Rembrandt Duits completed his PhD at the University of Utrecht , and works at the Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute, where he also teaches Renaissance material culture. His thesis, Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting, won the Karel van Mander Prijs for the best publication on art between 1500 and 1800. Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting discusses the representation of Italian Renaissance patterned silks in paintings from Italy and the Southern Netherlands , from the 14th to the 16th century. It is the first study to approach this subject from the perspective of material culture, attempting to answer such questions as why the subject of luxury textiles gained so great a popularity in Renaissance painting, how artists catered for an audience that desired to have gold brocades depicted but did not always possess the financial means to own the actual fabrics, and what the skills artists developed in this field contributed to the rising social status of the medium of painting. The material culture of the grand courts at which real gold brocade played an essential role in the display of wealth and status is compared to that of the socially ambitious but less affluent middle class for whom paintings were often the only affordable substitute for courtly splendour. Thus, the book also addresses the problem of the distinction between fact and fiction, imagination and reality in the account of contemporary social history presented in paintings.

Silk fabrics woven with gold thread, predominantly produced in Italy, were depicted frequently in Renaissance painting, both in costumes and as backdrops for important figures. These painted textiles carried an economic and social significance that a contemporary audience would have recognised as part of the message conveyed by the picture. Gold brocade and Renaissance painting focuses on examples from Italy and the southern Netherlands, dating from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Setting aside traditional notions of the hierarchy of the major and minor arts, the book treats gold brocade and painting equally as exponents of the special segment of Renaissance material culture that was art. The fabrics rendered in painting reflected the tradition of actual weaving, but only to an extent, as many gold brocades were painted from imagination. Gold brocades were much more expensive than paintings; hence the two media functioned in different contexts. Gold brocade was an important element in the display of wealth and status at grand courts, while painting often formed the only affordable substitute for courtly splendour for the socially ambitious but less affluent urban upper-middle class. Their value and cultural role also meant that gold-brocaded textiles could be included in paintings both in praise of luxury and as a condemnation of it - sometimes in one and the same work. Gold brocade and Renaissance painting examines the skills artists developed for representing these lavish textiles. It uses a wide range of documents (from inventories and account books to letters, poems, educational treatises and sermons) to compare the economic value of gold brocade and painting, clarify the conditions of their use, and interpret the different messages given by brocades in different pictures. Primarily, however, the book deals with the distinction between fact and fiction, imagination and reality in the world shown in Renaissance paintings.

This book focuses on the values, priorities, and motives of patrons and the purposes and functions of art works produced north and south of the Alps and in post-Byzantine Crete. It begins by considering the social range and character of Renaissance patronage and ends with a study of Hans Holbein the Younger and the reform of religious images in Basle and England. Viewing Renaissance Art considers a wide range of audiences and patrons from the rulers of France to the poorest confraternities in Florence. The overriding premise is that art was not a neutral matter of stylistic taste but an aspect of material production in which values were invested--whether religious, cultural, social, or political.

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.

Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe discusses the cultural and artistic interaction between the Byzantine east and western Europe, from the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 to the flourishing of post-Byzantine artistic workshops on Venetian Crete during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the formation of icon collections in Renaissance Italy. The contributors examine the routes by which artistic interaction may have taken place, and explore the reception of Byzantine art in western Europe, analysing why artists and patrons were interested in ideas from the other side of the cultural and religious divide. In the first chapter, Lyn Rodley outlines the development of Byzantine art in the Palaiologan era and its relations with western culture. Hans Bloemsma then re-assesses the influence of Byzantine art on early Italian painting from the point of view of changing demands regarding religious images in Italy. In the first of two chapters on Venetian Crete, Angeliki Lymberopoulou evaluates the impact of the Venetian presence on the production of fresco decorations in regional Byzantine churches on the island. The next chapter, by Diana Newall, continues the exploration of Cretan art manufactured under the Venetians, shifting the focus to the bi-cultural society of the Cretan capital Candia and the rise of the post-Byzantine icon. Kim Woods then addresses the reception of Byzantine icons in western Europe in the late Middle Ages and their role as devotional objects in the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, Rembrandt Duits examines the status of Byzantine icons as collectors’ items in early Renaissance Italy. The inventories of the Medici family and other collectors reveal an appreciation for icons among Italian patrons, which suggests that received notions of Renaissance tastes may be in need of revision. The book thus offers new perspectives and insights and re-positions late and post-Byzantine art in a broader European cultural context.

Students of the Italian Renaissance who wish to go beyond the standard names and subjects will find in this text abundant information on the lives, customs, beliefs, and practices of those who lived during this exciting time period. The World of Renaissance Italy: A Daily Life Encyclopedia engages all of the Italian peninsula from the Black Death (1347–1352) to 1600. Unlike other encyclopedic works about the Renaissance era, this book deals exclusively with Italy, revealing the ways common Italian people lived and experienced the events and technological developments that marked the Renaissance era. The coverage specifically spotlights marginal or traditionally marginalized groups, including women, homosexuals, Jews, the elderly, and foreign communities in Italian cities. The entries in this two-volume set are organized into 10 sections of 25 alphabetically listed entries each. Among the broad sections are art, fashion, family and gender, food and drink, housing and community, politics, recreation and social customs, and war. The "See Also" sources for each article are listed by section for easy reference, a feature that students and researchers will greatly appreciate. The extensive collection of contemporary documents include selections from a diary, letters, a travel journal, a merchant's inventory, Inquisition testimony, a metallurgical handbook, and text by an artist that describes what the author feels constitutes great work. Each of the primary source documents accompanies a specific article and provides an added dimension and degree of insight to the material.

In this volume, Rebekah Compton offers the first survey of Venus in the art, culture, and governance of Florence from 1300 to 1600. Organized chronologically, each of the six chapters investigates one of the goddess's alluring attributes – her golden splendor, rosy-hued complexion, enchanting fashions, green gardens, erotic anatomy, and gifts from the sea. By examining these attributes in the context of the visual arts, Compton uncovers an array of materials and techniques employed by artists, patrons, rulers, and lovers to manifest Venusian virtues. Her book explores technical art history in the context of love's protean iconography, showing how different discourses and disciplines can interact in the creation and reception of art. Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence offers new insights on sight, seduction, and desire, as well as concepts of gender, sexuality, and viewership from both male and female perspectives in the early modern era.