Reader in Renaissance Studies at Warburg Institute Michael Baxandall

Michael Baxandall

Michael (Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition Baxandall, Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition Warburg Institute University of London)

This book is both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting, and a primer in how to read social history out of the style of pictures. It examines the commercial practice of the early Renaissance picture, trade in contracts, letters, and accounts; and it explains how the visual skills and habits evolved in the daily life of any society enter into its painters' style. Renaissance painting is related for instance to experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. This second edition contains an appendix, the original Latin and Italian texts referred to throughout the book, giving the student access to all the relevant, authentic sources.

A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy

Shadows are holes in light. We see them all the time, and sometimes we notice them, but their part in our visual experience of the world is mysterious. In this book, an art historian draws on contemporary cognitive science, eighteenth-century theories of visual perception, and art history to discuss shadows and the visual knowledge they can offer.

Shadows and Enlightenment

Defines and explains various concepts regarding the painter's intentions in order to provide a basis for understanding of a work of art

On the Historical Explanation of Pictures

Patterns of Intention

An unexpected, gripping and fiercely intelligent postwar thriller by one of Britain's leading cultural historians which will remind readers of John Buchan, Erskine Childers, and John le Carre.

A Grasp of Kaspar

Presenting a mesmerizing picture both of British intellectual life in the 1940's and '50's and the mental, emotional, and cultural formation of a man destined to transform many aspects of that world over the next 40 years, Episodes is both a gripping story and a vividly analytic tour de force. From early childhood in Cardiff and the valleys of South Wales to school and adolescence in Manchester and more, the book brilliantly recaptures the formation of the young man who finally decides not to write novels but to become a scholar. First recounting, in coruscating detail, life and work with John Pope-Hennessy at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then narrating the debate and final acceptance of an invitation from the Warburg Institute at London University, Episodes shows the formation of the extraordinarily learned and original mature scholar. A personal testimony, a spellbinding series of vignettes and characterizations of famous and infamous contemporaries, and a contribution to the cultural history of the mid-20th century, this is an essential and unforgettable book.

A Memorybook

Episodes

A detail examination of the craftsmanship and lives of German woodcarvers from 1475 to 1525 discusses their artistic styles, techniques of carving, and place in society.

The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany

He offers seven thought-provoking pieces, three of which are new and written specifically for this book. While Baxandall focuses on works of the fifteenth century, his essays transcend this period and show with fresh insight how words match the experience of looking at paintings and sculptures."--BOOK JACKET.

Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism

Words for Pictures

`This handsomely illustrated book is an original attempt to make clear how much the art of the orators and the painters in the Renaissance had in common ... Extremely important for the history of art.' Neo-Latin News

Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450

Giotto and the Orators

"Distinguished art historian Michael Baxandall here discusses the historical understanding of works of art: how we can discover the intentions of an artist living in a different time and culture and to what extent we can test and evaluate a historical interpretation of a picture. Analyzing in detail paintings by Picasso, Chardin, and Piero della Francesca, Baxandall shows how this inferential criticism sharpens our legitimate satisfaction in the art works themselves"--Publisher's description.

Svetlana Alpers

Tiepolo is a brilliant example of the specifically pictorial intelligence. This book is both a study of his art and an argument for fuller recognition of the peculiarities of the painter's representational medium. Alpers and Baxandall locate distinctive modes of Tiepolo's representation of the world and human action; follow his process of invention from first pen drawings, through small oil sketches, to great frescoes; and analyse his best and biggest painting, the Four Continents in the Stairway Hall of the Prince-Bishop's Residence at Wurzburg, illustrated with photographs specially taken for the book. The topics taken up include: painting's resistance to enacted narrative drama, its engagement with indeterminacies and repetitions, the senses in which a painter may 'perform' both past art and himself, the constructive roles of gestural drawing, exploitation of shifts of scale between design and finished work, dialogue between the changing natural site lighting and in-picture lighting, contributions made by the beholder's own mobility, the expressive scope of tensions between two and three dimensions, the deep rationale of rococo formal structure, and the sources of the moral force of pictures without an explicit moral. The book - both art criticism and a practical polemic - ends with an annotated gazetteer for travellers, listing those Tiepolo paintings that can still be seen in the places and conditions for which he painted them.

Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence

As sombras são buracos na luz. Nós as vemos a todo momento e, às vezes, reparamos nelas. Um historiador da arte usa a ciência cognitiva contemporânea, de teorias oitocentistas da percepção visual e da história da arte para discutir as sombras e o conhecimento visual que elas podem oferecer. O livro contém um apêndice que situa e organiza o sistema de sombras de Leonardo da Vinci, que tem exercido forte influência na reflexão sobre as sombras, nos últimos 500 anos.

Michael Baxandall

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