Tapestries--the art form of kings--were a principal tool used by powerful Renaissance rulers to convey their wealth and might. From 1460 to 1560, courts and churches lavished vast sums on costly weavings in silk and gold thread from designs by leading artists. In this lavishly illustrated book, the first major survey of tapestry production of this period, contributors analyze some of these & beautiful tapestries, examine the stylistic and technical development of tapestry production in the Low Countries, France, and Italy during the Renaissance, and discuss the contribution that the medium made to art, liturgy, and propaganda of the day.
A microcosm of Renaissance Italy is presented through this family history of the Gonzaga of Mantau--one of the reigning families of the Renaissance.--Amazon.com.
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, drawings, and architectural treatises. Though only forty-eight when he died, Coecke was one of the greatest Netherlandish artists of the sixteenth century. His paintings and drawings, initially wrought in the style of the Antwerp Mannerists, evolved through his enthusiastic response to Italian Renaissance design, and influenced generations of artists in his wake. This comprehensive study explores Coecke’s stylistic development, as well as his substantial contribution to the body of great Renaissance art in Flanders. Featuring twenty monumental tapestries, along with many of their cartoons and preparatory sketches, plus seven paintings, additional drawings, and printed matter—many of them newly photographed for this volume—Grand Design provides a thorough reappraisal of Coecke’s work, amply justifying the high regard in which Coecke’s work was held and its wide dissemination long after his death.
First English translation of a late fifteenth century manuscript containing instructions for designing a medieval tapestry - the only such to survive. The "Troyes Mémoire", a late fifteenth-century manuscript preserved in the archives of the town of Troyes, France, is the sole surviving example of the written instructions used in designing tapestries during the Middle Ages. It is unique in its presentation of detailed information on how patrons and church officials communicated complex iconographic material to the medieval artists commissioned to paint cartoons for tapestries. It is here translated intoEnglish for the first time, with full introduction and extensive notes. The volume also includes a translation of another richly informative document from medieval Troyes: the Account Books of the Church of Sainte-Madeleine, whichintroduces us to the actual people who worked together, between 1416 and 1430, to produce a set of tapestries for the town's oldest church. They shed important new light on an era when tapestry represented a supreme form of art. Tina Kane is Conservator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Textile Conservation.
Like a particularly good detective story, this richly textured book follows tantalizing clues in its hunt for a group of missing artistic masterpieces. Susan Bell recounts both her long search for a series of sixteenth-century tapestries that celebrated women and her efforts to understand their meaning for Queen Elizabeth I of England and the other powerful women who owned them. Opening a new window on the lives of noblewomen in the Renaissance, the brilliantly colored tapestries that were the ultimate artistic luxury of the day, and the popular and influential fourteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, Bell pursues a compelling tale that moves from centuries past to today. The tapestries around which this story revolves are linked to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies (1405), orginally published six hundred years ago in 1405. The book is a tribute to women that honors two hundred female warriors, scientists, queens, philosophers, and builders of cities. Though twenty-five manuscripts of the City of Ladies still exist, references to tapestries based on the book are elusive. Bell takes us along as she tracks down records of six sets of tapestries whose owners included Elizabeth I of England; Margaret of Austria; and Anne of Brittany, Queen of France. Bell examines the intriguing details of these women's lives—their arranged marriages, their power, their affairs of state—asking what interest they had in owning these particular tapestries. Could the tapestries have represented their thinking? As she reveals the historical, linguistic, and cultural aspects of this unique story, Bell also gives a fascinating account of medieval and early-Renaissance tapestry production and of Christine de Pizan's remarkable life and legacy.
"This lavishly illustrated book presents a rich variety of European tapestries from the Art Institute of Chicago. These exquisite examples of the art of tapestry weaving include medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque works manufactured at many of the foremost workshops in the major centers of production. Among the pieces discussed are The Annunciation, a Renaissance masterpiece designed by an artist in the circle of Andrea Mantegna; The Story of Caesar and Cleopatra, a magnificent series of fourteen tapestries now attributed with certainty to Justus van Egmont, who worked in Rubens's studio; Autumn and Winter, based on designs by Charles Le Bron; and The Elephant, woven after a design by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. An international team of scholars explains the history of this previously unpublished collection and offers new designer and workshop attributions, design and source identifications, and provenance information." --Book Jacket.
A study of the condition, subject, design, manufacture, ownership, and exhibitions for each tapestry or set of tapestries in the Museum's medieval tapestry collection. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Campbell sheds light on Tudor political and artistic culture and the court's response to Renaissance aesthetic ideals. He challenges the predominantly text-driven histories of the period and offers a fresh perspective on the life of Henry VIII"--OCLC
"Publisdhed in conjuntion with the exhibition: Magnificenza! the Medici, Michelangelo, & the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (In Italy, L'Ombra del genio: Michelangelo e l'arte a Firenze, 1538-1631) ..."--Title page verso.
Harvard professor Zerner focuses on one of the most dynamic and flamboyant periods in art history, the Renaissance in France. Renaissance Art in France explains how the school of Fontainebleau, in its exaggerated elegance and complex fantasies, combined French forms of medieval origin with the Italianate decorative style. It quickly came to represent a high point in the development of Mannerism and laid the groundwork for the invention of French Classicism. The volume showcases artists who excelled in the fine arts such as court portraitist François Clouet and sculptor Jean Goujon, as well as those working in decorative arts that also flourished during this period: tapestry, stained-glass windows, printmaking, and metalwork. With beautiful illustrations and an accessible text, it is all summed up here in one compact volume.
