Renaissance jewels are among the most alluring manifestations of an age that experienced the widening of horizons, from the Old World to the New. This volume overflows with luxurious imagery expressing the boundless creativity and spirit of the Age of the Renaissance. Yvonne Hackenbroch relates the tales of the jewels, the artists, and the patrons who commissioned them.

Superb sourcebook of rare ornamentation includes meticulously detailed narrative and 400 illustrations depicting priceless brooches, necklaces, clasps, gold padlock, reliquary pendants, much more.

The study of medieval clothing and textiles reveals much about the history of our material culture, as well as social, economic and cultural history as a whole. This book makes use of archaeological finds and text references in order to examine this history, providing on overview of historic fashions.

A biography of Vittoria Colonna, a confidante of Michelangelo, the scion of one of the most powerful families of her era, and a pivotal figure in the Italian Renaissance Ramie Targoff’s Renaissance Woman tells of the most remarkable woman of the Italian Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa of Pescara. Vittoria has long been celebrated by scholars of Michelangelo as the artist’s best friend—the two of them exchanged beautiful letters, poems, and works of art that bear witness to their intimacy—but she also had close ties to Charles V, Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Aretino, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, Reginald Pole, and Isabella d’Este, among others. Vittoria was the scion of an immensely powerful family in Rome during that city’s most explosively creative era. Art and literature flourished, but political and religious life were under terrific strain. Personally involved with nearly every major development of this period—through both her marriage and her own talents—Vittoria was not only a critical political actor and negotiator but also the first woman to publish a book of poems in Italy, an event that launched a revolution for Italian women’s writing. Vittoria was, in short, at the very heart of what we celebrate when we think about sixteenth-century Italy; through her story the Renaissance comes to life anew.