"Although most of Mantua's artistic treasures were sold or claimed as war spoils upon the decline of the Gonzaga family, the rich cultural legacy of this fascinating city lives on in the city's many surviving frescoes and in the collections of some of the world's premier museums These priceless works of art are reunited in the pages of this beautifully illustrated volume."--BOOK JACKET.

S. Andrea in Mantua is the final architectural work and the masterpiece of Leon Battista Alberti, the great 15th-century Italian humanist. As a key monument of Renaissance architecture and a seminal work for later developments including the work of Bramante and endless repetitions in Baroque Europe, the novelty of the spatial creation in S. Andrea has long been recognized. What has been obscured by the long period of construction--over 300 years--is the extent to which the existing building reflects Alberti's plan. This book, through a careful investigation of the church fabric and a sound interpretation of all relevant documents, demonstrates the fidelity of the current building to Alberti's original design. The author publishes all known documents relating to the building, including previously unpublished material, and presents new photographic documentation. The book also discusses the place of the church in Alberti's work, sources for its design in ancient, medieval and Renaissance architecture, and its role in the dynastic and civic ambitions of the ruling family of Mantua, the Gonzaga. The changes made in Alberti's plan, particularly those of the 18th century, Juvarra's dome, and Pozzo's neo-quattrocento restoration of the interior, are re-evaluated. This is the first extensive treatment of the building in English, and the first serious monograph on S. Andrea since the 19th century.

Analyzing the artistic patronage of famous and lesser known women of Renaissance Mantua, and introducing new patronage paradigms that existed among those women, this study sheds new light the social, cultural and religious impact of the cult of female mystics of that city in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Author Sally Hickson combines primary archival research, contextual analysis of the climate of female mysticism, and a re-examination of a number of visual objects (particularly altarpieces devoted to local beatae, saints and female founders of religious orders) to delineate ties between women both outside and inside the convent walls. The study contests the accepted perception of Isabella d'Este as a purely secular patron, exposing her role as a religious patron as well. Hickson introduces the figure of Margherita Cantelma and documents concerning the building and decoration of her monastery on the part of Isabella d'Este; and draws attention to the cultural and political activities of nuns of the Gonzaga family, particularly Isabella's daughter Livia Gonzaga who became a powerful agent in Mantuan civic life. Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua provides insight into a complex and fluid world of sacred patronage, devotional practices and religious roles of secular women as well as nuns in Renaissance Mantua.

Based on a series of letters between Barbara and her cousin Maria, in which she recounts her daily life, dramas and jokes, The Princess of Mantua is an example of docufiction at its most exquisite.

In Music at the Gonzaga Court in Mantua, Donald C. Sanders examines the history of musical composition and performance at the northern Italian court of Mantua from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century. Music is discussed in the context of the visual art, poetry, and theater that graced the court and of the Gonzaga family's interaction with the major European historical figures of the era.

A microcosm of Renaissance Italy is presented through this family history of the Gonzaga of Mantau--one of the reigning families of the Renaissance.--Amazon.com.

The unfinished frescoes by Antonio Pisanello in the Ducal Palace in Mantua have intrigued and puzzled art historians since their rediscovery in the 1960s. In the most extensive discussion in English of these important paintings, Joanna Woods-Marsden identifies the frescoes as a coherent cycle depicting an episode from the "prose Lancelot," a thirteenthy2Dcentury French romance. Dating the cycle c. 1447-48, she argues that it was commissioned by Lodovico Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua, and suggests that the work, located in an important reception-hall in the mid-fifteenth-century palace, documents its patron's political and social self-image and ambitions. Not only does the book consider Pisanello's pictorial style in the context of the values, pretensions, and illusions of the Gonzaga court, but it also constitutes a study of his artistic career, of the links between the cycle's pictorial design and the Lancelot's narrative structure, and of Pisanello's physical execution of the frescoes and sinopie.