through her art.

The Venetian painter known as Giorgione or ‘big George’ died at a young age in the dreadful plague of 1510, possibly having painted fewer than 25 works. But many of these are among the most mysterious and alluring in the history of art. Paintings such as the Three Philosophers and The Tempest remain compellingly elusive, seeming to deny the viewer the possibility of interpreting their meaning. Tom Nichols argues that this visual elusiveness was essential to Giorgione’s sensual approach, and that ambiguity is their defining quality. Through detailed discussions of all Giorgione’s works, Nichols shows that by abandoning the more intellectual tendencies of much Renaissance art, Giorgione made the world and its meanings appear always more inscrutable.

Often called ‘the father of modern philosophy’, René Descartes’ contributions to philosophy, mathematics and natural science set the intellectual agenda for the seventeenth century. In this biography and assessment of his works, based on the most up-to-date research, Steven Nadler follows Descartes from his early years and education in France to the Dutch Republic, where he lived most of his adult life, to his final months as tutor to Queen Christina of Sweden.Nadler shows how Descartes’ ‘renewal’ of philosophy involved a transformation in both the way in which philosophy is done and the fundamental understanding of the cosmos, the natural world and human nature. His work was a springboard for many of the metaphysical and epistemological problems that continue to engage philosophers today.

Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the greatest scientists in history, yet the spectrum of his interests was much broader than that of a contemporary scientist. He was deeply involved in alchemical, religious and biblical studies, and in the later part of his life he played a prominent role in British politics, economics and the promotion of scientific research. His Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica, which sets out his laws of universal gravitation and motion, is regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science.This enlightening biography offers an accessible introduction to Newton’s celebrated work in mathematics, optics, mechanics and astronomy and to how Newton viewed these scientific fields in relation to his quest for the deepest secrets of the universe, matter theory and religion. It sets Newton the natural philosopher in the troubled context of the religious and political debates that took place during his life, which spanned from the years of the Civil War to the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian succession. Taking into account the latest Newtonian scholarship, this fast-paced biography will appeal to all those with an interest in this iconic figure and the great scientific revolution of the early modern period.

This incisive and illuminating biography follows the three themes which shaped the life of Leonardo da Vinci and for ever changed Western art and imagination: nature, art and self-fashioning.Nature and art helped form Leonardo. He spent his first twelve years in the Tuscan countryside before entering the most reputed artistic workshop of Florence. There he bloomed as one of the most promising painters of his time, and promptly also applied his skills to explore and question the world. Leonardo was also self-fashioned: he received only a basic education and grew up around peasants and artisans. By the 1480s, he had transformed himself into a court artist and was a familiar of kings. Following the chronology of his life, this book examines Leonardo as artist, courtier and thinker, and explores how these aspects found expression in his paintings, as well as his work in sculpture, architecture, theatre design, urban planning, engineering, anatomy, geology and cartography. It concludes with observations on Leonardo’s relevance today as a model of the multidisciplinary artist, combining imagination, art and science.

At the end of his long, prolific life, Titian was rumoured to paint directly on the canvas with his bare hands. He would slide his fingers across bright ridges of oil paint, loosening the colours, blending, blurring, and then bringing them together again. With nothing more than the stroke of a thumb or the flick of a nail, Titian’s touch brought the world to life. The clinking of glasses, the clanging of swords, and the cry of a woman’s grief. The sensation of hair brushing up against naked flesh. The sudden blush of unplanned desire, and the dry taste of fear in a lost, shadowy place. Titian’s art was a synaesthetic experience. To see was at once to hear, to smell, to taste, and to touch. But while Titian was fully attached to the world around him, he also held the universe in his hands. Like a magician, he could conjure appearances out of thin air. Like a philosopher, his exploration into the very nature of things channelled and challenged the controversial ideas of his day. But as a painter, he created the world. Dogs, babies, rubies and pearls. Falcons, flowers, gloves and stone. Shepherds, mothers, gods and men. Paint, canvas, blood, sweat and tears. In a series of close visual investigations, Maria H. Loh guides the reader through the lush, vibrant world of Titian’s touch.

The Italian sculptor known as Donatello helped to forge a new kind of art – one that defines the Renaissance. His work was progressive, innovative, challenging and even controversial. Using a variety of novel sculptural techniques and perspectives, Donatello depicted human sexuality, violence, spirituality and beauty. But to really understand Donatello one needs to understand a changing world, a transition from Medieval to Renaissance and to an art more personal and part of the modern self. Donatello was not just a man of his times, he helped create the spirit of the times he lived in, and those to come. In this beautifully illustrated book, the first monograph on Donatello for 25 years, A. Victor Coonin describes the full extent of Donatello’s revolutionary contribution and shows how his work heralded the emergence of modern art.

