Product Description

Renaissance Art Reconsidered showcases the aesthetic principles and the workaday practices guiding daily life through these years of extraordinary human achievement.

• A major new anthology, bringing to life the places, works, media, and issues that define Renaissance art
  
• Ideal for use on Renaissance studies courses and for reference by students of art history
  
• Moves beyond the borders of Italy to consider European, Mediterranean, and post Byzantine art, widening the traditional focus of Renaissance art
  
• Includes letters, treatises, contracts, inventories, and other public documents, many of which are translated into English for the first time in this volume
  
• Showcases the aesthetic principles and the workaday practices guiding daily life through these years of extraordinary human achievement, providing crucial insight into the art and the context in which it was produced.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77135 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

Review
“The text is well written and informative without being overly technical or employing excessive terminology.” (Association of Art Historians2009)

“Renaissance Art Reconsidered is rich in detail and broad in scope, but its most important accomplishment is its conveyance of individual attitudes on the great value placed on all forms of art. It provides a view of what was expected both throughout the creative process and in the end result. This anthology gives us insight into the needs and problems of the creative process of the artists, patrons, and viewers of the Renaissance.” (Sixteenth Century Journal, Winter 2008)

From the Back Cover
Renaissance Art Reconsidered: An Anthology of Primary Sources offers an intimate glimpse into the reality of making art, and the geographical, material and theoretical factors that shaped artistic production between 1400 and 1530. This book widens the traditional Italian focus of Renaissance art history, considering texts from northern Europe and the Mediterranean alongside texts relating to Italian art. Unprecedented in its range, this collection brings together a wide variety of contracts, extracts from treatises, letters, diaries, wills and other important documents, many of which are translated into English for the first time, to provide crucial insight into the art and the context in which it was produced.

About the Author
Carol M. Richardson is Lecturer in the History of Art Department at The Open University. She is the author of Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Early Renaissance (1400–1480) (2007).

Kim W. Woods is Lecturer in the History of Art Department at The Open University. She is the author of Imported Images (2007).

Michael W. Franklin is Course Administrator at The Open University.

Customer Reviews

A very valuable (teaching and learning) tool
This volume cleverly allows everyone interested in the Renaissance to go beyond textbooks, readers and other kind of monographies to read translated extracts from original Renaissance period documents. Since texts are grouped in thematic ensemble and each text is presented in a brief contextual introduction, this ensemble of primary documents should be of great value to teachers and students at various levels, and possibly in different disciplines.

Possible objectives could be not only the furthering of Renaissance understanding, but also the acquisition of a critical approach towards Renaissance secondary sources, and the analysis of the art historical discourse on the period, under the light provided by these original sources.