Patronage in Renaissance Italy : from 1400 to the early sixteenth century
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Bibliographic Information
Patronage in Renaissance Italy : from 1400 to the early sixteenth century
John Murray, 1994
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. 340-357
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This is a comprehensive study of patrons in the Italian quattrocento. It should be of interest to art historians and their students and to lovers of Renaissance art and civilization. At the start of the 15th century the patron, not the artist, was seen as the creator and he carefully controlled both subject and medium. In a competitive and violent age, image and ostentation were essential statements of power. Buildings, bronzes or tapestry were much more eloquent statements than the cheaper marble or fresco. The artistic quality that concerns us nowadays was less important then than perceived cost. The arts in any case were just part of a pattern of conspicuous expenditure which would have included for instance holy relics, manuscripts and jewels - all of which had the added advantage that they were portable and could be used as collateral for bank loans. Since Christian teaching frowned on wealth and power, money had also to be spent on religious endowments made in expiation. But here too the patron was in control, and used the arts and other means to express religious belief, not aesthetic sensibility. Thus artists in the Early Renaissance were employed as craftsmen.
Only late in the century did their relations with patrons start to adopt a pattern we might recognize today. This book, which also discusses the important differences between mercantile republics like Florence and Venice, the princely states such as Naples and Milan, and the papal court in Rome, offers a fuller understanding of why the works of this seminal period take the forms they do.
Table of Contents
- Note on money
- Florence
- civic pride and guild prestige
- merchants and morality
- Cosimo de' Medici
- for God, their city and themselves
- propaganda for the new republic
- Venice - heir of Byzantium
- image of the state
- the Scuole
- piety and patriotism
- the Italian courts
- Milan
- Naples
- Urbino
- Ferrara
- Mantua
- Rome - city of the Popes
- the return of the Papacy
- a new language
- morality and extravagance
- the Papal court
- the triumph of Rome. Appendices: the Medicis
- Venetian Doges
- rulers of Milan
- rulers of Naples
- rulers of Ferrara
- rulers of Martina
- the Popes
- Sixtus IV's nephews.
by "Nielsen BookData"
