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This collection of original essays, gathered in honor of distinguished historian Ronald G. Witt, explores a range of issues of interest to scholars of Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. Contributors include Robert Black, Melissa Bullard, Anthony D'Elia, Anthony Grafton, Paul Grendler, James Hankins, John Headley, John Monfasani, and Louise Rice.
The updated second edition of a highly readable synthesis of the major determining features of the Renaissance.
Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? This book starts with an exploration of Ficino’s views on the imagination and discusses whether, how and why these ideas may have been received in Italian Renaissance works of art.
This book examines the heretofore unsuspected complexity of Lorenzo Ghiberti's sculpted representations of Old Testament narratives in his Gates of Paradise (1425–52), the second set of doors he made for the Florence Baptistery and a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture. One of the most intellectually engaged and well-read artists of his age, Ghiberti found inspiration in ancient and medieval texts, many of which he and his contacts in Florence's humanist community shared, read, and discussed. He was fascinated by the science of vision, by the functioning of nature, and, above all, by the origins and history of art. These unusually well-defined intellectual interests, reflected in his famous Commentaries, shaped his approach in the Gates. Through the selection, imaginative interpretation, and arrangement of biblical episodes, Ghiberti fashioned multi-textured narratives that explore the human condition and express his ideas on a range of social, political, artistic, and philosophical issues.
Written by an eminent authority on the Renaissance, these classic essays deal not only with Paul Kristeller's specialty, Renaissance humanism and philosophy, but also with Renaissance theories of art. The focus of the collection is on topics such as humanist learning, humanist moral thought, the diffusion of humanism, Platonism, music and learning during the early Renaissance, and the modern system of arts in relation to the Renaissance. For this volume the author has written a new preface, a new essay, and an afterword.
The creativity of the human mind was brilliantly displayed during the Florentine Renaissance when artists, mathematicians, astronomers, apothecaries, architects, and others embraced the interconnectedness of their disciplines. Artists used mathematical perspective in painting and scientific techniques to create new materials; hospitals used art to invigorate the soul; apothecaries prepared and dispensed, often from the same plants, both medicinals for patients and pigments for painters; utilitarian glassware and maps became objects to be admired for their beauty; art enhanced depictions of scientific observations; and innovations in construction made buildings canvases for artistic grandeur. An exploration of these and other intersections of art and science deepens our appreciation of the magnificent contributions of the extraordinary Florentines.
Concerned about sanitation during a severe bout of plague in Milan, Leonardo da Vinci designed an ideal, clean city. Leonardo was far from alone among his contemporaries in thinking about personal and public hygiene, as Douglas Biow shows in The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy. A concern for cleanliness, he argues, was everywhere in the Renaissance.Anxieties about cleanliness were expressed in literature from humanist panegyrics to bawdy carnival songs, as well as in the visual arts. Biow surveys them all to explain why the topic so permeated Renaissance culture. At one level, cleanliness, he documents, was a matter of real concern in the Renaissance. At another, he finds, issues such as human dignity, self-respect, self-discipline, social distinction, and originality were rethought as a matter of artistic concern.The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy moves from the clean to the unclean, from the lofty to the base. Biow first examines the socially elevated, who defined and distinguished themselves as clean, pure, and polite. He then turns to soap, an increasingly common commodity in this period, and the figure of the washerwoman. Finally he focuses on latrines, which were universally scorned yet functioned artistically as figures of baseness, creativity, and fun in the works of Dante and Boccaccio. Paralleling this social stratification is a hierarchy of literary and visual artifacts, from the discourse of high humanism to filthy curses and scatological songs. Deftly bringing together high and low-as well as literary and visual-cultures, this book provides a fresh perspective on the Italian Renaissance and its artistic legacy.
This monograph demonstrates why humanism began in Italy in the mid-thirteenth century. It considers Petrarch a third generation humanist, who christianized a secular movement. The analysis traces the beginning of humanism in poetry and its gradual penetration of other Latin literary genres, and, through stylistic analyses of texts, the extent to which imitation of the ancients produced changes in cognition and visual perception. The volume traces the link between vernacular translations and the emergence of Florence as the leader of Latin humanism by 1400 and why, limited to an elite in the fourteenth century, humanism became a major educational movement in the first decades of the fifteenth. It revises our conception of the relationship of Italian humanism to French twelfth-century humanism and of the character of early Italian humanism itself. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.
A luxurious and definitive exploration of how and why the Renaissance flourished in Italy for two centuries. The idea of “renaissance,” or rebirth, arose in Italy as a way of reviving the art, science, and scholarship of the Classical era. It was also powered by a quest to document artistic “reality” according to newly discovered scientific and mathematical principles. By the late 15th century, Italy had become the recognized European leader in the fields of painting, architecture, and sculpture. But why was Florence the center of this burgeoning creativity, and how did it spread to other Italian cities? Brimming with vivid reproductions of works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and others, this book showcases the creative achievements that traveled from Florence to Rome to Venice. Art historian Norbert Wolf explores the influence of secular and religious patronage on artistic development; how the urban structure and way of life allowed for such a rich exchange of ideas; and how ideas of humanism informed artists reaching toward the future while clinging to the ideals of the past. Insightful, accessible, and fascinating, this thoroughly researched book highlights the connections and mutual influences of Florence, Rome, and Venice as well as their intriguing rivalries and interdependencies.
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.