This book traces the rich history of the northern Italian city of Mantua from its mythic origins described in Dante’s Inferno to its cultural heyday during the Renaissance (under the patronage of the powerful Gonzaga family), and to its eventual decline and annexation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
The fortunes of Mantua rose and fell with those of the Gonzaga family, who ruled as imperial vicars from the fourteenth to the early eighteenth century. They transformed the city into a major cultural center by commissioning works from the master architects and artists of the day, such as Leon Battista Alberti, Giulio Romano, Titian, Rubens, and Guercino. However, Andrea Mantegna—who served as the court painter from 1460 to 1506 and whose technical mastery revolutionized painting—is the artist most identified with the city.
Although most of Mantua’s artistic treasures were sold or claimed as war spoils upon the decline of the Gonzaga family, the rich cultural legacy of this fascinating city lives on in the city’s many surviving frescoes and in the collections of some of the world’s premier museums. The Art of Mantua reunites this important body of work.

The Art of Mantua: Power and Patronage in the Renaissance

Arts & Photography

Furlotti, Barbara

Rebecchini, Guido

History & Criticism

J.paul Getty Museum

An exciting new approach to understanding the trade of antiquities in early modern Rome traces the journey of objects from discovery to display. Barbara Furlotti presents a dynamic interpretation of the early modern market for antiquities, relying on the innovative notion of archaeological finds as mobile items. She reconstructs the journey of ancient objects from digging sites to venues where they were sold, such as Roman marketplaces and antiquarians’ storage spaces; to sculptors’ workshops, where they were restored; and to Italian and other European collections, where they arrived after complicated and costly travel over land and sea. She shifts the attention from collectors to peasants with shovels, dealers and middlemen, and restorers who unearthed, cleaned up, and repaired or remade objects, recuperating the roles these actors played in Rome’s socioeconomic structure. Furlotti also examines the changes in economic value, meaning, and appearance that antiquities underwent as they moved throughout their journeys and as they reached the locations in which they were displayed. Drawing on vast unpublished archival material, she offers answers to novel questions: How were antiquities excavated? How and where were they traded? How were laws about the ownership of ancient finds made, followed, and evaded?

Antiquities in Motion: From Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections

Getty Research Institute

This book explores the subject of baronial identity and material culture in sixteenth-century Rome by focusing on the Duke of Bracciano, Paolo Giordano I Orsini, his court, and his possessions. It is an investigation into the way in which a Roman baron constructed and disseminated his sense of self through the objects he owned, the events he organized, and the relationships he forged by means of material goods and works of art. The analysis of the use of artistic and luxury goods in the form of pawns, rentals, loans, gifts, and thefts shows how aristocratic patrimonies were subject to continual mobility and served a multiplicity of goals. Supported by a wealth of documentation, mostly unpublished, including inventories, correspondence and account books, this study provides a new dynamic insight into a Renaissance aristocratic court.

A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541-1585) (Cursor Mundi, 15)

History

Europe

Brepols Publishers

A volume dedicated to the history of the new Vatican Picture Gallery, conceived at the behest of Pope Pius XI and inaugurated in 1932 in a structure specially built in order to definitively house the painting collection. The Picture Gallery, which is in continual expansion due to bequests and acquisitions, gathers together in eighteen chronologically arranged rooms the masterpieces of some of the greatest European painters from the Medieval period to the nineteenth century.

Guide to the Masterpieces of the Vatican Picture Gallery: English Language Edition

International Publishers Marketing, Inc.

Masterpieces of the Vatican Museums. Ed. English

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Books by Furlotti, Barbara