Bøger i Renaissance Lives serien

A new interpretation of Tycho Brahe's pivotal role in the emergence of empirical science.

A revisionist biography of Andreas Vesalius--the father of modern anatomy--as deeply shaped by Renaissance culture. In 1543 the young and ambitious physician Andreas Vesalius published one of the most famous books in the history of medicine, On the Fabric of the Human Body. While we often think of dissection as destroying the body, Vesalius believed that it helped him understand how to construct the human body. In this book, Sachiko Kusukawa shows how Vesalius's publication emerged from the interplay of Renaissance art, printing technology, and classical tradition. She challenges the conventional view of Vesalius as a proto-modern, anti-authoritarian father of anatomy through a more nuanced account of how Vesalius exploited cultural and technological developments to create a big and beautiful book that propelled him into imperial circles and secured his enduring fame.

A revealing new account of the life and work of this early modern German printmaker. This captivating biography brings Lucas Cranach the Elder into the spotlight for the twenty-first century. The illuminating narrative unveils an artist whose vision transcended personal brilliance as he sought to elevate a nascent nation and foster a sense of community with his work. Perhaps Cranach's most remarkable achievement lay in forging a robust Lutheran community, endowed with a resounding message of salvation. Using prints (the prevailing medium of mass communication) and multiple versions of paintings, he developed an intricate symbolism that resonated with the populace in early modern Germany. Jennifer Nelson also explores his extensive repertoire of female nudes and shows how these seductive artworks not only tantalized his patrons but constructed for them a deep history of Germany's notional connections with ancient Greece and Rome.

An original survey of the Renaissance painter's life and work. This book is a concise survey of the life of the Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) within his social and cultural surroundings. Delving into the artist's deliberately idiosyncratic life, the book shows how di Cosimo chose to live in squalor--eating nothing but boiled eggs cooked fifty at a time in his painting glue. Sarah Blake McHam shows how the artist became a favorite among sophisticated patrons eager for pagan artworks featuring Greco-Roman mythological subjects as well as orthodox, but never ordinary, religious altarpieces and private devotional paintings. The result is a newly accessible introduction to the life of this important Renaissance artist.

An accessible biography of the celebrated early Netherlandish painter, now in paperback. In his lifetime the early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch was famous for his phantasmagoric images, and today his name is synonymous with the infernal. The creator of expansive tableaus of fantastic and hellish scenes--where any devil not dancing is too busy eating human souls--he has been as equally misunderstood by history as his paintings have. In this book, Nils Büttner draws on a wealth of historical documents--not to mention Bosch's paintings--to offer a fresh and insightful look at one of history's most peculiar artists on the five-hundredth anniversary of his death. Bosch's paintings have elicited a number of responses over the centuries. Some have tried to explain them as alchemical symbolism, others as coded messages of a secret cult, and still others have tried to psychoanalyze them. Some have placed Bosch among the Adamites, others among the Cathars, and others among the Brethren of the Free Spirit, seeing in his paintings an occult life of free love, strange rituals, mysterious drugs, and witchcraft. As Büttner shows, Bosch was--if anything--a hardworking painter, commissioned by aristocrats and courtesans, as all painters of his time were. Analyzing his life and paintings against the backdrop of contemporary Dutch culture and society, Büttner offers one of the clearest biographical sketches to date alongside beautiful reproductions of some of Bosch's most important work. The result is a smart but accessible introduction to a unique artist whose work transcends genre.

Aldus Manutius is perhaps the greatest figure in the history of the printed book: in Venice, Europe's capital of printing, he invented the italic type and issued more first editions of the classics than anyone before or since, as well as Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the most beautiful and mysterious printed book of the Italian Renaissance.0This is the first monograph in English on Aldus Manutius in over forty years. It shows how Aldus redefined the role of a book printer, from mere manual labourer to learned publisher. As a consequence Aldus participated in the same debates as contemporaries such as Leonardo da Vinci and Erasmus of Rotterdam, making this book an insight into their world too.

A new assessment of the inventive and influential artist Jan van Eyck. Jan van Eyck (1390-1441) was one of the most inventive and influential artists in the entire European tradition. The realism of his paintings continues to astound observers more than six centuries on, even though our world is saturated by high-resolution images. However, viewers today are as like to be absorbed by Van Eyck's personality as his realism. While he sometimes directly painted himself into his works, he also suggested his presence through an array of inscriptions, signatures, and even a personal motto. Incorporating a wealth of new research and recent discoveries within a fresh exploration of the paintings themselves, this book reveals how profoundly Jan van Eyck transformed the very idea of what an artist could be.

