The Italian Renaissance is a pivotal episode in the history of Western culture. Artists such as Masaccio, Donatello, and Fra Angelico created some of the most influential and exciting works in a variety of artistic fields at this time. Evelyn Welch presents a fresh picture of this period in the light of new scholarship and by recreating the experience of contemporary Italians - the patrons, the viewing public and the artists. The book discusses a wide range of works from across Italy, examines the issues of materials, workshop practices and artist-patron relationships, and explores the ways in which visual imagery related to contemporary sexual, social and political behaviour.

The heavenly grace and human grandeur of a supreme Renaissance master In art history, we tend to be on first name terms only with the most revered of masters. The Renaissance painter and architect Raphael Santi (1483–1520) is one such star. The man we call simply Raphael has for centuries been hailed as a supreme Renaissance artist. For some, he even outstrips his equally famous, equally first-named, contemporaries, Leonardo and Michelangelo. From 1500 to 1508, Raphael worked throughout central Italy, particularly in Florence where he secured his reputation as a painter of portraits and beautifully rendered Madonnas, archetypical icons within the Catholic faith. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II and later embarked on an ambitious mural scheme for the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. Within this room, Raphael’s The School of Athens is considered a paradigm of the High Renaissance, merging Classical philosophy with perfected perspectival space, animated figures, and a composition of majestic balance. This essential introduction explores how in just two decades of work, Raphael painted his way to legendary greatness. With highlights from his prolific output, it presents the mastery of figures and forms that secured his place not only in the trinity of Renaissance luminaries but also among the most esteemed artists of all time.

The garden is an expression of our ability to make nature into art. This pocket-sized book of the "New Horizons" series examines the evolution of the garden over more than 2000 years, exploring some of the most beautiful gardens in the world, from antiquity, medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy, classical France, 18th-century England and the modern day.

1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening.Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses' chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life - and all those who love him back home in London - forever.Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, Still Life is a novel about beauty, love, family and friendship.

1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening.Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses' chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life - and all those who love him back home in London - forever.Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, Still Life is a novel about beauty, love, family and friendship.

Art as we know it today would not exist without the Renaissance. Widely considered the most influential phenomenon in European art, architecture, literature, and science, the movement revolutionized the Western conception of reality and heralded the emergence of modernity out of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance first gained momentum in Italy, at the end of the 14th century, spreading across Europe over the course of the next centuries, with dynamic epicenters in Florence, the Low Countries, and Germany. The movement found its intellectual basis in humanism, derived from classical Greek philosophy. Across art, science, literature, and politics, proponents of the Renaissance avowed that man was the "measure of all things" and determined to replace scholastic medieval confines with a revival of antiquity. Under the influence of humanism, artists advanced anatomy and geometry to reach new feats of figurative accuracy and revolutionize renderings of perspective to reflect the human experience of place in space. In Flemish painting, artists such as Bruegel brought new techniques and an everyday sensibility to landscapes and still lifes while in Germany, Durer and Cranach pioneered an unprecedented drama and psychology in woodcut and engraving. From Florence to Nuremberg, Venice to Bruges, this essential introduction in TASCHEN's Basic Art series provide a dependable foundation to the transformative reach and sweep of the Renaissance era. Through the movement's famed luminaries and lesser-known proponents, its social and political circumstances, and its diversions and developments over time and geography, we take in an extraordinary phenomenon, transformative centuries of change that proffered individual genius, regional variety, and a wholesale reconfiguration of seeing and representing the world. Featured artists include: Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Hieronymus Bosch, Sandro Botticelli, Pieter Brueghel, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Durer, El Greco, Matthias Grunewald, Hans Holbein the Younger, Fra Filippo Lippi, Masaccio, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, Paolo Uccello, Veronese, and Leonardo da Vinci.

From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of the families we forge and the friendships that make us. 1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses’ chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life – and all those who love him back home in London – forever. Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, Still Life is a novel about beauty, love, family and friendship.

A witty account of Waugh's time in Abyssinia as a war correspondent In 1935 Italy declared war on Abyssinia and Evelyn Waugh was sent to Addis Ababa to cover the conflict. His acerbic account of the intrigue and political machinations leading up to the crisis is coupled with amusing descriptions of the often bizarre and seldom straightforward life of a war correspondent rubbing shoulders with less-than-honest officials, Arab spies, pyjama-wearing radicals and disgruntled journalists. Witty, lucid and penetrating, Evelyn Waugh captures the dilemmas and complexities of a feudal society caught up in twentieth-century politics and confrontation.

