Michelangelo and His World: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. This item is unavailable.Michelangelo and His World: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance

This new volume is the most comprehensive examination of Italian Renaissance sculpture from 1490 to 1560 ever published. Central to the whole study is the sculpture of Michelangelo, which is illustrated in its entirety in the documentation section. Nineteen of Michelangelo's contemporaries are also treated in detail, with full individual biographies and representative examples of their work. Special attention is paid to Jacopo Sansovino, Benvenuto Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli, and Bartolomeo Ammannati.
In his introductory essays, Joachim Poeschke, professor of art history at the University of Dusseldorf and the author of numerous publications on Italian art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, places the sculpture of the sixteenth century in its intellectual and cultural context. He discusses the shift in its subject matter and function and examines the theoretical notions that motivated the artists of the period. Poeschke's broad overview of the period makes this volume an invaluable addition to Renaissance literature.
The works are presented in masterful new photographs taken especially for this book by Albert Hirmer and Irmgard Ernstmeier-Hirmer. The illustrations, which include fifty-two full-page colorplates, afford an opportunity to see these works in extraordinary detail and often from several viewpoints. With an extensive and up-to-date bibliography, Michelangelo and His World is an invaluable reference for scholars, students, and aficionados of Italian Renaissance art.

By the time Michelangelo died in 1564 in his house in Rome (where he lived rather modestly despite his fame and Medici commissions), his powerful narrative realism and secular treatment of the idealized human body had liberated a generation of Italian sculptors. Among those featured in this book are adventurer-[poet Benvenuto Cellini, Florentine master Giovanni Rustici, ordained priest Giovanni Montorsoli and the underrated Pierino da Vinci (nephew of Leonardo). A new humanism animated works such as Jacopo Sansovino's bronze statue of Peace torching a helmet and suit of armor and Tullio Lombardo's serene marble Adam. This erudite, fresh overview of Italian sculpture of the late Renaissance by University of Dusseldorf art historian Poeschke features 52 full-page color plates and 347 halftones with commentaries, plus an introductory essay and biographical profiles of 20 sculptors. Among the many works of extraordinary power and grace are Baccio Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus and Michelangelo's David, Bearded Slave and The Risen Christ. Its comprehensive coverage and outstanding plates make this an indispensable reference.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

While they will never challenge Michelangelo's preeminence, the 19 contemporaries surveyed along with the master testify to the creative vitality of Italian sculpture between 1490 and 1560. Poeschke's volume is not only the best single-volume corpus of reproductions of the sculpture of Michelangelo, J. Sansovino, Cellini, Ammannati, Peirino da Vinci, and other lesser lights, it also places their work in an historical milieu that witnessed profound changes in artistic theory, patronage, function, and meaning. Included also is an elaborate documentation section made up of biographical essays and well-wrought analyses of the individual monuments. These discussions not only serve to help unravel the scholarly disputations surrounding the pieces but also chronologically situate them, characterize their formal elements, and suggest their likely sources and iconographic content. Complementing this is a selection of essential comparative illustrations. Manifest throughout is a serene ability to decipher and synthesize while simultaneously offering up challenging but levelheaded conclusions in the face of too easily accepted orthodoxies. Precise scholarship, lucid exposition, and the lavish scale of superb reproductions affirm this work's importance for art collections.
Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.