A critical biography of the early modern Italian naturalist. The Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was a prolific writer, polymath, and prodigious collector who amassed the largest collection of naturalia in sixteenth-century Europe, as well as hundreds of colored drawings detailing them. Many of these drawings found their way into his illustrated publications, most of which were published posthumously. This book provides a concise yet comprehensive portrait of Aldrovandi, paying particular attention to two aspects: the role that the newly discovered continent of America played in his research interests, and his study of abnormalities of physiological development in organisms. Peter Mason gives insight into Aldrovandi's fascinating life, his early work on antiquities, his natural history and other collecting activities, his network of correspondents and patrons, and the influence and legacy of his collection and publications.

A critical biography of one of the most celebrated prose stylists in early modern English. This book provides an overview of the life and work of the scandalous Renaissance writer Thomas Nashe (1567-c.1600), whose writings led to the closure of theaters and widespread book bans. Famous for his scurrilous novel, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), Nashe also played a central role in early English theater, collaborating with Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. Through religious controversies, pornographic poetry, and the bubonic plague, Andrew Hadfield traces the uproarious history of this celebrated English writer.

Shows how René Descartes transformed philosophy.

The first monograph in a generation, and the first study in English in over 70 years of Renaissance master-artist Filippino Lippi.

A new biography of the Italian Renaissance painter, poet and actor Salvator Rosa.

The first popular biography in English in thirty years of Erasmus of Rotterdam.

A new account of the life and work of poet, scholar, soldier and cleric John Donne.

The spirit, ingenuity and genius of Peter Paul Rubens.

An exploration of the visual elusiveness at the core of Giorgione's work.

A nuanced account of the life and art of Piero della Francesca.

An insightful new interpretation of the elusive Renaissance painter Hans Holbein.

A beautifully illustrated monograph on the innovative and at times controversial sculptor Donatello.

A new account of the controversial alchemist, physician and social radical known as Paracelsus.

A full account of Renaissance artist Raphael's prodigious yet short-lived career.

This incisive and illuminating biography follows the three themes that shaped the life of Leonardo da Vinci and, through him, forever changed Western art and imagination: nature, art, and self-fashioning. Nature and art helped form Leonardo. He spent his first twelve years in the Tuscan countryside before entering the most reputed artistic workshop of Florence. There he blossomed as one of the most promising painters of his time and promptly applied his skills to explore and question the world through science and invention. Leonardo was also self-fashioned: he received only a basic education and grew up around peasants and artisans. But from the 1480s onwards, he transformed himself into a court artist and became a familiar of kings and rulers. Following the chronology of Leonardo's extraordinary life, this book examines Leonardo as artist, courtier, and thinker, and explores how these aspects found expression in his paintings, as well as in his work in sculpture, architecture, theater design, urban planning, engineering, anatomy, geology, and cartography. François Quiviger concludes with observations on Leonardo's relevance today as a model of the multidisciplinary artist who combines imagination, art, and science--the original, and ultimate, Renaissance Man.

At the end of his long, prolific life, Titian was rumored to paint directly on the canvas with his bare hands. He would slide his fingers across bright ridges of oil paint, loosening the colors, blending, blurring, and then bringing them together again. With nothing more than the stroke of a thumb or the flick of a nail, Titian's touch brought the world to life. The clinking of glasses, the clanging of swords, and the cry of a woman's grief. The sensation of hair brushing up against naked flesh, the sudden blush of unplanned desire, and the dry taste of fear in a lost, shadowy place. Titian's art, Maria H. Loh argues in this exquisitely illustrated book, was and is a synesthetic experience. To see is at once to hear, to smell, to taste, and to touch. But while Titian was fully attached to the world around him, he also held the universe in his hands. Like a magician, he could conjure appearances out of thin air. Like a philosopher, his exploration into the very nature of things channelled and challenged the controversial ideas of his day. But as a painter, he created the world anew. Dogs, babies, rubies, and pearls. Falcons, flowers, gloves, and stone. Shepherds, mothers, gods, and men. Paint, canvas, blood, sweat, and tears. In a series of close visual investigations, Loh guides us through the lush, vibrant world of Titian's touch.

Niccolo Guicciardini's enlightening biography offers an accessible introduction to Newton's celebrated work in mathematics, optics and astronomy and to how Newton viewed these scientific fields in relation to his quest for the deepest secrets of the universe, matter theory and religion.

In this engaging book, Bernadine Barnes brings together new research to show how Michelangelo's art was viewed in its own time.