Italian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply "Il Divino" ("the divine one"). This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration and accessible texts, we explore the artist's extraordinary figuration and celebrated style of terribilita (momentous grandeur), which allowed human and biblical drama to exist in compelling scale and fervor. Through the power hubs of Renaissance Italy, we take in his major commissions and phenomenal capacity for compositional schemes, whether the famous Medici library in Florence, or the extraordinary 500-square-meter ceiling (1508-1512) in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. From the towering David to the aching grief and faith of The Pieta and the vivid drama of the Sistine Chapel's Last Judgment, this is a succinct, dependable reference to a true giant of art history and to some of the most famous artworks in the world.

talian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply “Il Divino” (“the divine one”).This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration and accessible texts, we explore the artist’s extraordinary figuration and celebrated style of terribilita (momentous grandeur), which allowed human and biblical drama to exist in compelling scale and fervor. Through the power hubs of Renaissance Italy, we take in his major commissions and phenomenal capacity for compositional schemes, whether the famous Medici library in Florence, or the extraordinary 500-square-meter ceiling (1508–1512) in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.From the towering David to the aching grief and faith of The Pieta and the vivid drama of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment, this is a succinct, dependable reference to a true giant of art history and to some of the most famous artworks in the world.

talian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply “Il Divino” (“the divine one”).This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration and accessible texts, we explore the artist’s extraordinary figuration and celebrated style of terribilita (momentous grandeur), which allowed human and biblical drama to exist in compelling scale and fervor. Through the power hubs of Renaissance Italy, we take in his major commissions and phenomenal capacity for compositional schemes, whether the famous Medici library in Florence, or the extraordinary 500-square-meter ceiling (1508–1512) in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.From the towering David to the aching grief and faith of The Pieta and the vivid drama of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment, this is a succinct, dependable reference to a true giant of art history and to some of the most famous artworks in the world.

Germany's greatest Renaissance artist. Though most famous for his engravings, Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) was also a master painter and draftsman whose work exemplifies the spirit of German art. Durer's importance in the German High Renaissance was such that he can be considered to embody the movement entirely. His visits to Italy (where he studied most notably with Giovanni Bellini) had a profound effect on his artistic development and enabled him to combine both German and Italian influences in his work. In his later life, Durer's passion for knowledge and progress led him to research and write on the subjects of art theory and mathematics, making him not only the greatest Northern European artist of his time, but also one of its leading thinkers. This overview of Durer's entire oeuvre—covering his oil, tempera, and watercolor paintings, copper and wood engravings, and his drawings and sketches—is the perfect introduction to his work.

Florence’s world-famous Renaissance is brought to life in this anthology through the eyes of its most illustrious chroniclers. Beginning with Dante’s vision of Inferno, teeming with his Florentine enemies, to the artist Cellini’s swashbuckling adventures in High Renaissance Italy, and including the pioneering writings of Boccaccio, Ficino, Guicciardini and Vasari, this selection shows that in literature, as in art, Florence was a trailblazer. The city’s long tradition of mesmerizing foreigners is celebrated in selections from Tobias Smollet, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence and Stendhal (whose rapturous impressions gave name to ‘Stendhal syndrome’), while indigenous writers such as Curzio Malaparte and Vasco Pratolini paint a far grittier portrait of Florence under the looming cloud of Fascism and World War II. Salman Rushdie’s dazzling novel The Enchantress of Florence takes inspiration from the city’s gilded Renaissance past, while Mary McCarthy’s masterful travelogue captures a bustling 20th century market city. George Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, Iris Origo and Penelope Fitzgerald are among the other brilliant writers whose stories illuminate the many faces of this fascinating city.

In the autumn of 1502 three giants of the Renaissance period - Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli - set out on one of the most treacherous military campaigns of the period. Cesare Borgia was a ferocious military leader whose name was synonymous with brutality and whose reputation was marred with the suspicion of incest. Niccolo Machiavelli was a witty and subversive intellectual, more suited to the silken diplomacy of royal courts than the sodden encampments of a military campaign. And Leonardo da Vinci was a visionary master and the most talented military engineer in Italy. What led him to work for the monstrous Borgia? And what attracted him to the cunning Machiavelli? In his extraordinary new book acclaimed historian Paul Strathern ingeniously focuses on this improbable collusion of three iconic figures of the Italian Renaissance to unite three mighty strands of the period - war, politics and art. As each man's life unfolds, so does the Italian Renaissance.

1944. In the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier; Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered E. M. Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Evelyn's talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses' mind that will shape the trajectory of his life - and of those who love him - for decades to come.

1944. In the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier; Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered E. M. Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Evelyn's talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses' mind that will shape the trajectory of his life - and of those who love him - for decades to come.