Surreptitious messages, concealed myths, and historical truths lie hidden in the great works of the Italian Renaissance, behind heavy gold leaf and religious symbology.

Although often obscured by the archaic language of historical painting, careful analysis and expert interpretation bring these images to life. Discover masterpieces of the most beloved creative epoch in this fascinating art historical inquiry. Images of war, romance, birth, and knowledge, works of the Italian Renaissance have much to say when given a voice. Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen do just that-pulling apart each of the 12 featured paintings with all the talent of true detectives to offer an illuminating portal to the past.

From Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam to Ucello's The Battle of San Romano, from Antonello da Messina's St. Jerome in His Study to Pinturicchio's Penelope with the Suitors, the artworks under investigation are a diverse representation of the period's innovation and brilliance, sourced directly from some of the most impressive collections in the world, including the Uffizi, Prado, and National Gallery London.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

It seems that ever since ancient times, the basis for the great success of portraiture as a genre has been that entirely human aspiration to leave a tangible sign of one's life on earth, the desire to immortalise an image of oneself in an attempt to defeat the inevitable passage of time.

This fascinating and complex subject acquired status as an art form during the 15th century as the concept of Humanism became more diffuse and greater importance was given to the dignity of a person and his capacity to be in control of his own destiny.

The selection of portraits by great European artists contained in this book begins with those of an official nature in which the subject is shown in profile — a deliberate reminder of the classic world — and continues with those offering a realistic image of the subject and an extremely detailed landscape. It ends with portraits from the late Renaissance when it was a psychological characterisation of the subject that prevailed.

Architect and engraver Paul Letarouilly dedicated more than 30 years of his life to creating the most complete collection of plans, elevations, and details of the buildings and monuments of Renaissance Rome.

This student's edition of his achievement features highlights from five massive volumes, originally published between 1825 and 1882. Its systematic overview illustrates the principles of design behind the works of Michelangelo, Sangallo, Peruzzi, Vignola, Bramante, Bernini, Fontana, dalla Porta, Maderno, Borromini, and other great builders of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Letarouilly's engravings, which illustrate the translation of the principles behind classical architecture into the new age of the Renaissance, served as a major source of inspiration from the moment of their publication, and they remain standard references to this day. This edition includes informative text by classical architect and scholar John Barrington Bayley that offers insights into the architecture of Rome's palaces, villas, and squares as well as St. Peter's and the Vatican.

Ideal for students of classical, Renaissance, and Roman architecture, this affordable volume also constitutes a useful guide for visitors to Rome.

Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) was an Antwerp painter and printmaker. Together with his wife, he was one of the first to establish a publishing house for prints.

From 1548 their firm "At the Sign of the Four Winds" issued hundreds of important etchings and engravings. Prints after frescoes and paintings by Italian artists Raphael and Bronzino, the first series of classical ruins, antique sculpture, as well as designs by such Northern artists as Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were distributed all over Europe and helped to spread Renaissance ideals of beauty.

It was Cock who spotted the talent of Pieter Bruegel, an artist who would eventually supply Cock with more than sixty designs for prints.

A little-known and rediscovered illuminated manuscript from the Renaissance is the focal point of this enthralling exploration of Umbrian painting, the role of the Franciscan order, and the artists Bartolomeo and Giacepo Caporali.

The Caporali Missal, a sumptuous and important Renaissance missal—or service book for the priest at the altar—was illuminated by the Caporali brothers for the Franciscan community in the hillside town of Montone, near Perugia, in 1469. This exhibition catalog celebrates this important manuscript, recently acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art, with exquisite reproductions that bring the illuminated pages to life.

Additional works by the Caporali brothers and relevant art from the museum’s and other collections elucidate the history, style, content, function, and authorship of the missal. Illustrations of a chalice and a paten, a chasuble, and a processional cross enhance the religious and aesthetic context of the manuscript.

A series of essays by eminent scholars examine the influence of Florentine artists on the Caporali brothers and explore the spiritual life of the Franciscan community and the history of the friary at Montone.

Italian ironwork from Roman times, through Medieval centuries, and up to Neo Classical designs of the early nineteenth century comprise this collection of 100 photographs from Italian sources. They depict trellises, grilles, gates, fencing, household lighting, fireplace accoutrements, and door hardware that will inspire today's designers. Their origins in hill towns of Ialy are recorded for many images. This is authentic ironwork for contractors, decorators, and homeowners to enjoy.

The lofty painted ceilings of Europe's palaces and churches rank among the greatest treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. This unique assemblage features brilliant full-color reproductions of some of the finest examples of such art. Drawn from two rare French and German portfolios of the nineteenth century, this unique volume re-creates more than 60 magnificent ceilings from Parisian drawing rooms, German castles, and Italian galleries.

