 | The Italian Renaissance and Cultural Memory
by Patricia Emison
Cambridge Press, 2011
from the book cover: Why did Renaissance art come to matter so much, so widely, and for so long? Patricia Emison's answer depends on a recalibrated view of the long Renaissance--from 1300 to 1600--synthesizing the considerable evolution in our understanding of the epoch since the foundational 19th-century studies of Jacob Burckhardt and Heinrich Wölfflin.
Demonstrating that the imitation of nature and of antiquity must no longer define its limits, she exposes the self-consciously modern aspect of Renaissance style. She sets the art against the literary and political interests of the time, and analyzes works both of very familiar artists--Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael--and of lesser-known figures, including Cima da Conegliano and Federico Barocci, as well as various printmakers. Succinct yet expansive, this treatment of the period also explores its layered significance for subsequent generations, from the Old Masters to the Post-Modernists. |
