“Art mattered in the Renaissance... People expected painting, sculpture, architecture, and other forms of visual art to have a meaningful effect on their lives,” write the authors of this important new look at Italian Renaissance art. A glance at the pages of Art in Renaissance Italy shows at once its freshness and breadth of approach, which includes thorough explanation into how and why works of art, buildings, prints, and other kinds of art came to be. This book discusses how men and women of the Renaissance regarded art and artists as well as why works of Renaissance art look the way they do, and what this means to us. It covers not only Florence and Rome, but also Venice and the Veneto, Assisi, Siena, Milan, Pavia, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, Urbino, and Naples—each governed in a distinctly different manner, every one with its own political and social structures that inevitably affected artistic styles. Spanning more than three centuries, the narrative brings to life the rich tapestry of Italian Renaissance society and the art works that are its enduring legacy. For enthusiasts of Italian Renaissance art.
John T. Paoletti is Professor of the History of Art at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Educated at Yale, he has published widely, including Collaboration in Italian Renaissance Art (co-editor and contributor, 1978), The Siena Baptistery Font (1979), and Art as Culture (1986). He was formerly editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin of the College Art Association in the United States of America.
Gary M. Radke is a Renaissance specialist at Syracuse University and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He holds degrees from Syracuse University, Michigan State University, and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. He is the author of Viterbo: Profile of a Thirteenth-Century Papal Palace (1997) and a guest curator for exhibitions of Italian art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia.