The first extended study of the painting of Florence and Siena in the later 14th century, this book presents a rich interweaving of considerations of connoisseurship, style, iconography, cultural and social background, and historical events.

The first extended study of the painting of Florence and Siena in the later 14th century, this book presents a rich interweaving of considerations of connoisseurship, style, iconography, cultural and social background, and historical events.

This book provides a new perspective on Sienese painting after the Black Death, asking how social, religious, and cultural change effect visual imagery and style. Judith Steinhoff demonstrates that Siena's artistic culture of the mid- and late fourteenth century was intentionally pluralistic, and not conservative as is often claimed. She shows that Sienese art both before and after the Black Death was the material expression of an artistically sophisticated population that consciously and carefully integrated tradition and change.

The bubonic plague ravaged early modern Europe from the mid-fourteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, striking so often and in so many localities that people constantly were on guard against the scourge. Hope and Healing explores the response of the visual arts to this omnipresent aura of death, decay, and tragedy in the early modern European experience, focusing on Italy between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. An esteemed group of contributors draws on a wide range of materials, including diaries, medical and devotional treatises, poetry, sermons, letters, and chapbooks to illuminate the various aesthetic, social, and religious concerns that preoccupied artists, patrons, and the general populace. This vibrant and fascinating volume ultimately offers a fresh and intriguing perspective on the forces and concerns that shaped early modern Italian art.

This book is a revisionist account of central Italian painting in the period 1260 - 1370.

Siena, Florence and Padua were all major centres for the flowering of early Italian Renaissance art and civic culture. The three communities shared a common concern for the embelishment of their cities by means of painting, sculpture and architecture. The eleven papers in this volume re-examine and re-assess the artistic legacy of the three cities during the 14th century amd locate the various works of art considered within their broader cultural, social and religious contexts. Contributors include: D Norman (Patrons, politics and art) ; C Harrison (Giotto and the `rise of painting') ; C King (The arts of carving and casting) ; T Benton (The building trades and design methods) ; D Norman (Art and religion after the Black Death) ; C King (The trecento: New ideas, new evidence) .

The first extended study of the painting of Florence and Siena in the later 14th century, this book presents a rich interweaving of considerations of connoisseurship, style, iconography, cultural and social background, and historical events. -- From product description.