Throughout his controversial life the alchemist, physician and social radical known as Paracelsus combined traditions that were magical and empirical, scholarly and folk, learned and artisanal. He endorsed both Catholic and Reformation beliefs, but believed devoutly in a female deity. He travelled constantly, learning and teaching a new form of medicine based on the experience of miners, bathers, alchemists, midwives, barber-surgeons and executioners. He argued for changes in the way the body was understood, how disease was defined and how treatments were created, but he was also moved by mystical speculations, an alchemical view of nature and an intriguing concept of creation.Bruce T. Moran tells the story of how alchemy refashioned medical practice, and brings to light the ideas, workings and major texts of an important Renaissance figure, showing how his tenacity and endurance changed the medical world for the better, and brought new perspectives to the study of nature.

The Renaissance artist Raphael is known for his extraordinary frescoes, his sublime Madonnas, devotional altarpieces, architectural designs, and his inventive prints and tapestries. It was his use of ancient Roman models – classical sculptures, reliefs and paintings – that formed his much admired classical style, and influenced the styles of many later artists.In Raphael and the Antique Claudia La Malfa gives a full account of Raphael’s prodigious career, from central Italy when he was 17 years old, to Perugia, Siena and Florence, where he first met with Leonardo and Michelangelo, to Rome where he became one of the most feted artists of the Renaissance. This book focuses and highlights Raphael’s re-invention of classical models, his draughtsmanship and his concept of art, which he pursued and was still striving to perfect at the time of his death aged only 37, in 1520.

Immensely skillful and inventive, Hans Holbein moulded his approach to art-making during a period of dramatic transformation in European society and culture: the emergence of humanism, the impact of the Reformation on religious life and the effects of new scientific discoveries. Most people have encountered Holbein’s work – Henry VIII was forever defined for posterity by his memorable portrait – but little is widely known about the artist himself.This overview of Holbein looks at his art through the changes in the world around him. Offering insightful and often surprising new interpretations of visual and historical sources that have rarely been addressed, Jeanne Nuechterlein reconstructs what we know of the life of this elusive figure, illuminating the complexity of his world and the images he generated.

The Danish aristocrat and astronomer Tycho Brahe personified the inventive vitality of Renaissance life in the sixteenth century. Brahe lost his nose in a student duel, wrote Latin poetry and built one of the most astonishing villas of the period, as well as the observatory Uraniborg, while virtually inventing team research and establishing the fundamental rules of empirical science.This illustrated biography presents a new and dynamic view of Tycho’s life, reassessing his gradual separation of astrology from astronomy, and his key relationships with Johannes Kepler, his sister, Sophie, and his kinsmen at the court of King Frederick II.

As one of the most innovative and enlightened painters of the early Italian Renaissance, Piero della Francesca brought space, luminosity and unparalleled subtlety to painting. In addition, Piero invented the role of the modern artist by becoming a traveller, a courtier, a geometrician, a patron and much else besides.In this nuanced account of his life and art, Machtelt Brüggen Israëls reconstructs how Piero came of age. Successfully demystifying the persistent notion of Piero’s art as enigmatic, she reveals the simple and stunning intentions behind his work.

John Donne: In the Shadow of Religion explores the life of one of the most significant figures of the English Renaissance. The book not only provides an overview of Donne’s life and work, but connects his writing and thinking to the ideas, institutions and networks that influenced him. The book shows how Donne’s faith underpinned his career, from aspirational courtier to phenomenally successful clergyman and preacher, when he became dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Donne emerges as a figure obsessed with himself, tormented by the fear that his transgressions may have condemned him to eternal damnation.This fine new account uses Donne’s correspondence, writing and poetry to give a rounded portrait of a bold, experimental thinker, who was never afraid of taking risks that few others would have countenanced.

Peter Paul Rubens was the most inventive and prolific northern European artist of his age. This book discusses his life and work in relation to three interrelated themes: spirit, ingenuity and genius. It argues that Rubens and his reception were pivotal in the transformation of early modern ingenuity into Romantic genius. Ranging across the artist’s entire career, it explores Rubens’s engagement with these themes in his art and biography. The book looks at Rubens’s forays into altarpiece painting in Italy as well as his collaborations with fellow artists in his hometown of Antwerp, and his complex relationship with the spirit of pleasure. It concludes with his late landscapes in connection to genius loci, the spirit of the place.

