John T. Spike

Angelico (fra)

Art historian Spike provides fresh insights into the life and work of the Dominican friar Fra Angelico (1400?-1455) who succeeded Masaccio as the foremost painter of the early Renaissance in Italy. This splendid, massive (11x13") volume contains an extensive essay on Fra Angelico's life and work, followed by large color plates and detailed discussion of individual works. The large format allows for an intimate look at the friar's inspired art, and the volume is a feast for the eyes. A catalog presents his oeuvre, as revised by Spike's new attributions, illustrated with thumbnail reproductions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Fra Angelico

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty

Alessandro Cecchi

"Perhaps more than any other painter, Sandro Botticelli (about 1445-1510) exemplifies the artistic achievement of Renaissance Florence in the 15th century. "Botticelli and the Search for the Divine," organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary and Italy's Metamorfosi Associazione Culturale, explores the dramatic changes in the artist's style and subject matter--from poetic depictions of classical gods and goddesses to austere sacred themes--reflecting the shifting political and religious climate of Florence during his lifetime."--Exhibition website.

Florentine Painting Between the Medici and the Bonfires of the Vanities

Botticelli and the Search for the Divine

Cesare De Seta

Daniele Benati

János Jernyei Kiss

Axel Vécsey

The Glory of Italian Baroque and Rococo Painting

Caravaggio to Canaletto

Giuseppe Valentino

Mattia Preti

Gregorio Preti

Catalogue raisonné of 20 works by Matti Preti and Gregorio Preti located in Taverna, Italy.

Catalogo Completo Delle Opere, Catalogue of Their Paintings in Taverna

Mattia E Gregorio Preti a Taverna

Erik Harrington

Keith Sciberras

A Brush with Passion: Mattia Preti (1613-1699) is the first major exhibition of his art held in the United States and one of three international venues recognized by the Preti Quadricentennial Committee in Italy, of which our own Dr John T Spike is a member. Taverna, the artist’s birthplace in Calabria, and Valletta, Malta, where Preti lived for forty years as painter to the Knights of Malta, will also host exhibitions with works from their respective countries. Mattia Preti is celebrated as the last and most enduring proponent of the passionate, contrasted style of the painter, Michelangelo da Caravaggio (1571-1610). In many ways, Preti’s life followed in Caravaggio’s footsteps, although with a happier ending. As a young man, Preti made his way up the Italian peninsula to study painting in Rome, arriving around 1630. He quickly fell under the spell of Caravaggio, similarly seeking emotional intensity and wrapping his canvases in pervasive darkness that evokes the impenetrable nights of those candle-lit times and the hidden depths of the human soul. Preti’s paintings underwent a significant development in the mid-1640s, when he immersed himself in studies of the Venetian Renaissances, especially Titian and Paolo Veronese, in search of more colors and a grander theatricality in his compositions. The exhibition A Brush with Passion: Mattia Preti (1613-1699) features a prime example of this new direction, the ‘Banquet of Herod’ in the Toledo Museum of Art, which is one of the artist’s masterpieces. Fiercely self-reliant and incessantly inventive, Preti followed Caravaggio’s restless path leading first to Naples and then beyond to Malta. His paintings on the vault and for most of the altars in the Church of St John in Valletta earned him a high title in the Sovereign Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta. His last four decades were dedicated to commissions for the Knights and the leading noble families of Europe. These paintings have found their way to the world’s museums and for which Preti’s anniversary is being commemorated.

Mattia Preti (1613-1699) : Paintings from North American Collections in Honor of the 400th Anniversary of His Birth

A Brush with Passion

John Yau

Carole Feuerman

"Expressing a refreshing viewpoint on potentially mundane and ordinary activities, realistic sculptor Carole A. Feuerman's human figure sculptures are anything but commonplace. Her versatility working with marble, bronze, vinyl, and painted resins incorporates both ancient and contemporary methods. This gorgeous book presents a captivating glimpse at a transitory, contemplative moment in time."--Jacket flap.

Swimmers

This is a long-awaited and authoritative reinterpretation of the early life and career of arguably the greatest artist in history. Author John T. Spike surveys Michelangelo's early life from birth to his early thirties, probing the thinking, artistic evolution and yearnings of a young man thoroughly convinced of his own exceptional talent. Spike explores Michelangelo's involvement in the most troubling controversies of his age, and recreates Florence and Rome with vivid sketches of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leonardo, Julius II and Machiavelli. This is a prodigiously informative and compelling account that will fulfil the need for a major Michelangelo biography for this generation and many to come.

Young Michelangelo

John T. Spike

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