Florence and the Renaissance have become virtually synonymous, bringing to mind names like Dante, Giotto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and many others whose creativity thrived during a time of unprecedented prosperity, urban expansion, and intellectual innovation. With more than 200 illustrations, Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance reveals the full complexity and enduring beauty of the art of this period, including panel paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and stained glass panels. The book considers not only the work of Giotto and other influential artists, including Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi, and Pacino di Bonaguida, but also that of the larger community of illuminators and panel painters who collectively contributed to Florence's artistic legacy. It places particular emphasis on those artists who worked in both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and presents new conservation research and scientific analyses that shed light on artists' techniques and workshop practices of the times. Reunited here for the first time are twenty-six leaves of the most important illuminated manuscript commission of the period: the Laudario of Sant' Agnese. The splendor of this book of hymns exemplifies the spiritual and artistic aspirations of early Renaissance Florence. A major exhibition on this subject will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum November 13, 2012, through February 10, 2013, and at the Art Gallery of Ontario March 16, 2013, through June 16, 2013. Contributors to this volume include Roy S. Berns, Eve Borsook, Bryan Keene, Francesca Pasut, Catherine Schmidt Patterson, Alan Phenix, Laura Rivers, Victor M. Schmidt, Alexandra Suda, Yvonne Szafran, Karen Trentelman, and Nancy Turner.

The Italian sculptor known as Donatello helped to forge a new kind of art—one that came to define the Renaissance. His work was progressive, challenging, and even controversial. Using a variety of novel sculptural techniques and innovative interpretations, Donatello uniquely depicted themes involving human sexuality, violence, spirituality, and beauty. But to really understand Donatello, one needs to understand his changing world, marked by the transition from Medieval to Renaissance style and to an art that was more personal and representative of the modern self. Donatello was not just a man of his times, he helped shape the spirit of the times he lived in and profoundly influenced those that came after. In this beautifully illustrated book—the first thorough biography of Donatello in twenty-five years—A. Victor Coonin describes the full extent of Donatello’s revolutionary contributions, revealing how his work heralded the emergence of modern art.

Florence is justly named the 'cradle of the renaissance'. It was here that, inspired by the revival of interest in classical antiquity, fuelled by civic pride and fostered by the wealthy Medici family, a visual language was created that was to be spoken

Whether part of a grand villa or an extension of a common kitchen, gardens in the Renaissance were planted and treasured in all reaches of society. Illuminated manuscripts of the period offer a glimpse into how people at the time pictured, used, and enjoyed these idyllic green spaces. This illustrated volume explores gardens on many levels, from the literary Garden of Love and the biblical Garden of Eden to courtly gardens of the nobility, and reports on the many activities that took place there.

A landmark, hardcover, slipcased volume that tells the story of the archetypal Renaissance city anew, through its art. Placed at the heart of Italy, Florence was already in the Middle Ages a center of commerce and fine craftsmanship. Spurred on by a few powerful dynasties of merchants and financiers—above all the Medici, but also the Strozzi, the Pitti, and others—the city became the leading force in the Renaissance of the arts, literature, and science. Challenging the primacy of the Venetian Republic and even the city of the Popes, Florence attained a glory that was reflected down through the later centuries of Medici rule. And Florence was all along a city of painters, who recorded its sights; the likenesses of its leaders and luminaries; its battles, civic myths, and patron saints; and, of course, the changing tastes of their Tuscan patrons. In this magnificent volume are assembled a wide variety of artworks, both familiar and rarely seen, that, interwoven with an authoritative text, illustrate the eventful history of Florence—from the age of Cimabue and Giotto, through the High Renaissance of Leonardo and Michelangelo, to the Mannerism of Vasari and Bronzino, and even to the era of modern travelers like Sargent and Degas. The History of Florence in Painting is a feast for the eyes and the intellect, and worthy companion to the previous volumes in this series, The History of Venice in Painting, The History of Paris in Painting, and The History of Rome in Painting.

Spanning an age that witnessed great achievements in the arts and sciences, this definitive overview of the Italian Renaissance will both captivate ordinary readers and challenge specialists. Dr. Plumb’s impressive and provocative narrative is accompanied by contributions from leading historians, including Morris Bishop, J. Bronowski, Maria Bellonci, and many more, who have further illuminated the lives of some of the era’s most unforgettable personalities, from Petrarch to Pope Pius II, Michelangelo to Isabella d'Este, Machiavelli to Leonardo. A highly readable and engaging volume, THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE is a perfect introduction to the movement that shaped the Western world.

Nudity in religious art had been virtually all shameful for the first 1400 years of Christianity-sinners burning in Hell, Adam and Eve after The Fall. But in the early Italian Renaissance, the nude human body can be found with dignity and beauty even in religious art. How were centuries of religious beliefs and traditions overcome? Renaissance Eroticism at the Dawn explores this question. It focuses on a detailed study of the first freestanding nude statue since antiquity, Donatello's puzzling bronze "David." In the popular mind this statue has long been simply the Biblical David standing on the head of Goliath, but experts have found it to be in fact quite mysterious in its details and it has never made sense simply as the slaying of Goliath. It is argued here however that mysterious details of the statue do make good sense in a historical intellectual context that has now become better understood. The general context was an effort in Italian Christian intellectual circles (loosely, the Humanist Zeitgeist) to recover a pure spirituality, unadulterated by the dogmas and politics of the then oppressive Roman Church. Intellectual Christians scoured ancient philosophical, magical, and mythological texts for possible insights into universal and authentic spiritual truths that they felt had been suppressed and denied them by theocrats. Northern European Protestants had much the same complaints with Roman dogma but took their resentments in very different directions with the Reformation. Renaissance Eroticism at the Dawn examines the details of "David" in the context of modern readings of spiritual trends in 15th century Neo-Platonism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, spiritual alchemy, mythological allegory, magic, and numerology. These were once dismissed as "esoteric" or "occult," superstitious beliefs. But scholars began to study them more seriously in recent decades-for example to better understand the roots of modern CONCEPTUAL science. These have now come to be regarded as important "proto-sciences" and "alternative spiritualities." Of course Renaissance spirituality also forms an important chapter not only for the history of science but also for the complex history of Christian thought and of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation-and indeed for the development of the modern mind. The deeper motivational question looms: What strong compulsions-what powerful human aspirations-could have led bright people to persist doggedly at such efforts, that from our contemporary perspective can seem nonsensical? A consideration of the potential "esoteric" spirituality in "David" is an opportunity to explore the personal and emotional dimensions of that remarkably rich, diverse, and historically transformative climate of questioning, investigation, and speculation in Renaissance Italy. Renaissance, Eros, Plato, Neo-Platonism, Donatello, occult, esoteric, alchemy, magic, Ficino, Florence, putti, Amor-Atys, nudity, baptism, Pagan, Christianity, history of science, sensuality, Pico de Mirandola, mythology, Reformation, Council of Trent, Council of Florence, Dante, homosexual, androgyny.