Richly depicting scenes from nature and mythology, this collection abounds in chubby cherubs, ethereal goddesses, heroes in full battle armor, and all manner of animals, both legendary and realistic. In addition, a generous assortment of floral ornaments includes rosettes, garlands, and clusters of acanthus and other decorative leaves and vines. Whether used in their entirety or as individual motifs, these designs will add beauty and sophistication to any art or craft project.

The volume is divided into three chapters: Early Renaissance, High Renaissance and Mannerism. It includes palaces, buildings, villas, churches, hospitals, monasteries, squares, streets, fountains and flights of steps.

The book is completed with drawings and maps.

Among the so-called “minor arts” that flourished in the Italian Renaissance, perhaps the most astounding in its virtuosity was that of intarsia, or wood inlay, in which countless pieces of wood of various species were fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle so as to form exquisite pictures. The masters of intarsia adopted the newly developed technique of linear perspective to depict their characteristic themes, namely, cityscapes viewed through an archway and illusionistic renderings of half-open cabinets filled with liturgical or scholarly equipment. At first these enchanting scenes in wood were found mainly in ecclesiastical settings - on choir stalls and altar frontals, and in sacristies - but by the later Quattrocento they were also used to decorate the studioli, or private studies, of powerful secular patrons. Eventually, in the Cinquecento, intarsists began to push the limits of their medium with figural scenes of ever-greater complexity; this ambitious yet perhaps quixotic attempt to rival the art of painting led to many technical and aesthetic innovations, but also to an abandonment of intarsia’s natural strengths and its ultimate decline as an independent art.

In this volume, a team of noted Italian art historians trace the evolution of Renaissance intarsia through a discussion of twelve of the most important intarsia cycles. These include the famous studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro in the ducal palace at Urbino; the sacristy of Santa Maria in Organo at Verona, which Vasari described as the most beautiful in all of Italy; and the choir of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, the cartoons for which were prepared by Lorenzo Lotto. Drawing on the latest scholarship and, in some cases, newly discovered documentary evidence, the authors explain the historical context and iconography of these masterpieces, as well as their connections to the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the time. Their insightful essays are illustrated with some two hundred new color images, the result of an extensive photographic campaign carried out exclusively for this work.

Admirably filling in a unique chapter of art history, Renaissance Intarsia will be essential reading for scholars and enthusiasts of art, and a powerful source of inspiration for contemporary artists and craftsmen.

Certain Italian fresco cycles, notably the Brancacci Chapel in Florence by Masaccio, Masolino, and Filippino Lippi, are well known. Others, such as Piero della Francescas work in Arezzo and Benozzo Gozzolis 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 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 Roettgens authoritative text, makes a brilliant volume that will be treasured by scholars and art lovers alike.

Of all the riches of the sixteenth-century European nobleman, none spoke more powerfully of his heroism, wealth and taste than his armour, clothing and weapons. Drawing on the V&A's popular arms and armour collection, Angus Patterson looks at the suits designed to kill, protect and impress. From parade suits, lavishly embossed and gilded, decorated with plumes of ostrich feathers and draped with colourful silk sashes to swords, daggers, pistols and gunpowder flasks slung from elaborate belts, detailed new photography alongside paintings and sculpture bring medieval and renaissance fashion to life

Under the rule of Henry VII (r. 1485-1509) England became a powerful nation. The Tudor court sought to express its worldliness and political clout through major artistic commissions, employing Florentine sculptors and painters to create lavish new interiors, suitable for entertaining foreign dignitaries, for its royal palaces. These were exemplified by Henry VIII's palace of Nonsuch, so named because no other palace could match its magnificence. Italian sculpture, painting, and tapestries of the day reflected an interest in portraiture and dynastic monuments, epitomized in England by the royal tomb projects created by Baccio Bandinelli, Benedetto da Rovezzano, and Pietro Torrigiani.

Generously illustrated throughout, The Anglo-Florentine Renaissance traces the artistic links between Medicean Florence and Tudor England through essays by an international team of scholars and explores how the language of Florentine art effectively expressed England's political aspirations and rose to prominence as a new international courtly style.

Known as the "century of anatomy," the 16th century in Italy saw an explosion of studies and treatises on the discipline. Medical science advanced at an unprecedented rate, and physicians published on anatomy as never before. Simultaneously, many of the period's most prominent artists—including Leonardo and Michelangelo in Florence, Raphael in Rome, and Rubens working in Italy—turned to the study of anatomy to inform their own drawings and sculptures, some by working directly with anatomists and helping to illustrate their discoveries. The result was a rich corpus of art objects detailing the workings of the human body with an accuracy never before attained.

Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy examines this crossroads between art and science, showing how the attempt to depict bone structure, musculature, and our inner workings—both in drawings and in three dimensions—constituted an important step forward in how the body was represented in art. While already remarkable at the time of their original publication, the anatomical drawings by 16th-century masters have even foreshadowed developments in anatomic studies in modern times.