Art/Art History

This volume brings together fourteen essays which examine the important and often unrecognized roles aristocratic and bourgeois women played in the patronage of visual culture during the Italian Renaissance.     (SCE&S 54)

In fourteen substantial essays Reiss, Wilkins, and their collaborators offer rich new evidence for the activity of secular women in the production and reception of Italian Renaissance art, calling into serious question traditional stereotypes of female patronage and reconceptualizing art patronage itself.

—Renaissance Quarterly

This book is a survey of the ceremonial armor crafted for the Spanish Habsburg monarchs of the sixteenth century.     (SCE&S 81)

A thoroughly researched study of the context and meaning of Renaissance armor and weapons at the Spanish Habsburg court.… Frieder has provided a provocative view of a subject deserving more attention, as armor formed a central part of royal collecting at the Spanish court.

—Renaissance Quarterly

This volume presents a detailed survey of the art, furnishings, and architecture of Netherlandish churches at the time of the Reformation.     (SCE&S 37)

Bangs’s book aims to recreate what the churches in the Low Countries looked like before they were stripped of their art during the Reformation.... The book’s utility lies in its offering the only complete survey of Catholic church furnishings in Dutch churches.

—The Catholic Historical Review

This unique collection of images of Abraham Lincoln portrays one of America’s greatest figures from an artist’s point of view.

This interdisciplinary art-historical survey on lepra and its visualization in sculpture, murals, stained glass, and other media provides new information on the history of art, medicine, religion, and European society.     (EMS 7)

This interdisciplinary study on disease in a metaphysical context is the first general overview of plague art written from an art historical standpoint.     (SCE&S 53)

I know of no scholar who has done more to elucidate the meaning and the significance underlying plague imagery.

—William Pressly, University of Maryland

This collection of essays offers a thorough study of the patron-artist relationship through the lens of one of early modern Italy’s most powerful and influential historical families. Contributors present a longitudinal study of the della Rovere family’s ascent into Italian nobility.     (SCE&S 77)

[The book] does its job well, engaging with current debates on a number of different levels and further extending our understanding of the complexities of Renaissance patronage.

—Renaissance Quarterly

This book shows how the German territorial rulers used visual imagery to further their personal causes and beliefs.     (SCE&S 20)

Sienese artists were part of a dynamic dialogue that was shaped by their city’s internal political turmoil, diplomatic relationships with its neighbors, internal social hierarchies, and struggle for self-definition.     (SCE&S 71)

Renaissance Siena represents an important contribution to the field and one that will rightly challenge lingering misconceptions about the city and its art beyond the Black death.

—The Catholic Historical Review

Here, against the background of the Renaissance, the author uses art historical methods with an interdisciplinary approach to resolve the meaning of the fresco’s iconography and circular composition.     (SCE&S 46)

I consider the book as a “must” not only for Michelangelo aficionados but also for anyone interested in the links between astronomy and art, as well as by the influences of cosmological perceptions on historical masterpieces.

—The Observatory

This interdisciplinary volume draws on approaches from art history and cultural studies to investigate the manifestations of secrecy in printed books and drawings, staircases and narrative paintings, ecclesiastical furnishings and engravers’ tools.