History of Italian Renaissance art Painting Sculpture Architecture - Hardcover

Hartt, Frederick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500235104 ISBN 13: 9780500235102

Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1987

Synopsis

For survey courses in Italian Renaissance art.

 

A broad survey of art and architecture in Italy between c. 1250 and 1600, this book approaches the works from the point of view of the artist as individual creator and as an expression of the city within which the artist was working.

 

History of Italian Renaissance Art, Seventh Edition, brings you an updated understanding of this pivotal period as it incorporates new research and current art historical thinking, while also maintaining the integrity of the story that Frederick Hartt first told so enthusiastically many years ago. Choosing to retain Frederick Hartt's traditional framework, David Wilkins' incisive revisions keep the book fresh and up-to-date.

About this title

About the Author:

The late Frederick Hartt was one of the most distinguished art historians of the twentieth century. A student of Berenson, Schapiro, and Friedlaender, he taught for more than fifty years, influencing generations of Renaissance scholars. At the time of his death he was Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Virginia. He was a Knight of the Crown of Italy, a Knight Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, an honorary citizen of Florence, and an honorary member of the Academy of the Arts of Design, Florence, a society whose charter members included Michelangelo and the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.

 

Hartt authored, among other works, Florentine Art under Fire (1949); Botticelli (1952); Giulio Romano (1958); Love in Baroque Art (1964); The Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal (1964); three volumes on the painting, sculpture, and drawings of Michelangelo (1964, 1969, 1971); Donatello, Prophet of Modern Vision (1974); Michelangelo's Three Pietąs (1975); and the monumental Art: A History o f Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, now in its fourth edition (1993).

 

David G . Wilkins is professor emeritus of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and former chair of the department. He has also served on the faculties of the University of Michigan in Florence and the Semester at Sea Program. He is author of Donatello (1984, with Bonnie A. Bennett); Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (1985); The Illustrated Bartsch: "Pre-Rembrandt Etchers," vol. 53 (1985, with Kahren Arbitman); A History o f the Duquesne Club (1989, with Mark Brown and Lu Donnelly); Art Past/Art Present, a broad survey of the history of art (fifth edition, 2005, with Bernard Schultz and Katheryn M. Linduff); and The Art of the Duquesne Club (2001). He was the revising author for the fourth and fifth editions of History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1994, 2003) and co-editor of The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1996, with Rebecca L. Wilkins) and Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (2001 with Sheryl E. Reiss). He was editor of The Collins Big Book of Art (2005).  In 2005 he also received the College Art Association’s national award for Distinguished Teaching in Art History.

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

When Frederick Hartt's History o f Italian Renaissance Art was first published, more than thirty years ago, it was an epoch-making achievement. This large volume with its dozens of color plates presented for the reader the story of Italian Renaissance art as it was loved, appreciated, and understood by one of the great scholars of the period. Before his death in 1991, Frederick Hartt was able to revise the book for two later editions. In 1994 a fourth edition offered minor revisions to Hartt's text and illustrations in the light of new discoveries and the restoration of the Sistine Chapel and other works. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this new edition has been undertaken to update and enhance Hartt's original vision. I think he would have been especially pleased with our ability to offer color illustrations throughout the book, uniting the images with the text in a manner not possible before.

As I set about updating Hartt's vision, my intent was to maintain the integrity of the story that he had first told so enthusiastically many years ago. The organization of the text as he planned it has been retained, and many of the works illustrated are the same. The new works added here were chosen to expand and enhance Hartt's original vision.

The history of Italian Renaissance art is a vast and complex subject that could be told in a number of ways. Frederick Harrt's view was a traditional one that had its roots in the first history of Renaissance art, written by Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth century. Like Vasari, Hartt emphasized the art that was created in Florence, Rome, Siena, and Venice. While art historians have discovered much that is interesting and important in the art created in Naples, Milan, Ferrara, and other centers during the Renaissance, to include this material in extensive detail would have detracted from Hartt's thesis that Renaissance art evolved in Florence and had its most fulfilling later development in Rome, Siena, and Venice. His belief that each of these cities evolved a unique style was the basis for his organization; as such, chapters were devoted to the developments in each center. Such an approach remains appropriate, for the story of each city's art has an internal integrity that is based on its own independent political and social structure and development.

Hartt's model, Vasari's Lives of the Artists, was based on an interest in understanding each artist as a creative individual. While such a biographical and focused approach is still rewarding, it means that each artist is isolated and discussed independently. This organization provides readers with a strong sense of the personality and artistic development of each individual, while at the same time requiring that they re-create the original, overlapping chronology of events and works.

While choosing to maintain Harrt's traditional framework, I have at the same time introduced a number of changes. Illustrations have been deleted to make way for other works that enrich our understanding of the diversity of the period. While Hartt emphasized religious art, I have added a number of secular works. Also new is a series of portraits of significant patrons and personalities of the period. Extracts from Renaissance texts have been added to enhance the historical context. The emphasis throughout, however, remains as Hartt envisioned it—on the work of art and on the individual creator rather than on the broader social and historical context within which these works were created.

One of Harrt's goals was to help the reader see the works of art as he saw them through the use of evocative and poetic language. As an example of his descriptive powers, note how quickly he captured the effect of Parmigianino's Vision of St. Jerome (see fig. 18.54): "In the darkness that veils any possibility of establishing spatial relationships, rays of light flash from the Madonna's head and shoulders like shards of ice." Again and again his words send the reader back for another, closer look at the work of art.

My own love for this period was established when I first visited Florence in 1963 in preparation for a position at the University of New Hampshire. Although at the time I thought of myself as a medievalist in training, my job required that I teach a full semester course on Italian Renaissance art. As a result I devoted extra time to Italy and Renaissance art; when I left Florence that summer, I knew that I would be going back. I owe a special debt to all my teachers at the University of Michigan: Ludovico Borgo, Eleanor Collins, Marvin Eisenberg, Ilene Forsyth, Oleg Grabar, Victor Meisel, Clifton Olds, James Snyder, Harold Wethey, and Nathan Whitman.

In preparing this edition I want to thank a number of individuals for their assistance, including my family—Ann Thomas Wilkins, Rebecca Wilkins, Katherine Wilkins, Chris Colborn, Tyler Jennings—and past and present students and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh—Bonnie Apgar Bennett, Maria Carolina Carrasco, Jennifer Craven, Roger Crum, Holly Ginchereau, Ann Sutherland Harris, Ray Anne Lockard, Sarah Cameron Loyd, Erin Marr, Stacey Mitchell, Elizabeth Prince, Azar Rejaie, David Rigo, Jane Vadnal, and Jim Wilkinson. I profited, as always, from the thoughtful and enthusiastic assistance of the excellent staff at Harry N. Abrams, Inc., including Julia Moore, head of the textbooks division, my editor and project manager for this revision, Cynthia Henthorn, and Julia Chmaj, Holly Jennings, and Sabine Rogers for editorial; John Crowley for picture research; and former publisher Mark Magowan for his inspired support. Much appreciation also goes to Diana Gongora, Alia Mansoori, Doria Romero, and David Savage for picture research and permissions; John McKenna for illustration; Adrian Kitzinger for map design; and the staff of BTD, Inc., Beth Tondreau, Erica Harrison, Lorie Pagnozzi, and Mia Risberg for design. My hearty thanks to all. Errors and omissions are, as always, my responsibility alone.

DAVID G. WILKINS
Silver Lake, New Hampshire, December 2001

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0500235104
• ISBN 13: 9780500235102
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 704