For the great Renaissance masters, the creation of art was not only an intellectual or aesthetic exercise. It was a contest. The artists of sixteenth-century Italy knew each other's work, knew each other's patrons, and knew each other-sometimes as friends and colleagues, sometimes as enemies, but always as rivals. This enthralling book views the lives and greatest works of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian through the prism of their ardent rivalry. Rona Goffen, one of the most highly respected scholars of the Italian Renaissance today, brings the artists to life in this lively account of their impassioned strivings to outdo both living competitors and the masters of antiquity.

Quoting from poems, letters, treatises, contracts, and other contemporary writings, the author demonstrates the extent to which artists, as well as their patrons and colleagues, characteristically thought about art in the context of rivalry. Renaissance patrons often stipulated in contracts with artists that their commissions be more beautiful than works made for other patrons. The artists themselves competed for commissions. Goffen brings into sharp focus the immediacy, intensity, and complexity of artistic rivalry among the Renaissance masters, recovering for us the emotional and professional circumstances that brought about their magnificent creations.

About the Author

Rona Goffen, Board of Governors Professor of Art History at Rutgers University, is also the author of Giovanni Bellini, published by Yale University Press.

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