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Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance 1400-1470
The first comprehensive survey in modern times of the surviving fresco cycles of the early Renaissance, this pathblazing work is an extraordinary achievement in scholarship and publishing Certain Italian fresco cycles, notably the Brancacci Chapel in Florence by Masaccio, Masolino, and Filippino Lippi, are well known. Others, such as Piero della Francesca's work in Arezzo and Benozzo Gozzoli's Chapel of the Magi in Florence, have been reproduced countless times. Yet no publisher--until now--has attempted to gather together and document in extensive photographs the essential fresco cycles of the early Italian Renaissance. The list of works covers the regions of Italy, from the Alpine mountain areas to Puglia, with an emphasis on Tuscany and Florence, the artistic center that gave life to the Renaissance. Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance, 1400-1470 opens with a concise introductory text discussing various aspects of fifteenth-century fresco painting: artists, patronage, cultural and historical conditions, technical methods, and questions of local tradition. The central section of the book examines twenty-one fresco cycles, each representing a crowning achievement in this field. A descriptive and interpretive essay introduces each cycle and is followed by a series of full-page and double-page color plates-many of them new photography of recently restored frescoes-covering the entire work. This parade of colorful masterpieces, paired with Steffi Roettgen's authoritative text, makes a brilliant volume that will be treasured by scholars and art lovers alike. A second volume, Professor Roettgen's Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance, 1470-1510 , continues the story with works by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and many others..
Price: $81.31
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Italian Frescoes: High Renaissance and Mannerism 1510-1600
The third volume in the only comprehensive modern survey of the surviving frescoes created during the later years of the great Italian Renaissance to the Baroque Following the success of the previous volumes in this extraordinary series--Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance and Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance—this volume presents twenty-two fresco cycles, each representing a notable achievement in the history of art. The fresco cycles featured include brilliant works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Parmigianino, Bronzino, Veronese, and Carracci --all of them still visible on walls and ceilings of palaces and churches spanning Italy from the Veneto to Rome. Here are such celebrated sites as the Sistine Chapel in Rome and Palladio's Villa Barbaro in Maser, as well as lesser known gems. Each of the twenty-two chapters is concise and authoritative, offering a descriptive and interpretive essay on all aspects of fresco painting, covering the artists and their patrons in the context of their cultural and political history. Each essay concludes with a diagram of the site, followed by a series of full- and double-page color plates showing the entire cycle, many reproduced from new photographs of recently restored frescoes. No publisher until now has attempted to gather together and document all the important fresco cycles of the Italian Renaissance. While this volume is a continuation of the previous books, The High Renaissance to the Baroque easily stands alone as an incredible treasury of art and scholarship, which will be eagerly collected by art historians and art lovers alike. Other Details: 360 full-color illustrations.
Price: $79.64
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Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance 1470-1510
Steffi Roettgen's first volume, Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance, 1400-1470, was called "by far the finest book on the subject" by Everett Fahy, chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If this second volume, focusing on the Renaissance from 1470 to 1510, is even more beautiful, it is because the artists represented here--including Boticelli, Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Perugino, and Fra Angelico--represent, as the subtitle puts it, "the flowering of the Renaissance." The 470-page book, which documents fresco cycles by more than a score of artists in 16 different locations, is organized by place, with each chapel, sacristy, or cloister treated separately, in its own chapter. The mostly uncaptioned color plates fill the large pages in a carefully organized sequence, according to maps of the buildings (or ceilings or walls) that are shaded to show each cycle of paintings as it is pictured. Roettgen's text, translated by the excellent Russell Stockman, is masterly--clear and authoritative, descriptive and interpretive--but the success of Roettgen's great undertaking also depends largely on the photographs by Antonio Quattrone, primarily, and Fabio Lensini. Quattrone in some cases has captured the frescoes' balance, color, and realism--and their lovely details--with the kind of clarity that no one has brought to them before. His lighting is shadowless, his camera centered and still. These remarkable photographs give the reader a privileged view instead of the dim, squinting one we normally have, from below. It's almost like being on the scaffold with the artists themselves. --Peggy Moorman.
