History of Italian Renaissance Art

For sophomore/senior survey courses of Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Long hailed as one of the most comprehensive and richly detailed chronologies of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Italy from c. 1200 AD to c. 1594 AD, this text focuses on the works of art, their creators, and the circumstances affecting their creation. This revision is designed to provide students with a more streamlined approach to understanding Italian Renaissance art without losing the enthusiasm and appreciation that Hartt demonstrated for this area and which earlier editions of this book conveyed so successfully to generations of students. The text is organized first of all chronologically, with individual chapters dedicated to developments in different areas or cities, such as Florence, Tuscany, Rome, Venice, and North Italy. There is a strong emphasis on understanding the works of individual artists as examples of their specific approach and style.

The late Frederick Hartt was one of the most distinguished art historians of the twentieth century. A student of Berenson, Schapiro, and Friedlaender, he taught for more than fifty years, influencing generations of Renaissance scholars. At the time of his death he was Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Virginia. He was a Knight of the Crown of Italy, a Knight Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, an honorary citizen of Florence, and an honorary member of the Academy of the Arts of Design, Florence, a society whose charter members included Michelangelo and the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.

Hartt authored, among other works, Florentine Art under Fire (1949); Botticelli (1952); Giulio Romano (1958); Love in Baroque Art (1964); The Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal (1964); three volumes on the painting, sculpture, and drawings of Michelangelo (1964, 1969, 1971); Donatello, Prophet of Modern Vision (1974); Michelangelo's Three Pietàs (1975); and the monumental Art: A History o f Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, now in its fourth edition (1993).

David G . Wilkins is professor of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and chair of the department. He has also served on the faculties of the University of Michigan in Florence and the Semester at Sea Program. He is author of Donatello (1984, with Bonnie A. Bennett); Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (1985); The Illustrated Bartsch: "Pre-Rembrandt Etchers," vol. 53 (1985, with Kahren Arbitman); A History o f the Duquesne Club (1989, with Mark Brown and Lu Donnelly); Art Past/Art Present, a broad survey of the history of art (fourth edition, 2001, with Bernard Schultz and Katheryn M. Linduff); and The Art of the Duquesne Club (2001). He was the revising author for the fourth edition of History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1994) and co-editor of The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1996, with Rebecca L. Wilkins) and Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (with Sheryl E. Reiss).