Introduction to 15th century Italian painting, and a primer in how to read social history out of the style of pictures.

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)

Arts & Photography

Baxandall, Michael

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Hardcover with dust jacket. VG/VG. Edge-worn dust jacket.

Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450. (Oxford-Warburg Studies) (English, Greek and Latin Edition)

Oxford Univ. Pr.

Examines the relationship between the painter and his public and relates the Renaissance styles and techniques to contemporary culture

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style

This highly acclaimed volume examines the one firm bridge between the art of the humanists and the painters of the early Italian Renaissance: what Petrarch and other humanists wrote about painting. Baxandall surveys the main themes of their art criticism and describes how their language conditioned their insights into painting.

Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (Oxford-Warburg Studies)

Clarendon Press

A detail examination of the craftsmanship and lives of German woodcarvers from 1475 to 1525 discusses their artistic styles, techniques of carving, and place in society

The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, 1475-1525: Images and Circumstances

Yale Univ Pr

This book is an inquiry into the historical understanding of pictures -- something sought not only by art historians but by anyone who looks at a picture in the knowledge that it is old or comes out of a culture different from his own. Michael Baxandall begins by developing a scheme for the explanation of concrete historical objects in general, taking as an example how we think about a complex artifact such as a bridge, the Forth Bridge in Scotland. He then shows how this scheme is adapted to the explanation -- or inferential criticism -- of pictures. Analyzing in detail Picasso's Portrait of Kahnweiler, Chardin's A Lady Taking Tea, and Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ, Baxandall discusses the painter's goal, his sense of what is wanted from him and what he wants, the market in which he works, the culture from which he draws resources, his relation to other painters, and the use he makes of philosophical or scientific ideas. Baxandall then reflects on how far we can understand the mind of an artist living in a different culture and to what extent we can test and evaluate a historical interpretation of a picture. Braxandall does not claim that the method of inferential criticism is the only way to think about pictures. But if we accept that behind a superior picture there is a superior organization -- perceptual, emotional, and constructive -- it seems evident that attempting to discover the artist's intentions will sharpen our legitimate satisfaction in the picture itself.

Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures

Painting

Yale University Press

In this book, an eminent art historian draws on contemporary cognitive science, eighteenth-century theories of visual perception, and art history to discuss shadows and the visual knowledge they can offer. Michael Baxandall begins by describing the physical constitution and different varieties of shadows. He then sketches the eighteenth-century empirical/nativist debate on the role of shadows in the perception of shape. Next he surveys modern research by cognitive scientists and machine vision workers, explaining how research is divided on the issue of how far and by what means shadows help or hinder perception of shape. Baxandall continues his exploration by recounting a neglected episode of shadow theory, the observations of a group of mid-eighteenth-century French scientists and artists on shadows as related to light and space. Finally he sets these various shadow universes into relation with each other, addressing the special problem of painting shadows, and analyses Chardin's painting The Young Draughtsman, in which shadow painting is both medium and theme. The book includes an appendix that situates and summarizes the shadow system of Leonardo da Vinci, which has had a strong though partly underground influence on thinking about shadows for five hundred years.

Shadows and Enlightenment

This study by two brilliant and eminently readable art historians looks at Tiepolo`s works as an example of the specifically pictorial as distinguished from the verbal intelligence. Alpers and Baxandall show that Tiepolo`s greatness lies not in stories told, or in meanings pursued, but in the use of his visual medium-drawing, painting, and natural lighting. They conclude with a study of his best and biggest painting, The Four Continents at Wrzburg, newly photographed for this book. The book ends with an annotated gazetteer for travellers, listing those Tiepolo paintings that can still be seen in the places and conditions for which he painted them.

Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence

ALPERS, Svetlana

Individual Artists

In this book, an eminent art historian draws on contemporary cognitive science, eighteenth-century theories of visual perception, and art history to discuss shadows and the visual knowledge they can offer.

The Italian Renaissance was a creative period for art criticism as well as for art itself. The early efforts to give verbal accounts of visual representations and their quality throw light not only on the art of the period but also on art criticism at any time. This collection of papers by art historian and critic Michael Baxandall represents his thinking over the past forty years on the relation between language and art. He offers seven thought-provoking pieces, three of which are new and written specifically for this book. Focusing on works of the fifteenth century, Baxandall shows with fresh insight how words match the experience of looking at paintings and sculptures. The author introduces the basic Renaissance framework for art criticism and proceeds to explore various humanist critical writings of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He concludes with a major new essay on Piero della Francesca's Resurrection of Christ in which he probes the visual experience of a painting that criticism seeks to verbalize.

Words for Pictures: Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Baxandall, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Baxandall, Michael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Baxandall, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)

Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450. (Oxford-Warburg Studies) (English, Greek and Latin Edition)

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style

Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (Oxford-Warburg Studies)

The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, 1475-1525: Images and Circumstances

Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures

Shadows and Enlightenment

Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence

Shadows and Enlightenment

Words for Pictures: Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism