Florence is justly named the 'cradle of the renaissance'. It was here that, inspired by the revival of interest in classical antiquity, fuelled by civic pride and fostered by the wealthy Medici family, a visual language was created that was to be spoken

From the WORLD OF ART series, a survey of the artistic achievements of the Renaissance sculptors from Nicola Pisano through Brunelleschi and Donatello to Michelangelo and Cellini.

To whom should we ascribe the great flowering of the arts in Renaissance Italy? Artists like Botticelli and Michelangelo? Or wealthy, discerning patrons like Cosimo de' Medici? In recent years, scholars have attributed great importance to the role played by patrons, arguing that some should even be regarded as artists in their own right. This approach receives sharp challenge in Jill Burke's Changing Patrons, a book that draws heavily upon the author's discoveries in Florentine archives, tracing the many profound transformations in patrons' relations to the visual world of fifteenth-century Florence. Looking closely at two of the city's upwardly mobile families, Burke demonstrates that they approached the visual arts from within a grid of social, political, and religious concerns. Art for them often served as a mediator of social difference and a potent means of signifying status and identity. Changing Patrons combines visual analysis with history and anthropology to propose new interpretations of the art created by, among others, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Raphael. Genuinely interdisciplinary, the book also casts light on broad issues of identity, power relations, and the visual arts in Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance.

"Some of the greatest names in the history of art are those of Florentine sculptors: Ghiberti, Donatello and Luca della Robbia; Verrocchio and Michelangelo; Cellini and Giovanni Bologna. These were the creators of a school of sculpture that remained supreme for over two centuries."--BOOK COVER.

The first book to be dedicated to the topic, Patronage and Italian Renaissance Sculpture reappraises the creative and intellectual roles of sculptor and patron. The volume surveys artistic production from the Trecento to the Cinquecento in Rome, Pisa, Florence, Bologna, and Venice. Using a broad range of approaches, the essayists question the traditional concept of authorship in Italian Renaissance sculpture, setting each work of art firmly into a complex socio-historical context. Emphasizing the role of the patron, the collection re-assesses the artistic production of such luminaries as Michelangelo, Donatello, and Giambologna, as well as lesser-known sculptors. Contributors shed new light on the collaborations that shaped Renaissance sculpture and its reception.

Text on the latest research. While his central focus is on the work of Donatello, he also illuminates the beginnings of Renaissance sculpture in Florence, its further development in Tuscany and the rest of Italy, the new artistic goals and their theoretical formulation, and the relationships between patron and artist, convention and artistic freedom. The invaluable documentary section includes all the work of Donatello, as well as that of Ghiberti. Other important.