The Panorama of the Renaissance - Hardcover

Aston, Margaret (ed.)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810937042 ISBN 13: 9780810937048

Publisher: Abrams, 1996

Synopsis

An illustrated survey presents the entire epoch of the Renaissance, including government, science, religion, art, daily life, exploration, and learning

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Aston was formerly a lecturer at Cambridge University.

Reviews

As crowded, lively, and full of detail as a period tapestry, this volume offers an unusual survey of that exuberant period, making ingenious use of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of the era to recapture a real sense of life in Europe from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aston, a scholar and fellow of the British Academy, provides brief, lucid introductory remarks to a series of lengthy chapters (on humanism, religion, life and death, and art, among others) that consist of numbers of two-page spreads containing a precise paragraph on the subject at hand (the human form, eroticism, the domestic setting, the artist's mastery of space, the Sistine ceiling) and six to ten illustrations. The reproductions (1,000, with 578 in color) are crisp, and taken together, the mix of drawings, photographs of artifacts, and the period's astonishing art conveys a unique feeling for both the era's flux and its unity, the manner in which every element of society participated in remaking the world. A fresh, delightful introduction to the subject. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This lavishly illustrated survey of Renaissance art provides a clear framework for understanding the diversity of what was achieved as the modern world emerged from the Dark Ages. Stressing reinvention and recovery of classical science and culture, Aston, a fellow of the British Academy, begins, in an overview of magisterial brevity and richness, by noting that "antiquity was reborn not merely to be re-experienced or re-created; it was to be transcended." Aston is an astute scholar of Italian humanistic culture and the mechanics of its transmission throughout Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the integration of pictures and text highlights how a remarkable confluence of historical forces made an era of reawakening almost inevitable. In separate chapters devoted to key aspects of the period?the political background, religion, urban development, daily life, scientific discovery and commerce as well as art for art's sake?a parade of more than 1,000 images combines with spare but efficient captions and summaries. Scores of familiar masterpieces, from manuscripts to paintings to sculptures and buildings, plus lesser works wisely chosen for their ability to illuminate a subject, are masterfully organized into page spreads and linked by a user-friendly system of cross-referencing, encouraging interactive odysseys.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Abrams
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810937042
• ISBN 13: 9780810937048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Profusely Illustrated
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 367