"The 'Madonna and child' known as 'The Dudley Madonna' was painted around 1508 by Giovanni Belline (c. 1430-1516), one of the most celebrated of Italian artists. This book charts the painting's recent provenance and reception and revisits the context in which it was created. It retraces its critical history from Dudley's nineteenth-century London until today, and reassesses and autograph work by Bellini that during the twentieth century was almost completely overlooked. The years 1505-10 were crucial to Giovanni Bellini's career, and this book examines anew the part he played in the Venetian High Renaissance, noting his response to the upcoming generation (above all Titian) and new ideas coming from central Italy - from Raphael and in particular from the visiting Florentine Fra Bartolomeo." -- book flyleaf.

Drawings by the great Italian Mannerist painter and poet Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) are extremely rare. This important and beautiful publication brings together for the first time nearly all of the sixty drawings attributed to this leading draftsman of the 16th century. Each drawing is illustrated in color, discussed in detail, and shown with many comparative photographs. Bronzino's technical virtuosity as a draftsman and his mastery of anatomy and perspective are vividly apparent in each stroke of the chalk, pen, or brush. The younger generations of Florentine artists particularly admired Bronzino for his technical virtuosity as a painter, and Giorgio Vasari praised him for his powers as a disegnatore (designer and draftsman).