Book Description

In this fascinating book, Fra Carnevale—heretofore a mysterious, quasi-legendary figure—emerges as a well-defined and pivotal artist in Renaissance Florence. In presenting their case, the authors take the reader from the workshop of Filippo Lippi in Florence to Urbino, capital of Federico da Montefeltro’s duchy in the region of the Marches. It was a road most memorably traveled by Piero della Francesca, who worked in Florence in 1439 and became Federico’s favorite artist. This book shows that other lesser known artists like Fra Carnevale also took the same path.

Among the many other artists—painters and sculptors—crucial to Fra Carnevale’s formation and discussed in this volume are Domenico Veneziano, Luca della Robbia, Pesellino, and Agostino di Duccio. Essays by Keith Christiansen, Andrea De Marchi, and Matteo Ceriana and a documentary appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo and Matteo Mazzalupi transform our knowledge of this exciting moment in the history of Renaissance art.
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Book Description

What makes a masterpiece? John Pope-Hennessy, the preeminent expert on Italian Renaissance art, examines the works of master Piero della Francesca, painting by painting and fresco by fresco. The author discusses the stories the works portray, their meticulous composition, the questions they raise, and their place within the artistic context of the time. This volume includes the famous Aldous Huxley essay “The Best Picture,” which inspired Pope-Hennessy to seek out the enigmatic works that now constitute the pilgrimage known as the Piero della Francesca Trail. 56 full-color photos are featured. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A compact delight
One of the pleasures of a small book is the ability to savour the author's writing. This volume combines Huxley's essay (which makes the startling claim that Piero's Resurrection is the best painting in the world) with Pope-Hennessy's lucid descriptions of Piero's works. The plates are wonderful and well arranged. PH's swipes at Kenneth Clark and John Mortimer would seem churlish in a larger, more ponderous volume, but are merely charmingly opinionated here. A lovely way to spend an hour or two.

This Trail is worth finding
This small volume (fewer than 60 pages of text) is well worth tracking down through the 'out-of- print' mechanisms. Originally a lecture, the book introduces Piero della Francesca as a "reclusive, silent, rather taciturn friend", but a friend nonetheless. Mr Henessey's rounded analysis and warm descriptions of both the painter and his paintings certainly allow the reader to establish a relationship with Piero. Depsite the author's slightly disparaging remark about "tourists in their rented Fiats" following the Piero della Francesca trail, I urge travellers (Fiat driven, armchair or others) to increase their knowledge, appreciation and sheer enjoyment of Piero by slipping this volume into their luggage or onto the bookshelf. The book is usefully illustrated. ... Read more

Book Description

Although overlooked for centuries, Piero della Francesca is now regarded as the supreme early Renaissance artist. Discover his unprecedented use of landscape and his naturalistic portraiture. The DK ArtBook series presents both the life and works of each artist within the cultural, social, and political context of their time. To make the books easy to consult, they are divided into three areas -- the life and works of the artist, historical and cultural background, and analysis of major works -- which are identifiable by side bands. Each spread focuses on a specific theme, with an introductory text and several annotated illustrations. Few art history texts contain such abundance of full-color illustrations. The index section is also illustrated and gives background information on key figures and the location of the artist's works. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A lavish treatment of a fascinating painter
Piero's ouevre has never seen such handsome representation in book form. Razor-sharp, large-format illustrations, including details printed at full-bleed on forearm-wide pages, permit intimate inspection of works which even in person can sometimes only be viewed distantly in dim church-light.

Quibbles include some tenuous conjectures about the development of the artist's thinking (which, if the author is taken at face value, includes the Zohar). It's too bad that more progress hadn't been made on the newly-restored Arezzo frescoes at the time of publication. But these aside, this is as definitive and gorgeous of a presentation of Piero as one could fairly ask for. Simply a beautiful book. ... Read more

Book Description

As a great master of the early Renaissance, Piero della Francesca created paintings for ecclesiastics, confaternities, and illustrious nobles throughout the Italian peninsula. Since the early twentieth century, the rational space, abstract designs, lucid illumination and naturalistic details of his pictures have attracted wide audiences. Piero's treatises on mathematics and perspective fascinate scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This Companion brings together new essays that offer a synthesis and overview of Piero's life and accomplishments as a painter and theoretician. ... Read more

Book Description

Piero della Francesca, one of the greatest painters of the fifteenth century, was also anaccomplished mathematician. This book--the first to study and integrate Piero's work as a mathematician and painter-explores the connections between his two activities and enhances our understanding of both his paintings and his scientific writings.

