This beautifully illustrated and exquisitely designed volume
of paintings, sculpture, medals, and drawings celebrates the
extraordinary flowering of female portraiture, mainly in Florence,
beginning in the latter half of the fifteenth century.
The
Art of the Portrait by Norbert Schneider – Hardcover,
180 pages (December 1999) TASCHEN America Llc
The Art of the Portrait focuses on about a 200-year period,
from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance, during which the
genre of painted portraiture flourished.
The self-portrait has become a model of what art is: the artwork
is the image of its maker, and understanding the work means
recovering from it an original vision of the artist. In this
groundbreaking work, Koerner (fine arts, Harvard U.) analyzes
the historical origin of this model in the art of Albrecht Durer
(1471-1528) and Hans Baldring Grien (d.1545), the first modern
self-portraitist and his principal disciple. By doing so, he
develops new approaches to the visual image and to its history
in early modern European culture. Includes 220 b&w illustrations
and one color plate (the famous 1500 Self-Portrait). Annotation
copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, OR.
Sprinkling this selected survey with enjoyable anecdotes and
historical details, Campbell describes and categorizes portrait
painting of the Renaissance, illustrated in 140 black-and-white
and 80 color reproductions of good quality featuring such artists
as Durer, Holbein, Van Eyck, Raphael, and Titian. In the final
chapter, he advocates the supremacy of "Northern"
as opposed to Italian Renaissance portraiture because its influences
can be seen in the Italians, but he is not convincing. His argument
excludes any mention of Alberti, Masaccio, and scores of other
artists whose works represent the pursuit of ideal beauty, as
important to the Italians as the depiction of the individual,
and specifically omits the exquisite devotional paintings of
the early Renaissance, which contain many Italian portraits.
All told, however, the book presents some valuable material
by a knowledgeable source for people studying portrait painting.
Recommended for special collections. —Ellen Bates, New
York Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This lavishly illustrated book is the first to explore the genesis
and early development of self portraiture during the Renaissance
in Italy. Woods-Marsden argues that artists represented themselves
on canvas in an effort to change both the status of art and
their own social standing.
The artists represented are a veritable who's who of 16th- to
18th-century Dutch painters, with each entry including details
of the subject, the artist, the painting's provenance, the subject's
costume, and related literature. Though the topic of children
in art has been explored, this catalog of 85 paintings examines
concepts specific to the Netherlands.
The Art of the Portrait: Masterpieces of European Portrait Painting 1420-1670
(Big Series: Art) by Norbert Schneider – Paperback, 180 pages, Taschen America
Llc, 1996
The Art of the Portrait focuses on about a 200-year period, from the late Middle Ages
to the Renaissance, during which the genre of painted portraiture flourished. For the
first time since classical antiquity, interest in and attention to this type of painting
grew. As a consequence, new visual types of portraiture—full length, profiles,
groups—emerged, and a wider range of subjects (outside the traditional circle of
royalty and clergy) was explored in the canvasses, along with psychological and atmospheric
elements. During this heyday innumerable masterpieces were painted by a wealth of different
artists. But the 19th century, with the advent of photography and impressionism, among
other developments, put an abrupt end to the boom.
The paintings collected in this book include Botticelli's Profile of a Young Woman,
in which his subject is draped in a lovely deep-red gown with pearls threaded through
her intricately braided hair; Jan van Eyck's The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini,
which doubled as something of a marriage certificate for the couple, as it attested
to the presence of a witness (the artist himself) at the priestless ceremony; and da
Vinci's Mona Lisa, arguably the most famous portrait in the world. Works by Poussin,
Rembrandt, Titian, Dürer, Raphael, Rubens, Velázquez, and other artists
illustrate the highlights of the period. The book itself is an interesting enough survey
of some of the greatest portraits ever painted and the artists who created them. But
it contains poorly reproduced plates of relatively common paintings and a conventional
introductory essay, not to mention overlong annotations that tend to overtake the actual
images. Still, The Art of the Portrait has achieved minor notoriety since being
cited by David Hockney in The New Yorker (January 31, 2000) as supporting his
theory that painters of the 16th century must have relied on optical devices such as
the camera lucida to create the near-photographic perfection of the portraits.
Commonly known as the "Arnolfini Wedding" or "Giovanni
Arnolfini and His Bride," Jan van Eyck's double portrait,
painted in 1434, is probably the most widely recognized panel
painting of the fifteenth century. One of the great masterpieces
of early Flemish art, this enigmatic picture has also aroused
intense speculation as to its precise meaning. Edwin Hall's
accessible studyfirmly grounded in Roman and canon law, theology,
literature, and the social history of the periodoffers a compelling
new interpretation of this wonderful painting. Instead of depicting
the sacrament of marriage, Hall argues, the painting commemorates
the alliance between two wealthy and important Italian mercantile
families, a ceremonious betrothal that reflects the social conventions
of the time. Hall not only unlocks the mystery that has surrounded
this work of art, he also makes a unique contribution to the
fascinating history of betrothal and marriage custom, ritual,
and ceremony, tracing their evolution from the late Roman Empire
through the fifteenth century and providing persuasive visual
evidence for their development. His illuminating view of Van
Eyck's quintessential work is a striking example of how art
continues to endure and engage us over the centuries.
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Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance
Portrait in Florence
Virtue
and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits
of Women
The
Art of the Portrait
The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art
Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait Painting in the
14th, 15th and 16th Centuries
Portrait in the Renaissance (Bollingen Series, 35:12)
Renaissance Self-Portrait: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status
of the Artist 
Pride
and Joy: Children's Portraits in the Netherlands, 1500-1700
The Art of the Portrait: Masterpieces of European Portrait Painting 1420-1670
(Big Series: Art) by Norbert Schneider – Paperback, 180 pages, Taschen America
Llc, 1996
The Arnolfini Betrothal: Medieval Marriage and the Enigma
of Van Eyck's Double Portrait (California Studies in the
History of Art Discovery)
