Italian Frescoes

Quixotic Frescoes delves into the politics of imitation, self-censorship, religious ideology expressed through the pictorial, as well as the gendering of art as reflected in Cervantes' work.

From the late seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries, large-scale Italian frescoes soared in popularity as nobles in the German principalities of the Holy Roman Empire constructed new palaces at an unprecedented rate. They competed with one another to produce lavish decorative schemes that expressed their claim to princely power and political authority. Whereas previous art historians have primarily focused on iconographic and stylistic issues and generally treated these programs as individual commissions of regional courts, this book places the works of art within their broad cultural and historical contexts during the Enlightenment. This monograph explains how rulers gradually shifted from emphasizing military heroism to stressing their cultivation of the arts and sciences, and addresses how expressing membership in a specifically European civilization emerged as an integral visual theme and a key ambition of the German nobility.

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.

"Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are the literary figures we associate with the transitional era between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Italy. In art history, this time of artistic fertility is represented above all by the name Giotto, the great Florentine artist around whose work revolved the innovations in the visual arts in Italy, during the trecento, which shaped the course of Western art for centuries to follow. Italian cities flourished especially in the early decades of the century, as ambitious architectural projects were undertaken that demanded equally challenging decorative programs. Communal palaces and princely residences, new cathedrals and the spacious churches of the mendicant orders, all provided new tasks for painting, and especially for mural painting." "Italian Frescoes: The Age of Giotto, 1280-1400 illustrates in detail the inspired responses to this challenge by Giotto, his contemporaries, and his successors. They undertook a continuous artistic exploration of new ground - in terms of figurative and narrative style as well as in the shaping of pictorial space and use of color. After an introductory overview, the volume begins with an in-depth presentation of the frescoes at San Francesco in Assisi, which became, in the decades around 1300, the great school of Italian painting, where Giotto, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini, among others, created a new kind of painted mural and a new style of pictorial narrative. Expansive treatment is given as well to Giotto's masterful Arena Chapel in Padua, a touchstone of European art for writers and artists from Dante to Marcel Proust and from Ghiberti to Henri Matisse. Among the many other highlights of the volume are the chapels painted by Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Maso di Banco, Giovanni da Milano, and Agnolo Gaddi in the church of Santa Croce, Florence; Ambrogio Lorenzetti's monumental allegories of good and bad government in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena; Buffalmacco's Triumph of Death and Last Judgment in Pisa's Camposanto; and, toward the end of the century, Altichiero's frescoes for the Saint George Chapel in Padua."--BOOK JACKET.

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 builtbetween 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 andassistants, 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 ofthe 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 fresco - each illustrated with full color plates - Jaffe also illuminates the fascinating decorations on the ceilings and overdoors of the great rooms. In figures that personify virtues and vices, to comment onthe 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 andoutdoor, 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, Zelotti's Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga will be an indispensable introduction and guide to a treasurehidden in plain sight for many years.

History of fresco painting. The only book with chronological and topographical overview and background information on frescoes in Italy, the richest art treasury in the world: The technique of fresco painting; Working conditions and private life of painters; Looking at frescoes; Chronological overview; Frescoes according to region; Maps. A cultural travel guide which reads like a novel.

A tribute to the excellence of Italian frescoes in a large-format volume, featuring the paintings in extraordinary detail--a prestigious volume for the art lover's library. Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries, the art of fresco painting was to be found across all regions of Italy. This volume aims to illustrate the most significant periods still visible today in churches, convents, and in the palaces of the Italian courts, as well as in the villas of the enlightened aristocracy. Starting with Giotto, the great pictorial cycles from across the centuries--the fourteenth century, the golden centuries of the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Venetian eighteenth century--are all presented in stunning reproductions. The highquality images are displayed full-page, along with several close-ups that allow the reader to observe details of the artwork in a way that, in reality, would be close to impossible, as many frescoes are painted on inaccessible walls, vaults, and domes. An introduction written by a well-known historian of Italian art narrates how the art of fresco painting originated and developed in Italy. Each period is also briefly introduced by a historical-artistic fact sheet.

Following the success of the previous volumes in this extraordinary Series (The Early Renaissance and The Flowering of the Renaissance), Italian Frescoes: The High Renaissance to the Early Baroque presents twenty-two fresco cycles that 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. The authors present such celebrated sites as the Sistine Chapel in Rome, Palladio Villa Barbaro in Maser, and the Palazzo del Te in Mantua 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 fresco cycle, followed by a series of full- and double-page colour plates showing the entire cycle, many reproduced from new photographs of recently restored frescoes.

Italian Mosaics: 300-1300 is the first comprehensive and well-researched overview of the many stunning examples of the art that still survive. It is lavishly illustrated with superb color plates, the majority of them new, specially commissioned photographs. This volume focuses on Early Christian and medieval mosaics in Italy. Each of the nineteen chapters is concise and authoritative, offering a descriptive and interpretive essay on all aspects of mosaics covering the artists and their patrons in the context of their cultural and political history. Most essays conclude with a diagram of the site, followed by a series of full- and double-page color plates showing the entire cycle. While this volume is the predecessor to the Italian Frescoes series, it also stands alone as a masterpiece of art and scholarship, which will be welcomed by art lovers and art historians alike.