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During the Italian Wars of 1494 to 1559, with innovations in military technology and tactics, armour began to disappear from the battlefield. Yet as field armour was retired, parade and ceremonial armour grew increasingly flamboyant. Displaced from its utilitarian function of defense but retained for symbolic uses, armour evolved in a new direction as a medium of artistic expression. Luxury armour became a chief accessory in the performance of elite male identity, coded with messages regarding the owner's social status, genealogy, and political alliances. Carolyn Springer decodes Renaissance armour as three-dimensional portraits through the case studies of three patrons of luxury armourers, Guidobaldo II della Rovere (1514-75), Charles V Habsburg (1500-58 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1519-56), and Cosimo I de'Medici (1519-74). A fascinating exposition of male self-representation, Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance explores the significance of armour in early modern Italy as both cultural artefact and symbolic form.
For the first time, the pioneering book that launched the study of art and curiosity cabinets is available in English. Julius von Schlosser’s Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance) is a seminal work in the history of art and collecting. Originally published in German in 1908, it was the first study to interpret sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of wonder as precursors to the modern museum, situating them within a history of collecting going back to Greco-Roman antiquity. In its comparative approach and broad geographical scope, Schlosser’s book introduced an interdisciplinary and global perspective to the study of ...
Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502 – 1550) was renowned throughout Renaissance Europe as a draftsman, painter, and publisher of architectural treatises. The magnificent tapestries he designed were acquired by the wealthiest clients of the day, up to and including rulers such as Emperor Charles V, King Francis I of France, King Henry VIII of England, and Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici of Tuscany. At the same time, Coecke was remarkable not only for the complexity and unparalleled quality of his tapestries, but also for his fluency in various media: this lavishly illustrated volume examines the full range of his work, from tapestry and stained-glass window designs to panel paintings, prints, dr...
The suite of forty prints published in Geneva in 1570 depicting the wars, massacres and troubles of the French Wars of Religion may have been the first picture history made in woodcuts or etchings that promised a geenral public a true view of great events of the recent past. This richly illustrated study reconstructs the gradual elaboration of this experimental work, situating it within the previously untold story of the use of the graphic arts to report the news in the fist centuries of European printmaking. Successive chapters explore the pictorial traditions that inspired the printmakers, examine how they gathered their information, assess the reliability of the scenes, and analyze the historical vision informing the series. Part 2 reproduces the full suite with commentary in double page fold-outs. Through the study of a single print series, lost chapters in the history of jorunalism, of the graphic arts, and of Protestant historical consciousness re-emerge.
By providing precise and accurate examples placed and scrutinized in their historical context, Art and Faith in Tridentine Spain (1545-1690) explains how painting, sculpture, and sacred space were able to convey and accomplish the dogmatic decisions and the spiritual message of the Council of Trent. Beyond the Decree on the Holy Images, it is to the letter and to the spirit of all dogmatic Canons that post-Council art refers. From the 1500s to the 1680s Counter-Reformist art became a valuable and effective arm of the Church of Rome.
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in Early Modern Festivals. These spectacles articulated the self-image of ruling elites and played out the tensions of the diverse social strata. Responding to the growing academic interest in festivals this volume focuses on the early modern Iberian world, in particular the spectacles staged by and for the Spanish Habsburgs. The study of early modern Iberian festival culture in Europe and the wider world is surprisingly limited compared to the published works devoted to other kingdoms at the time. There is a clear need for scholarly publications to examine festivals as a vehicle for the presence of Spanish culture beyond territorial bou...
Baroque art flourished in seventeenth-century Seville during a tumultuous period of economic decline, social conflict, and natural disasters. This volume explores the patronage that fueled this frenzy of religious artistic and architectural activity and the lasting effects it had on the city and its citizens. Amanda Wunder investigates the great public projects of sacred artwork that were originally conceived as medios divinos—divine solutions to the problems that plagued Seville. These commissions included new polychromed wooden sculptures and richly embroidered clothing for venerable old images, gilded altarpieces and monumental paintings for church interiors, elaborate ephemeral decorat...