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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.

The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.

This English translation, with introduction and notes, an extensive glossary, maps, and topical bibliographies, explores religious authority and revealed knowledge and is indispensable for the study of Homer, heroes, literature, religion, and culture in the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).

Percy Jackson meets Indiana Jones in the final installment of the New York Times bestselling epic adventure Seven Wonders! Jack, Marco, Cass, and Aly’s quest to find the seven magic orbs buried beneath each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World has hit a perilous snag. King Uhla’ar has kidnapped Aly and taken her and an orb back through a rift in time. A giant, merciless behemoth guards the opening, and so Jack and his friends realize that their only hope to rescue Aly is to rush to find the rest of the lost Loculi. This mission takes them around the world—to the Temple of Artemis to fend off a mighty army and then to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, where they wind up swallowed in the belly of a beast. But before all is said and done, they must return to where it all began, to Atlantis, to save Aly, themselves…and the world. Don’t miss The Legend of the Rift, the epic finale to Peter Lerangis’s earth-shattering, New York Times bestselling adventure series, Seven Wonders.

In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and a faster tempo.