"The 'Madonna and child' known as 'The Dudley Madonna' was painted around 1508 by Giovanni Belline (c. 1430-1516), one of the most celebrated of Italian artists. This book charts the painting's recent provenance and reception and revisits the context in which it was created. It retraces its critical history from Dudley's nineteenth-century London until today, and reassesses and autograph work by Bellini that during the twentieth century was almost completely overlooked. The years 1505-10 were crucial to Giovanni Bellini's career, and this book examines anew the part he played in the Venetian High Renaissance, noting his response to the upcoming generation (above all Titian) and new ideas coming from central Italy - from Raphael and in particular from the visiting Florentine Fra Bartolomeo." -- book flyleaf.

Tuscany is a landscape whose cultural construction is complicated and multi-layered. It is this very complexity that this book seeks to untangle. By revealing hidden histories, we learn how food, landscape and architecture are intertwined, as well as the extent to which Italian design and contemporary consumption patterns form a legacy that draws upon the Romantic longings of a century before. In the process, this book reveals the extent to which Tuscany has been constructed by Anglos — and what has been distorted, idealized and even overlooked in the process.