The Renaissance Nude - Tapa dura

" . . . fantastic, richly readable . . . "--Tyler Green "The Modern Arts Notes Podcast " "Elegant, exquisite, erudite, scholarly, informative, profusely and beautifully illustrated, exceptionally well organized and presented, The Renaissance Nude is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university library European Art History collections in general, and Renaissance Art History supplemental studies lists in particular."--Midwest Book Review "Highly recommended." --Choice "The most impressive of the recent deluge of books on the subject . . . Readable, informative and sometimes startling . . . " --The Art Newspaper " . . . destined to become a standard work in art history. . . " --frieze

Reflecting an era when Europe looked to both the classical past and a global future, this volume explores the emergence and acceptance of the nude as an artistic subject. It engages with the numerous and complex connotations of the human body in more than 250 artworks by the greatest masters of the Renaissance. Paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, illuminated manuscripts and book illustrations reveal private, sometimes shocking, preoccupations as well as surprising public beliefs - the Age of Humanism from an entirely new perspective. This book presents works by Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach and Martin Schongauer in the north and Donatello, Raphael and Giorgione in the south; it also introduces names that deserve to be known better. A publication this rich in scholarship could only be produced by a variety of expert scholars; the sixteen contributors are preeminent in their fields and wide-ranging in their knowledge and curiosity. The structure of the volume - essays alternating with shorter texts on individual artworks - permits studies both broad and granular. From the religious to the magical and the poetic to the erotic, encompassing male and female, infancy, youth and old age, The Renaissance Nude examines in a profound way what it is to be human.