The Gubbio studiolo, a small private study that is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance intarsia, was reinstalled in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1996. It is valued not only for its perspectival inlay - a tour de force of illusionism - but also for its rich historical associations and beauty. Made for Federico da Montefeltro, a fifteenth-century condottiere, the studiolo has intarsia panels that display a dazzling array of the accoutrements of the duke’s life. This treasure trove is rendered with the most admirable understanding of the laws of perspective. The objects depicted and the shadows that give them such volume are composed of thousands of pieces and slivers of different varieties of wood, each set with uncanny accuracy. This book presents an in-depth discussion of this famous work of art. In the first of the two volumes, Olga Raggio focuses on Gubbio’s political history and architectural and urban development, the achievements of da Montefeltro and his role in the creation of the studiolo, and the history of the studiolo, and Martin Kemp examines the Gubbio perspectival system. In the second volume, Antoine M. Wilmering discusses the conservation of the Gubbio studiolo and the history, materials, and techniques of intarsia work.

The Renaissance in Italy continues to exercise a powerful hold on the popular imagination and on scholarly enquiry. This Companion presents a lively, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and current approach to the period that extends in Italy from the turn of the fourteenth century through the latter decades of the sixteenth. Addressed to students, scholars, and non-specialists, it introduces the richly varied materials and phenomena as well as the different methodologies through which the Renaissance is studied today both in the English-speaking world and in Italy. The chapters are organized around axes of humanism, historiography, and cultural production, and cover a wide variety of areas including literature, science, music, religion, technology, artistic production, and economics. The diffusion of the Renaissance throughout Italian territories is emphasized. Overall, the Companion provides an essential overview of a period that witnessed both a significant revalidation of the classical past and the development of new, vernacular, and increasingly secular values.

This is the Proceedings of the International Workshop Heritagebot 2017 that was held in Cassino, Italy in September 2017. The papers cover a wide range of disciplines connected with Cultural Heritage, from humanistic fields up to engineering designs through legal aspects and financial/economical studies, treating aspects of theory, design, practice and applications. Topics addressed during the conference were: business models and business planning; creative cities and industries; documentation, analysis and survey of cultural heritage; economics of cultural heritage; cultural heritage, business and organizational models; cultural heritage and collaborative digital systems; citizen science for cultural heritage: service robotics for cultural heritage; legal tools for the development and innovation management in cultural heritage; capital budgeting and capital structure of cultural heritage sector; field applications in cultural heritage.

Misericordia International was founded by Elaine C. Block as an association dedicated to the study of choir stalls and their relation to other artistic manifestations during the Middle Ages, and the dissemination of research. From its beginnings, Misericordia International has promoted a bi-annual international conference as a place of scientific exchange among members of the research community interested in this topic from a multidisciplinary perspective. The most recent conference was held from 23 to 26 June 2016 at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University in Greifswald, Germany. The theme of the conference was the workshop context of medieval choir stalls in its broadest sense. Where the iconography of choir stalls has enjoyed a lot of attention from researchers, the process and circumstances of the making of these complex objects have often been rather neglected. Choir stalls were not produced by an individual artist, but were created by a group of craftsmen. This factor raises all kinds of questions. The conference in Greifswald covered an obvious need for research and therefore included much hitherto unknown research material and additional first results based on initial research. In addition to questions about substantive and economic mechanisms of the production of choir stalls, the conference dealt with basic knowledge of craftsmanship. This publication presents the papers held at the conference and is divided into five thematic parts, namely Workshop practices; Early modern choir stalls – Traditions or restart?; Stalls of stone – A forgotten furniture; Travelling craftsmen; and Group of works.

During the early modern period there was a natural correspondence between how artists might benefit from the knowledge of mathematics and how mathematicians might explore, through advances in the study of visual culture, new areas of enquiry that would uncover the mysteries of the visible world. This volume makes its contribution by offering new interdisciplinary approaches that not only investigate perspective but also examine how mathematics enriched aesthetic theory and the human mind. The contributors explore the portrayal of mathematical activity and mathematicians as well as their ideas and instruments, how artists displayed their mathematical skills and the choices visual artists made between geometry and arithmetic, as well as Euclid’s impact on drawing, artistic practice and theory. These chapters cover a broad geographical area that includes Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, France and England. The artists, philosophers and mathematicians whose work is discussed include Leon Battista Alberti, Nicholas Cusanus, Marsilio Ficino, Francesco di Giorgio, Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, as well as Michelangelo, Galileo, Piero della Francesca, Girard Desargues, William Hogarth, Albrecht Dürer, Luca Pacioli and Raphael.