"Perhaps more than any other painter, Sandro Botticelli (about 1445-1510) exemplifies the artistic achievement of Renaissance Florence in the 15th century. "Botticelli and the Search for the Divine," organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary and Italy's Metamorfosi Associazione Culturale, explores the dramatic changes in the artist's style and subject matter--from poetic depictions of classical gods and goddesses to austere sacred themes--reflecting the shifting political and religious climate of Florence during his lifetime."--Exhibition website.
The recent exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli around the world show, more than ever, the significant and continued debate about the artist. Botticelli Past and Present engages with this debate. The book comprises four thematic parts, spanning four centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception from the fifteenth century. Each part comprises a number of essays and includes a short introduction which positions them within the wider scholarly literature on Botticelli. The parts are organised chronologically beginning with discussion of the artist and his working practice in his own time, moving onto the progressive rediscovery of his work from the late eighteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, through to his enduring impact on contemporary art and design. Expertly written by researchers and eminent art historians and richly illustrated throughout, the broad range of essays in this book make a valuable contribution to Botticelli studies.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the greatest European writers, whose untrammelled imaginative capacity was matched by a huge base in embracing the science of his era. His texts also paint compelling visual images. In Visions of Heaven, renowned scholar Martin Kemp investigates Dante's supreme vision of divine light and its implications for the visual artists who were the inheritors of Dante's vision. The whole book may be regarded as a new Paragone (comparison), the debate that began in the Renaissance about which of the arts is superior. Dante's ravishing accounts of divine light set painters the severest challenge, which took them centuries to meet. A major theme running through Dante's Divine Comedy, particularly in its third book, the Paradiso, centres on Dante's acts of seeing (conducted according to optical rules with respect to the kind of visual experience that can be accomplished on earth) and the overwhelming of Dante's earthly senses by heavenly light, which does not obey his rules of earthly optics. The repeated blinding of Dante by excessive light sets the tone for artists' portrayal of unseeable brightness.
Cherished for their linear grace, the divine and mythological masterpieces of Botticelli are the epitome of the golden age of Florentine art. Delphi’s Masters of Art Series presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing digital readers to explore the works of great artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents Botticelli’s complete works in beautiful detail, with concise introductions, hundreds of high quality images and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * The complete paintings of Botticelli — over 120 paintings, fully indexed and arranged in chronological and alphabetical order * Includes reproductions of rare works * Features a special ‘Highlights’ section, with concise introductions to the masterpieces, giving valuable contextual information * Enlarged ‘Detail’ images, allowing you to explore Botticelli’s celebrated works in detail, as featured in traditional art books * Hundreds of images in stunning colour – highly recommended for viewing on tablets and smart phones or as a valuable reference tool on more conventional eReaders * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the complete paintings * Easily locate the paintings you want to view * Includes Botticelli's drawings * Features three bonus biographies, including Vasari’s original work - discover Botticelli's artistic life * Scholarly ordering of plates into chronological order Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting e-Art books CONTENTS: The Highlights PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN MADONNA OF THE ROSE GARDEN PORTRAIT OF A MAN WITH A MEDAL OF COSIMO THE ELDER PORTRAIT OF ESMERALDA BRANDINI ST. SEBASTIAN ADORATION OF THE MAGI TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST MAGNIFICAT MADONNA PRIMAVERA MADONNA OF THE BOOK VENUS AND MARS PALLAS AND THE CENTAUR PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN, 1484 THE BIRTH OF VENUS MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE CESTELLO ANNUNCIATION CALUMNY OF APELLES THE STORY OF VIRGINIA THE MYSTICAL NATIVITY The Paintings THE COMPLETE PAINTINGS ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PAINTINGS The Drawings LIST OF DRAWINGS The Biographies LIFE OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI by Giorgio Vasari BOTTICELLI by Henry Bryan Binns BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: SANDRO BOTTICELLI by Sir Sidney Colvin Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles
A revealing look at the commercial strategy and diverse output of this canonical Renaissance artist. In this vivid account, Ana Debenedetti reexamines the life and work of Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli through a novel lens: his business acumen. Focusing on the organization of Botticelli’s workshop and the commercial strategies he devised to make his way in Florence’s very competitive art market, Debenedetti looks with fresh eyes at the remarkable career and output of this pivotal artist within the wider context of Florentine society and culture. Uniquely, Debenedetti evaluates Botticelli’s celebrated works, like The Birth of Venus, alongside less familiar forms such as tapestry and embroidery, showing the breadth of the artist’s oeuvre and his talent as a designer across media.
