Revaluing Renaissance Art

This title was first published in 2000: Michelangelo gave his painting of "Leda and the Swan" to an apprentice rather than hand it over to the emissary of the Duke of Ferrar, who had commissioned it. He was apparently disgusted by the failure of the emissary - who was probably more used to buying pigs than discussing art - to accord the picture and the artist the value they deserved. Any discussion of works of art and material culture implicitly assigns them a set of values. Whether these values be monetary, cultural or religious, they tend to constrict the ways in which such works can be discussed. The variety of potential forms of valuation becomes particularly apparent during the Italian Renaissance, when relations between the visual arts and humanistic studies were undergoing rapid changes against an equally fluid social, economic and political background. In this volume, 13 scholars explicitly examine some of the complex ways in which a variety of values might be associated with Italian Renaissance material culture. Papers range from a consideration of the basic values of the materials employed by artists, to the manifestation of cultural values in attitudes to dress and domestic devotion. By illuminating some of the ways in which values were constructed, they provide a broader context within which to evaluate Renaissance material culture.

Gabriele Neher, Rupert Shepherd

List of Contributors List of Figures Preface 1. Introduction: Revaluing Renaissance Art 2. The Price of Quality: Factors Influencing the Cost of Pigments During the Renaissance 3. 'Artefici' and 'huomini intendenti': Questions of Artistic Value in Sixteenth-Century Italy 4. 'Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentina': Cultural Values in the 1481 Divine Comedy 5. Mantegna's Parnassus: Reading, Collecting and the Studiolo 6. Alfonso I d'Este, Michaelangelo and the Man Who Bought Pigs 7. New, Old, and Second-Hand Culture: The Case of the Renaissance Sleeve 8. Evaluating Textiles in Renaissance Venice 9. Revaluing Dress in History Paintings for Quattrocento Florence 10. The Madonna and Child, a Host of Saints, and Domestic Devotion in Renaissance Florence 11. Images of St. Catherine: A Re-Evaluation of Cosimo Rosselli and the Influence of his Art on the Woodcut and Metal Engraving Images of the Dominican Third Order 12. Voting with their Feet: Art, Pilgrimage and Ratings in the Renaissance 13. Madness, Reason, Vision and the Cosmos: Evaluating the Drawings of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c.1351) Bibliography Index