Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy

An introduction to 15th century Italian painting and the social history behind it, arguing that the two are interlinked and that the conditions of the time helped fashion distinctive elements in the painter's style.

It is now almost 50 years since Painting and Experience was first published, yet it retains its power to reconceptualise the History of Art in ways that both closely define and open up to the broadest possible interpretation of what is the very best about the discipline.

Auteur

Michael Baxandell is Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition, Warburg Institute, University of London.

Texte du rabat

Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style of pictures in a given historical period, this new edition to Baxandall's pre-eminent scholarly volume examines early Renaissance painting, and explains
how the style of painting in any society reflects the visual skills and habits that evolve out of daily life. Renaissance painting, for example, mirrors the experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. The volume includes discussions of a wide variety of painters,
including Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Luca Signorelli, Boccaccio, and countless others. Baxandall also defines and illustrates sixteen concepts used by a contemporary critic of painting, thereby assembling the basic equipment needed to explore
fifteenth-century art.
This new second edition includes an appendix that lists the original Latin and Italian texts referred to throughout the book, providing the reader with all the relevant, authentic sources. It also contains an updated bibliography and a new reproduction of a recently restored painting which
replaces the original.

Résumé
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.

Contenu
Part 1 Conditions of trade: Introduction; contracts and the client's control; art and matter; the value of skill; perception of skill. Part 2 The period eye: Relative perception; pictures and knowledge; the cognitive style; the function of images; "Istoria"; the body and its language; figure patterns; the value of colours; volumes; intervals and proportions; the moral eye. Part 3 Pictures and categories: Words and pictures; Giovanni Santi's twenty-five painters; Cristoforo Landino; categories, including nature, relief, purity, ease, perspective, grace, ornateness, variety, composition, colouring, design, difficulty, foreshortening, promptness, blitheness, devotion; conclusion. Texts and references. Index.