Renaissance sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni was a student of Donatello, a teacher of Michelangelo, and a favorite of Lorenzo de' Medici "il Magnifico," his principal patron. Bertoldo was one of the first sculptors to create statuettes in bronze. With an overview of the artist's entire oeuvre, this major scholarly catalogue is the most substantial text on Bertoldo ever produced.

Small medals to a monumental palace frieze, all of which present an indelibly Tuscan brand of rustic classicism. Beginning with a survey of Bertoldo's career, James David Draper sheds new light on Medici patronage and on the efforts of Renaissance artists to formulate the period's humanist values in visual terms. He examines in depth the nature of the informally organized "academy" of young artists, including Michelangelo, who are believed to have gathered under.

"An inventory of the private possessions of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, head of the ruling Medici family during the apogee of the Florentine Renaissance"--Provided by publisher.

Considering the reception of the early modern culture of Florence, Rome, and Venice in other centers of the Italic peninsula, this book reexamines the Renaissance as a form of translation of a past culture. It assumes that the Renaissance attempted to assimilate the lost, or fragmentary, worlds of the Roman emperors, the Greek Platonists, and the ancient Egyptians. These essays, accordingly, explore how the processes of cultural self-definition varied between the Italian urban centers in the early modern period, well before the formation of a distinct Italian national identity.

This study is the first to examine the relationship between art and violence in 15th-century Florence, exposing the underbelly of a period more often celebrated for enlightened and progressive ideas. Renaissance Florentines were constantly subjected to the sight of violence, whether in carefully staged rituals of execution or images of the suffering inflicted on Christ. There was nothing new in this culture of pain, unlike the aesthetic of violence that developed towards the end of the 15th century. It emerged in the work of artists such as Piero di Cosimo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, and the young Michelangelo. Inspired by the art of antiquity, they painted, engraved, and sculpted images of deadly battles, ultimately normalizing representations of brutal violence. Drawing on work in social and literary history, as well as art history, Scott Nethersole sheds light on the relationship between these Renaissance images, violence, and ideas of artistic invention and authorship.

The recent exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli around the world show, more than ever, the significant and continued debate about the artist. Botticelli Past and Present engages with this debate. The book comprises four thematic parts, spanning four centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception from the fifteenth century. Each part comprises a number of essays and includes a short introduction which positions them within the wider scholarly literature on Botticelli. The parts are organised chronologically beginning with discussion of the artist and his working practice in his own time, moving onto the progressive rediscovery of his work from the late eighteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, through to his enduring impact on contemporary art and design. Expertly written by researchers and eminent art historians and richly illustrated throughout, the broad range of essays in this book make a valuable contribution to Botticelli studies.