This is the first mainstream book to look at the whole range of astrological rhythms, including the planetary retrogrades and eclipses as well as the monthly moon cycle, in order to achieve success and a more contented and naturally flowing life. This is the first-ever mainstream guide to working with the astrological cycles of the Universe. It will allow you to plan ahead and achieve more success in your projects, by taking risks at certain times and avoiding them at others, and also enable you to live more fully and joyfully, flowing with the natural rhythms of life. Accessible to complete beginners as well as offering more complex insights to those who already practise astrology, Planetology is packed full of hands-on projects to help readers work with Mercury, Venus, Mars and the sun and moon, each project with three levels of increasingly complex tasks that are designed to draw readers up to mastery level. At the book's core is Annie Botticelli's ASTRO system, which enables readers to align with each planet's motion through: Awareness (projects to work with each planet); Strategy (how to plan ahead for each cycle); Techniques (exercises that range from tapping to mineral soaks and detoxes to mantras); Remedies (such as crystals and homeopathy, all tuned into the planet under discussion); and Openness to unexpected, perhaps unwanted outcomes brought to you by Divine plan. These techniques, such as prayer and meditation, allow you to be receptive to the great universal flow that supersedes any one planetary cycle.
Consummate painter, draftsman, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was celebrated for his disegno, a term that embraces both drawing and conceptual design, which was considered in the Renaissance to be the foundation of all artistic disciplines. To his contemporary Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was “the divine draftsman and designer” whose work embodied the unity of the arts. Beautifully illustrated with more than 350 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and architectural views, this book establishes the centrality of disegno to Michelangelo’s work. Carmen C. Bambach presents a comprehensive and engaging narrative of the artist’s long career in Florence and Rome, beginning with his training under the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Bertoldo and ending with his seventeen-year appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The chapters relate Michelangelo’s compositional drawings, sketches, life studies, and full-scale cartoons to his major commissions—such as the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the church of San Lorenzo and its New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) in Florence, and Saint Peter’s—offering fresh insights into his creative process. Also explored are Michelangelo’s influential role as a master and teacher of disegno, his literary and spiritual interests, and the virtuoso drawings he made as gifts for intimate friends, such as the nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, the marchesa of Pescara. Complementing Bambach’s text are thematic essays by leading authorities on the art of Michelangelo. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and richly illustrated, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of this timeless artist.
In this volume, Rebekah Compton offers the first survey of Venus in the art, culture, and governance of Florence from 1300 to 1600. Organized chronologically, each of the six chapters investigates one of the goddess's alluring attributes – her golden splendor, rosy-hued complexion, enchanting fashions, green gardens, erotic anatomy, and gifts from the sea. By examining these attributes in the context of the visual arts, Compton uncovers an array of materials and techniques employed by artists, patrons, rulers, and lovers to manifest Venusian virtues. Her book explores technical art history in the context of love's protean iconography, showing how different discourses and disciplines can interact in the creation and reception of art. Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence offers new insights on sight, seduction, and desire, as well as concepts of gender, sexuality, and viewership from both male and female perspectives in the early modern era.
"For nearly four decades in the sixteenth century, the careers of Renaissance Venice's three greatest painters - Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese - overlapped, encouraging mutual influences and bitter rivalries that changed the course of art history. Venice was then among Europe's richest cities, and its plentiful commissions fostered an exceptionally fertile and innovative climate. In this environment, the three artists - brilliant, ambitious, and fiercely competitive - vied with each other for primacy, deploying the new combination of oil on canvas, with its unique expressive possibilities, and such new approaches as a personal and identifiable signature touch. They also pioneered the use of easel painting, a newly portable format that allowed for unprecedented fame in their lifetimes. With more than 160 stunning examples by the three masters and their contemporaries, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese elucidates the technical and aesthetic innovations that helped define the "Venetian style"--Characterized by loose technique. rich coloring, and often sensual subject matter - as well as the social, political, and economic context in which it flourished. Essays range from examinations of new approaches to studies of such crucial institutions as state commissions and the private patronage system. Most of all, by concentrating on the lives and careers of Venice's three greatest painters, the volume presents a vibrant human portrait - one brimming with intense competition, one-upmanship, humor, and passion."--Jacket.
