. By way of introduction to the objects themselves are three essays. The first, by Laurence B. Kanter, presents an overview of Florentine illumination between 1300 and 1450 and thumbnail sketches of the artists featured in this volume. The second essay, by Barbara Drake Boehm, focuses on the types of books illuminators helped to create. As most of them were liturgical, her contribution limns for the modern reader the medieval religious ceremonies in which the manuscripts were utilized. Carl Brandon Strehlke here publishes important new material about Fra Angelico's early years and patrons - the result of the author's recent archival research in Florence.

One of the most widely respected theological dictionaries put into one-volume, abridged form. Focusing on the theological meaning of each word, the abridgment contains English keywords for each entry, tables of English and Greek keywords, and a listing of the relevant volume and page numbers from the unabridged work at the end of each article or section.

Inverting rules with obvious relish, Florentine artist Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522) is known today—as he was in his own time—for his highly personal visual language, one capable of generating images of the most mesmerizing oddity. In this book, Dennis Geronimus overcomes the scarcity of information about the artist’s life and works—only one of the nearly sixty known works by Piero is actually signed and dated—and pieces together from extensive archival research the most complete and accurate account of Piero’s life and career ever written. Unfettered imagination was the sign under which Piero exercised his pictorial invention, and yet the complicated artist was also a product of his culture. The book fills gaps in the artist’s biography and provides intensive analysis of Piero’s protean imagery, discusses his various patrons and commissions, and lists his extant, lost, and uncertainly attributed works.

"The collection of Italian medieval sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters began with the acquisition in 1908 of a Romanesque column statue; today the Museum's holdings comprise more than seventy works dating from the ninth to the late fifteenth century ... The birthplaces of these works range from Sicily to Venice; some typify local styles, others illustrate the intense artistic exchanges taking place within Italy and between Italy and the wider world ... Technological advances of the last decades have made it possible to determine more precisely the materials and techniques from which works of art are made, the history of their alteration, and the mechanisms of their deterioration. Using such techniques, scholars have been able to ascertain, for example, that sculptures previously thought to be modern works carved in the medieval manner were in fact completely authentic. This innovative volume represents a watershed in the study of sculpture: a collaborative dialogue between an art historian and a conservator—between art history and art science—that deepens our understanding of the object we see, while illuminating its elusive, enigmatic history"--From publisher's description.

As early as the 1950s, Professor Irving Lavin was recognized as a major voice in American art history. His sustained production of seminal scholarly contributions have left their mark on an astonishingly wide range of -subjects and fields. Bringing these far-reaching publications together will not only provide a valuable resource to scholars and -students, but will also underscore fundamental themes in the history of art - historicism, the art of commemoration, the relationship between style and meaning, the -intelligence of artists - themes that define the role of the visual arts in human communication. Irving Lavin is best known for his array of fundamental publications on the Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). These include new discoveries and studies on the master's prodigious childhood, his architecture and -portraiture, his invention of caricature, his depictions of religious faith and political leadership, his work in the -theatre, his attitude toward death and the role of the artist in the creation of a modern sense of social responsibility. All of Professor Lavin's papers on Bernini are here brought together in three volumes. The studies have been reset and in many cases up-dated, and there is a comprehensive index.