Price: $89.23
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Zelotti's Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga
A prominent writer, a master painter, and a treasure of art that for centuries had been largely neglected are brought brilliantly to life in this first important study of one of the great legacies of Renaissance art. The immense castle at Cataio, about thirty-five miles from Venice, was built between 1570 and 1573. An extraordinary series of frescoes, painted in 1573, covers the walls of six of its palatial halls. Programmed by Giuseppe Betussi, the forty frescoes depict momentous events in the history of the Obizzi family from 1004 to 1422. Executed by Giambattista Zelotti and assistants, the frescoes, plus ceiling decorations, are painted in a Mannerist, highly illusionist style with such skill that the walls seem to be windows through which one views battle scenes, weddings, political negotiations, and other episodes in the dramatic history of the Obizzi family.Now one of the most distinguished scholars of Italian art takes readers room by room, fresco by fresco, on the first guided tour of this Betussi-Zelotti masterpiece. Writing with characteristic clarity, Irma Jaffe combines art history, iconography, formal analysis, Italian history, and the story of the Obizzi family in a richly detailed esthetic, social and historical introduction to the entire series.Describing and explaining with spirit and authority the composition and meaning of each frescoeach illustrated with full color platesJaffe also illuminates the fascinating decorations on the ceilings and overdoors of the great rooms. In figures that personify virtues and vices, to comment on the events painted on the walls beneath them, the values of sixteenth century Italy are reflected with uncommon clarity in both the fresco saga and the decorations above.A full understanding of Mannerism and sixteenth century painting must now include the contribution of Battista Zelotti. In the scenes at Cataio he reveals the possibilities available to Mannerist style in his countless poses of the human figure and of horses, in his variety of settings---indoor and outdoor, land and sea---and in the range of preeminent sixteenth century values such as family rank and pride, personal courage, and religion that are expressed in his Saga of the Obizzi family. Zelotti's masterpiece carries the artificiality inherent in Mannerism to a new level of theatrical drama. Viewing the scenes of fierce battles, magnificent weddings, assassinations, and triumph after triumph, suggests to modern viewers something of the splendor of grand opera.For Renaissance scholars and students, for art historians, for travelers and art lovers interested in the heritage of the Renaissance in Italy and in the glorious estates of the Veneto, Zelottis Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga will be an indispensable introduction and guide to a treasure hidden in plain sight for many years..
Price: $55.00
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Italian Frescoes: The Baroque Era, 1600-1800
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Giotto: The Frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua
At the end of a program of restoration that lasted an incredibly short time, but for which preparations had been made down to the smallest detail over twenty years of scientific investigation, historical research, laboratory experimentation, essays, trials and monitoring, one of the most fundamental cornerstones and certainly the most dazzling incunbala of modern European painting has been reopened to the public. Preceded by long and complex preparatory work on the building and the surroundings, the intervention of conservation on the mural decoration has made it possible to arrest the acceleration of the process of decay. This decay was chiefly the result of the combined action of damp and pollution, but had been further aggravated by the use of unsuitable restoration materials during the intervention carried out in the early sixties. Once the problem that had prompted the decision to intervene on Giotto's cycle had been resolved, it was thought only proper to respond to the need to restore the paintings as much as possible to their original state. The result has been to render the revolutionary spatial layout of the work more legible, along with the formal values through which Giotto expressed himself, in particular the quality of his coloring, something that is usually (and inexplicably) undervalued. But several genuine discoveries have also emerged, such as his use of the technique required to make mock marble ("marmorino" or "Roman stucco") and of oil to "bind" the white lead, which as a consequence has not undergone any process of alteration. This has revealed, at an unparalleled level (at least as far as our current knowledge is concerned), effects of sunlight or luminosity that it would be hard to regard as produced by chance. .
Price: $103.57
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The Message of St. Francis: with Frescoes from the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi
It's hard to say what's most important about The Message of St. Francis--St. Francis's words of wisdom; illustrations of scenes from his life; or the elegant, nearly indestructible paper it's printed on. Sister Nan, a member of the Community of St. Francis in London, has selected passages from St. Francis's writings and from his biographies, which are illustrated with photographs of Giotto's frescoes of St. Francis's life in the Basilica at Assisi. The book would make a fine introduction to St. Francis for young people, an excellent devotional for adults, or a treasured gift for just about anyone who is serious about seeking wisdom and enjoying beauty in life. Many of the excerpts from St. Francis's writings included here will be familiar to readers who have even superficial knowledge of his life. Others, such as "A Signature in the Air," from Murray Bodo's The Journey and the Dream, have the power of fresh revelation. In this passage, St. Francis is watching little lizards running across the walls of the Basilica. "It was their movement that fascinated him. Their motion was a pattern scribbled in the air which disappeared as soon as it was made. There was no permanence in these tiny signatures, no monument to themselves left behind. That is what he wanted to be: a tiny signature in the air that thrilled someone who saw it, but was as anonymous as a lizard's zigzagged darting on a pink Assisi wall. His movement would be his poem." --Michael Joseph Gross.
Price: $18.89
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