Old master drawings kept in storage, their access limited to a few, will now be made widely accessible in this new series which will eventually include all drawings in some 70 midwestern collections. The first volume introduces a corpus of the rarest of European drawings through the year 1500, a time when artists had just begun to value drawings as works of art. It presents 30 entries written by 12 scholars, each a specialist in the art of the period, and each with immediate access to the artwork itself. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Energetic, incisive, spontaneous, and expressive, the drawings of Filippino Lippi (1457/58-1504) are among the most original and creative of the Italian Renaissance.

"Strokes of Genius: Italian Drawings from the Goldman Collection was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title organized by and presented at the Art Institute of Chicago from November 1, 2014, to February 1, 2015."

Evelyn Karet's in-depth study of the Antonio II Badile Album - the earliest known example of an art collection pasted onto the pages of a book - is both focused and broad in its appeal to those interested in the early modern era. The provenance of the album is traced from its assemblage to the seventeenth-century collection of Conte Lodovico Moscardo to its dismantling by the dealer Francis Matthiesen in the 1950s, establishing that the volume conserved in the Frits Lugt Collection is not an original but a replica produced by Matthiesen. Although Antonio II must be celebrated as the collector of the drawings, new paleographic analysis has identified the actual compiler of the album after Antonio?s death providing a terminus post quem in the late 1530s or early 1540s. Karet enlarges the focus from the album itself to the historic tradition of collecting drawings in northern Italy in the early modern era before Vasari, for which the album provides a new point of reference. Throughout the book, Karet discusses the Badile family, examines the individual drawings in the book, investigates the contacts between artists and humanists, their rich, diverse collections and the humanist mind-set that fostered the appreciation of drawings. She explores notable early drawing collections in northern Italy and the role of northern Italy as a center of collection in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book concludes with two appendices: a reconstruction of the original album, including a discussion of the reconstruction process, suggestions about what the album originally looked like, and a page-by-page guide to its contents; and a detailed analysis of Francis Matthiesen's career. This book opens up new areas of inquiry into an overlooked subject.

An overview of Susan Karant-Nunn’s impact on the social and cultural history of the Reformation in central Europe.

Domenico Ghirlandaio was one of the most popular artists in fifteenth-century Florence. He worked in a variety of media, including panel paintings, wall murals, mosaic, and manuscript illumination, and his workshop - to which Michelangelo was apprenticed - was highly influential. This beautiful book offers a radically new interpretation of Ghirlandaio’s life and work, viewing him primarily as an artisan active within the craft traditions, guild structure, and workshop organizations of his day. Jean K. Cadogan argues that Ghirlandaio was a pivotal figure in the transformation of the artist from medieval artisan to Renaissance genius. She traces his gradual social elevation, which reflected the increasing respect with which he was treated by his patrons. And she notes that the changes in the way he and other artists were viewed created a milieu that encouraged innovation in technique, style, and content, qualities that were vividly displayed in Ghirlandaio’s work. Cadogan explains how his working method, his pragmatic, artisan approach to technique, the organization and functioning of his workshop, and his relations with his patrons affected the works of art Ghirlandaio produced. Her text is complemented by a catalogue raisonné of Ghirlandaio’s works in all media as well as an appendix of documents useful for scholars.