History of Italian Renaissance Art [Paperback]

Frederick Hartt's History of Italian Renaissance Art remains an unrivaled classic. As absorbing to read as it is authoritative in content, the book covers over four centuries of Italian painting, sculpture, and architecture. Its sumptuous color illustrations, fine writing, and in-depth scholarship bring into focus all the elements of this extraordinarily creative period and the amazing personalities who gave it life. Building on the book's more than thirty-year tradition, revising author David G. Wilkins skillfully blends new scholarly discoveries with Hartt's original emphasis on stylistic developments between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Wilkins's approach retains the enthusiasm and appreciation that Hartt so successfully conveyed to generations of students and admirers of Italian Renaissance art.

The fifth edition has a striking new design with more than half the works of art now illustrated in color. A lavish color portfolio of the Italian Renaissance opens the book and launches the reader on a dazzling adventure across time. New views of frescoes and sculptures photographed in their original locations offer a dynamic insight into the way Renaissance men and women experienced their art. Since the release of the fourth edition, many more works have been restored, including Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's Stanze frescoes in the Vatican. Fresh views of renowned works are included with art commissioned or produced by women. Extended captions identify Renaissance patrons and provide details about historical context, emphasizing how art was created and why, while in-depth visual analysis clarifies the aesthetic developments that emerged in key artistic centers such as Florence, Rome, Venice, and Siena. New iconographic diagrams and computerized reconstructions add dimension to the meanings behind classical, secular, and sacred motifs. Architectural plans, maps in color, and an expanded glossary and bibliography complete this well-rounded picture of the Italian Renaissance.

Frederick Hartt and David Wilkins's History of Italian Renaissance Art invites us to experience a rich artistic legacy in painting, sculpture, and architecture. Through an engaging narrative complemented by a cascade of illustrations, Hartt and Wilkins connect us with the remarkable artists whose innovations and visions shaped the Renaissance.

The late Frederick Hartt was one of the most distinguished art historians of the twentieth century. A student of Berenson, Schapiro, and Friedlaender, he taught for more than fifty years, influencing generations of Renaissance scholars. At the time of his death he was Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Virginia. He was a Knight of the Crown of Italy, a Knight Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, an honorary citizen of Florence, and an honorary member of the Academy of the Arts of Design, Florence, a society whose charter members included Michelangelo and the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.

Hartt authored, among other works, Florentine Art under Fire (1949); Botticelli (1952); Giulio Romano (1958); Love in Baroque Art (1964); The Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal (1964); three volumes on the painting, sculpture, and drawings of Michelangelo (1964, 1969, 1971); Donatello, Prophet of Modern Vision (1974); Michelangelo's Three Pietàs (1975); and the monumental Art: A History o f Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, now in its fourth edition (1993).

David G . Wilkins is professor emeritus of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and former chair of the department. He has also served on the faculties of the University of Michigan in Florence and the Semester at Sea Program. He is author of Donatello (1984, with Bonnie A. Bennett); Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (1985); The Illustrated Bartsch: "Pre-Rembrandt Etchers," vol. 53 (1985, with Kahren Arbitman); A History o f the Duquesne Club (1989, with Mark Brown and Lu Donnelly); Art Past/Art Present, a broad survey of the history of art (fifth edition, 2005, with Bernard Schultz and Katheryn M. Linduff); and The Art of the Duquesne Club (2001). He was the revising author for the fourth and fifth editions of History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1994, 2003) and co-editor of The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1996, with Rebecca L. Wilkins) and Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (2001 with Sheryl E. Reiss). He was editor of The Collins Big Book of Art (2005).  In 2005 he also received the College Art Association’s national award for Distinguished Teaching in Art History.