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.Giotto to Durer: Early Renaissance Painting in The National Gallery: Early European Painting in the National Gallery (National Gallery of London)

by: J Dunkerton

July 01, 1991
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries ... Read More:
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.The Northern Renaissance (Art & Ideas)

by: Jeffrey Chipps Smith

2004-05
I have had to buy this book whilst studying for a degree in Art History but would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in art and particularly in fourteenth to sixteenth century Netherlandish and German art.

Beautifully illustrated and written in an easy to follow format.

I will read this again and again just for its sheer beauty.
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.Renaissance Art Reconsidered: An Anthology of Primary Sources

from: WileyBlackwell

December 22, 2006
I have had to buy this book whilst studying for a degree in Art History but would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in art and particularly in fourteenth to sixteenth century Netherlandish and German art.

Beautifully illustrated and written in an easy to follow format.

I will read this again and again just for its sheer beauty.
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.Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)

by: Michael Baxandall

May 19, 1988
This is the kind of book that History of Art departments throw at you early on in their courses to instil the right respect and awe for the whole academic ritual.

When I first saw this book at Birkbeck College (2003 History of Art MA) I was duly impressed and intimidated into thinking this was somehow a classic. In this work Baxandall is the exemplary academic, slowly building up a case from painstaking research and cleverly interpreted trivia.

This approach is fine and dandy until you reflect that at the end of it the conclusions Baxandall has laboured so hard to arrive at are perhaps a little banal -- i.e. Renaissance painting was influenced by such contemporary phenomenon as religious practices, dancing, and the ability ... Read More:
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.The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics)

by: Giorgio Vasari

April 02, 1998
This is a long, long book with a great deal of information. Clocking in at over five hundred pages and covering about thirty artists of the Italian Renaissance, it is fairly comprehensive and detailed.

Some of Vasari's 'facts' have been discredited over the years and so the reader should not take everything here as gospel and indeed should be using this as a supplementary text with other material to get the best use out of it. Nevertheless it remains an important contemporary text and one of the first books on 'art history' ever produced.

I have to admit that I found it extremely hard going. There are great long lists of works and their subjects and the patrons of artists which it is easy to get bored or confused by but there are ... Read More:
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.On Painting (Classics)

by: Leon Battista Alberti

February 28, 1991
This is effectively a textbook for Renaissance artists. It is split into three sections, the first dealing predominantly with issues of composition and perspective, the second with light and shade, colour and the artist's duty to his art and his public, and the third predominantly with what qualities one must bring to the job of being an artist.

If you are only loosely interested in art as a pragmatic practice, and you don't have some mathematical knowledge which will steer you through the first section it may be rather impenetrable in places. I am one of these people and found myself really struggling with the first section.

It is however fascinating as a glimpse into the mindset of a humanist scholar and as someone practicing on ... Read More:
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.The Secret Language of The Renaissance: Decoding the Hidden Symbolism of Italian Art

by: Richard Stemp

October 15, 2006
This is effectively a textbook for Renaissance artists. It is split into three sections, the first dealing predominantly with issues of composition and perspective, the second with light and shade, colour and the artist's duty to his art and his public, and the third predominantly with what qualities one must bring to the job of being an artist.

If you are only loosely interested in art as a pragmatic practice, and you don't have some mathematical knowledge which will steer you through the first section it may be rather impenetrable in places. I am one of these people and found myself really struggling with the first section.

It is however fascinating as a glimpse into the mindset of a humanist scholar and as someone practicing on ... Read More:
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.The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Classics)

by: Jacob Burckhardt

June 28, 1990
For much of the last 139 years, Jacob Burckhardt's work has been dismissed as too "Nineteenth Century" for serious study: more literature than serious history. So much the pity. What Burckhardt left us in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is a magisterial, thematic, understanding of the Italian Renaissance that is far more 1990's in its observations and human understandings than its original 1860's. It is a shame that Burckhardt's famous pupil, Nietzsche, didn't learn a little more balance and discretion at his elder's feet. This book is a joy to read. Like Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this work shows us how history can engage the spirit, and how far off the mark some modern historians have gone with their ... Read More:
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.Art History and Its Methods: A Reader

by: Eric Fernie

June 01, 1995
A good text book, especially for students (like myself) who come from a a non-history background to study art history. Useful in preparing avenues for research topics or for constructing essays. I wish I had used this book more when I was studying for my MA!
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.Signs and Symbols in Christian Art: With Illustrations from Paintings of the Renaissance (Galaxy Books)

by: George Ferguson

June 30, 1977
This book was very drab, with an aged feel to the pages, and not what I expected at all. Most of the paintings are located in the States. Not very good for research as all paintings are in black and white. Its very much aimed at theology rather than art history.
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