J.V. Field begins by describing Piero's education, family background, and training as a painter. She then considers the strong sense of three-dimensional form shown in his art and the abstract solid geometry discussed in his writings. Field next deals with Piero's treatise on perspective and with art works that exemplify the prescriptions it provides, and she assesses the optical or pictorial "rules" Piero followed as a painter. Hailing Piero as an exemplar of a learned craft tradition, she concludes by considering the historical significance of that tradition and its links to the scientific revolution that emerged in the next century. Piero's mathematics is revealed to be as highly accomplished as his painting, and he is shown to exemplify-as does his younger contemporary Leonardo da Vinci-some of the important changes that the Renaissance made in the development of the sciences and in the arts.

Book Description

A major work by the most important Italian art historian of this century. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

STILL THE BEST BOOK ON PIERO
This remains the best book on Piero della Francesca, one of the world's greatest artists. It has influenced many books but still has no equal--after almost 80 years! Great it is back in print. ... Read more

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Great literature
Dario Fo is an amazing artist! he left a legacy, including this wonderfully translated book and his many plays ... Read more

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Incredible experience
You have to be really into Italian art and Early Renaissance to get the feeling of this wonderful book. The way it's lavishly printed makes you happy almost as much as you would see the originals. I would recommend this to an art lovers as a second choice after the site tours. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Sifting the available evidence, Carlo Ginzburg builds up a vivid portrait of Piero della Francesca's patrons and convincingly explains the contemporary intrigues resonant in his painting. This new edition, extensively illustrated, includes additional material by Ginzburg dealing with the work of Roberto Longhi, the dating of the Arezzo Cycle, and the rediscovery of della Francesca in the twentieth century. 123 color & b/w illustrations. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The enigma of Carlo
An immense pleasure! Carlo Ginsburg reminds us more than once that he is not an art historian, but an historian. As such, his approach to paintings such as Piero della Francesca's "Flagellation" which to our eyes are difficult if not unfathomable iconographically, is not bound to the orthodoxies of specialist methodology. If this sounds heady and dense, it is. This is not a book for the casual admirer of Renaissance painting because much of the suspense(and it is suspenseful) is reading the author's discrediting of other interpretations(these are often amusing), suggesting the roadmap he will take to circumvent the errors of the previous historians, then elegantly exhuming the necessary evidence and reasoning to produce-voila- a fresh, impressively founded exegisis before our very eyes. One marvels at the depth and breadth of cultural knowledge that is this historian's primary resource, and facility with archives. But there is another dimension to this book. As one reads, one understands that this is the work of contemporary humanist, and the source of his insights is perhaps this empathy, if not kinship with his subject, whether patron or artist. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Full Light
Look at fifteenth-century artist PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA for one answer to what Netherlands-style bright colors, detail, light, and nature did for Florentine Renaissance painting and early 16th-century Venetian art. His formula of detail, light, shape and space is unforgettable in the natural halo and perfectly geometrical wall shape formed by reflected lighting in his Madonna of Senigallia, the pioneer miniaturistic background landscapes in his portraits of the Montefeltros and in his Nativity, the saintly hair strand by strand in his Arezzo Cathedral fresco of Mary Magdalen, and the 3-D skin tones for his portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta. Alessandro Angelini is one of the Scala/Riverside published writers on Italian artists. His unique book tells what came after in the art world covered by Jill Dunkerton's GIOTTO TO DURER and Jean-Claude Frere's EARLY FLEMISH PAINTING. Likewise the author makes it clear what led into Bernard Berenson's THE ITALIAN PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE, Marcia B. Hall's AFTER RAPHAEL, Peter Humfrey's PAINTING IN RENAISSANCE VENICE, David Rosand's PAINTING IN 16TH-CENTURY VENICE, and Seymour Slive's DUTCH PAINTING 1600-1800. ... Read more

Book Description

In this book, Perry Brooks, an authority on Italian Renaissance painting who has taught at Columbia University, introduces the subtleties of Piero's frescoes for the general reader and solves a conundrum of their narrative organization that has long puzzled specialists.

Also available in the Rizzoli Art Series

Mary Cassatt by Nancy Mowll Mathews
Winslow Homer by Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr.
Edward Hopper by Karal Ann Marling
Jasper Johns by Roberta Bernstein
Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
Jacob Lawrence by Richard J. Powell
Kazimir Malevich by Alison Hilton
Henri Matisse by Roger Benjamin
Camille Pissarro by Joachim Pissarro
Rembrandt by Larry Silver
Georges Seurat by Norma Broude
... Read more

Book Description