Erasmus of Rotterdam came from an obscure background and through remarkable perseverance, skill, and vision became a powerful intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was known for his vigorous opposition to war, intolerance and hypocrisy, and at the same time for an irony and subtlety that could confuse his friends as well as his opponents. His ideas influenced the rise of the Reformation and had a huge impact on the humanities, and that continues to today. This book shows how an independent textual scholar was able, by the power of the printing press and his own wits, to attain both fame and notoriety. Erasmus of Rotterdam is the first popular biography in English in twenty years and is based on the immense amount of recent scholarship devoted to Erasmus.

One of the most brilliant and original authors and architects of the entire Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti had an output that encompassed engineering, surveying, cryptography, poetry, humour, political commentary and more. He employed irony, satire and playful allusion in his written works, and developed a sophisticated approach to architecture that combined the ancient and modern. Born into the Florentine elite, Alberti was nonetheless disadvantaged owing to exile and illegitimacy. As a result, he became an acute analyst of the social institutions of his time, as well as a profoundly existential writer who was intensely interested in the human condition.This new account explores Alberti’s life and works, examining how his personal and intellectual preoccupations continually pushed him to engage with an ever-broader spectrum of Renaissance culture.

Painter, poet and actor Salvator Rosa was one of the most engaging and charismatic personalities of seventeenth-century Italy. Although a gifted landscape painter, he longed to be seen as the pre-eminent philosopher-painter of his age. This new account traces Rosa’s strategies of self-promotion, and his creation of a new kind of audience for his art. The book describes the startling novelty of his subject-matter – witchcraft and divination, as well as prophecies, natural magic and dark violence – and his early exploration of a nascent aesthetic of the sublime.Salvator Rosa shows how the artist, in a series of remarkable works, responded to new movements in thought and feeling, creating images that spoke to the deepest concerns of his age.

The first monograph in a generation, and the first study in English in over eighty years, this book presents a new understanding of the Renaissance master-artist Filippino Lippi. Celebrated as ‘ingenious’ by Vasari in 1550, Filippino was highly praised and influential, then fell out of favour and was forgotten for centuries. He was rediscovered by the poet Swinburne, who in 1868 celebrated the painter’s ‘inventive enjoyment and indefatigable fancy’. In a similar spirit, this volume explores Filippino’s creativity in solving artistic problems. If a Roman cardinal requested a classically inspired work, or a Florentine humanist wanted to dazzle observers with his antiquarian interests, Filippino had the sensitivity to understand these diverse needs and express them with highly original solutions.

‘Machiavellian’ can signify duplicity and amorality in politics, but Machiavelli himself is far more complex than this cliché. A high-ranking Florentine government official and prolific writer of hugely influential political, military and historical works, Machiavelli was also a vernacular poet, first-rank dramatist and religious radical, rejecting not only the contemporary Catholic Church but Christianity itself. From champion of Florentine popular republicanism to political radical to conservative, Robert Black explores the many faces of the man described as the father of modern political philosophy and political science.

Italian poet Francesco Petrarca is widely considered one of the fathers of the modern Italian language. This is the first general account of Petrarch’s life and work in English in over thirty years, and considers how his reputation and identity have changed over the centuries. The book examines Petrarch’s unrequited love for his poetic muse, Laura, the experiences of his university years, his anti-institutional attitude and his endless focus on himself. Drawing on Petrarch’s Italian and Latin writings, this is a revealing portrait of a paradoxical figure: a man of mystique, historical importance and endless fascination.

16th-century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder redefined how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critical eye to mankind’s labours and pleasures, its foibles and rituals of daily life. Portraying landscapes, peasant life and biblical scenes in startling detail, Bruegel questioned how well we really know ourselves and also how we know, or visually read, others.This superbly illustrated volume, now in paperback, examines how Bruegel’s art and ideas enabled people to ponder what it meant to be human. It will appeal to all those interested in art and philosophy, the Renaissance and the painting of the Dutch Golden Age.

This book provides an overview of the life and work of the scandalous Renaissance writer Thomas Nashe (1567–c. 1600), perhaps the only English author whose work led to the closure of theatres and the widespread banning of printed books. Nashe was famous for writing the scurrilous novel The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), but as Andrew Hadfield shows, there was much more to his career than this brilliant work. Nashe played a vital role in establishing English Renaissance theatre, collaborating with Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. He was involved in religious controversies; wrote pornographic poetry; reflected on the terrifying impact of the plague on London; and wrote intricate sentences that saw him celebrated as one of the finest prose stylists of the age.

The Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was a prolific writer, polymath and prodigious collector who amassed the largest collection of naturalia in sixteenth-century Europe, as well as hundreds of coloured drawings detailing them. Many of these drawings found their way into his illustrated publications, most of which were published posthumously.This book provides a concise yet comprehensive portrait of Aldrovandi, paying particular attention to two aspects: the role that the newly discovered continent of America played in his research interests, and his study of abnormalities of physiological development in organisms. Peter Mason gives insight into Aldrovandi’s fascinating life, his early work on antiquities, his natural history and other collecting activities, his network of correspondents and patrons, and the influence and legacy of his collection and publications.

Jan van Eyck was one of the most inventive and influential artists in the entire European tradition. The phenomenal realism of his paintings, now six centuries old, still astounds observers in a world accustomed to high-resolution images. But other dimensions of his work are just as original and absorbing. Unlike any earlier artist, Van Eyck infused his paintings with himself. In addition to portraying, reflecting and implying his own presence in a variety of works, he also introduced his voice, hand and mind in an array of inscriptions, signatures and even a personal motto. Incorporating a wealth of new research and recent discoveries within a fresh exploration of the paintings themselves, this book reveals how profoundly Jan van Eyck transformed the very idea of what an artist could be.

The Italian Renaissance is conventionally thought of as the historical period that bore witness to the rise of the individual. Yet no other artist of the time begins to compare with Albrecht Dürer in terms of the almost obsessive interest he displayed in depicting his life, his dreams and his surroundings in his art.Exploring Dürer’s life and times, the natural world in his work, and his studies, travel and influences, David Ekserdjian closely examines Dürer’s paintings, as well as his drawings and prints, which are often comparatively overlooked. Revealing Dürer’s remarkable, unique status, both in his own time and across the centuries, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in Renaissance or northern European art.

In his lifetime Hieronymus Bosch was already famous for his fantastic, unearthly creations. Today his name has become synonymous with the eerie, infernal and macabre. Bosch’s enigmatic paintings have resulted in numerous interpretations; some tried to understand his visual worlds through esoteric means, while others attempted to decode them through psychology and psychoanalysis. Now in paperback, Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares traces the career of a painter who worked for the highest aristocratic and courtly circles, and explains Bosch’s paintings against the background of contemporary culture and society.

The singular Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522) led a deliberately idiosyncratic life: he chose to live in squalor and ate nothing but boiled eggs, which, according to Vasari’s famous biography, he cooked fifty at a time in water used to prepare his painting glue.Sarah Blake McHam delves into the social, cultural and literary backdrops of this artist’s life. She shows how Piero became the favourite of sophisticated patrons, who were eager to decorate their residences with pagan Greco-Roman mythological subjects. Piero’s vividly imagined portrayals led to his cornering the market on these commissions. At the same time his more orthodox, but never ordinary, religious altarpieces and private devotional paintings won the admiration of leading Florentine families. This original, richly illustrated account explores the fascinating life of one of Renaissance Italy’s most intriguing figures.

This captivating biography brings Lucas Cranach the Elder into the spotlight for the twenty-first century. The illuminating narrative unveils an artist whose vision transcended personal brilliance as he sought to elevate a nascent nation and foster a sense of community with his work. Perhaps Cranach’s most remarkable achievement lay in forging a robust Lutheran community, endowed with a resounding message of salvation.Using prints, the prevailing medium of mass communication, and multiple versions of paintings, he developed an intricate and appealing symbolism that resonated with the populace in early modern Germany. Along with Cranach’s more well-known works, Jennifer Nelson explores his extensive repertoire of female nudes, and shows how these seductive artworks not only tantalized his patrons but constructed a deep history of Germany’s notional connections with ancient Greece and Rome.

In 1543 the young and ambitious physician Andreas Vesalius published what became the most famous book in the history of medicine, On the Fabric of the Human Body. While we tend to think of dissection as a form of destroying the body, Vesalius believed that it helped establish how the human body was constructed. Sachiko Kusukawa shows how Vesalius’s book presented this view through innovative use of Renaissance art, printing technology and the classical tradition. She replaces the conventional view of Vesalius as a proto-modern, anti-authoritarian father of anatomy with a more nuanced account of how Vesalius exploited cultural and technological developments to create an astounding, beautiful book that propelled him to the post of imperial physician and secured his enduring fame.