The Renaissance Era was a period of huge cultural advancements. It began in Italy and spread throughout the length and breadth of Europe. The Renaissance had lasting effects on art, literature and sciences. Here are 12 notable works of fiction from this era. Contents: 1. Dante Alighieri : The Divine Comedy 2. Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) : Sonnets 3. Giovanni Boccaccio : The Decameron 4. William Shakespeare : Hamlet 5. William Shakespeare : Macbeth 6. Thomas More : Utopia 7. Thomas Nashe : The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton 8. Francois Rabelais : Gargantua and His Son Pantagruel 9. Sebastian Brant : The Ship of Fools 10. Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote 11. Luis de Camões : The Lusiad 12. Desiderius Erasmus : In Praise of Folly

The Renaissance was probably the most influential and fertile period of European cultural history. We are all familiar with the giants of High Renaissance art – Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael – but how much do you really know about how it all started and why it was so revolutionary? This easily accessible, fresh and beautiful introduction to this wonderful world takes you from the stirrings of a revival in classical learning and humanist thought in late medieval Italy through the application of technical developments in painting and scientific knowledge, to the blossoming of astounding artworks that we all know and love, reaching its peak in the sixteenth century. A digestible introduction to the background and history of the Renaissance is followed by a gallery of treasured works focusing on the most popular Italian art, from Giotto's frescoes and Fra Angelico’s delightful Annunciation, to Botticelli’s willowy Venuses, that ceiling of Michelangelo’s and the master of Venetian painting, Titian.

Art history need not be dry or dull, as O'Reilly's book shows. Featuring 90 full-color photos of many of the masterpieces of the movement, the book delves into the work of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, and Fra Angelico. Full-color photos and illustrations.

"Many famous artworks of the Italian Renaissance were made to celebrate love, marriage, and family. They were the pinnacles of a tradition, dating from early in the era, of commemorating betrothals, marriages, and the birth of children by commissioning extraordinary objects - maiolica, glassware, jewels, textiles, paintings - that were often also exchanged as gifts. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of artworks arising from Renaissance rituals of love and marriage and makes a major contribution to our understanding of Renaissance art in its broader cultural context. The impressive range of works gathered in these pages extends from birth trays painted in the early fifteenth century to large canvases on mythological themes that Titian painted in the mid-1500s. Each work of art would have been recognized by contemporary viewers for its prescribed function within the private, domestic domain."--BOOK JACKET.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

This study of the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto draws on the large body of work by the artist, as well as on the 16th-century documentation on the artist's life, including letters, an account book for the years 1538-56, and will.