The painting and carving of altarpieces was one of the most important and characteristic tasks of Italian Renaissance artists. This book focuses on Venice from 1450 to 1530. Peter Humfrey, an authority on Venetian painting, explores a wide range of issues surrounding altarpieces as an art form. These include the traditions of decoration of Venetian churches, the sacred and secular functions that altarpieces were expected to perform, the market for altarpieces, and the professional world of the Venetian artist. He discusses altarpieces by Bellini, Cima, the three Vivarini, and the young Titian, as well as by numerous other painters and sculptors of the period. A central theme of the book is the relation between the altarpieces and their original physical and liturgical context. Throughout, Humfrey tries to reintegrate altarpieces with their intended settings, both for the sake of recapturing their full visual effect and as a basis for examining the ideological relationship between their subject matter and the altar table below. He also examines the complex mixture of motives, worldly as well as pious, that prompted 15th-century Venetians to spend large sums of money on commissioning altarpieces for the churches of their city. The first part of the book is thematic, dealing with the making, placement, and function of the altarpiece. The second part is a chronological discussion of specific works, focusing on the ways in which the artists met challenges posed by specific commissions. An appendix to the book gives further factual and bibliographical information about 100 major Venetian altarpieces of the period.

The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice

Arts & Photography

Humfrey, Peter

Religious

Yale University Press

A comprehensive account of painting in Venice from the mid 15th century to the end of the 16th century - Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto.

Painting in Renaissance Venice

History & Criticism

The Renaissance was a golden age in the long history of Venetian painting, and the art that came from Venice during that era includes some of the most visually exciting works in the whole of Western art. This attractive book―a comprehensive account of painting in Venice from Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto―is an accessible introduction to the art of this period. Peter Humfrey surveys the development of a distinctly Venetian artistic tradition from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. He discusses the work of Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto as well as the paintings of those less well known―such as the three Vivarini, Cima, Carpaccio, Palma Vecchio, Lotto, and Jacopo Bassano. Humfrey analyzes these painters' works in terms of their pictorial style, technique, subject matter, patronage, and function. He also sets the art against the background of the political, social, and religious conditions of Renaissance Venice, as outlined in his Introduction. The book includes an appendix that provides brief biographies of thirty-six of the most important painters active in Renaissance Venice.

Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto (c.1480-1556/7) painted some of the most startlingly beautiful as well as some of the most puzzling and moving works of the later Renaissance. In this beautifully illustrated account of Lotto's life and work, Peter Humfrey offers the first comprehensive treatment of Lotto in English since Bernard Berenson's pioneering study published one hundred years ago. Humfrey draws on the large body of Lotto's extant work as well as on sixteenth-century documentation on the artist's life, including his letters, his account-book for the years 1538-56 and his will. Lotto first practised as a painter in the town of Treviso, but during his long and restless career he also spent periods in Bergamo and the Marches, as well as in Venice itself. His final, lonely years were passed in Loreto, where he died as a lay brother in the local religious community. Humfrey examines the way in which Lotto responded to the work of a wide range of artists, from Giovanni Bellini and Albrecht Durer to Raphael and Titian, but also emphasises the painter's marked stylistic individuality, even idiosyncrasy. Particularly attractive to twentieth-century viewers are Lotto's portraits, the psychological penetration of which reveal a personality exceptionally finely attuned to the thoughts and emotions of his fellow human-beings. The artist emerges as one of the most engaging and distinctive personalities of Italian Renaissance art.

Lorenzo Lotto

Individual Artists

Hailed as the greatest Venetian painter after Titian, Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480-1556) is known for a delightfully idiosyncratic artistic vision that has had special appeal for twentieth-century sensibilities. This book―which discusses Lotto’s life and work―explores the way his formal and iconographic experiments set him apart from the mainstream culture of his time. The volume describes and reproduces paintings in most of the genres in which Lotto worked, including devotional paintings, altarpieces, portraits, and mythologies. These are arranged in chronological order from his beginnings as a pupil of Giovanni Bellini through the brilliant work of his maturity on which his reputation was based, to the end of his career in a religious community on the Adriatic coast. Focusing on his autograph paintings, the book presents such masterpieces as Saint Jerome in the Wilderness and Portrait of Andrea Odoni. The authors―David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey, Mauro Lucco, and other eminent scholars―draw on a large number of original documents, including Lotto’s will, his letters to a confraternity in Bergamo, and his meticulously kept account books. They discuss not only Lotto’s biography and inspiration but also his mastery of allegory, his possible sympathy with the Protestant Reformation, the patrons of his altarpieces, and the so-called Lotto carpets. This beautiful book is the catalogue for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, d.c., that will run from 2 November 1997 to 1 March 1998. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance

Brown, David Alan

Lucco, Mauro

National Gallery Washington

Hard cover with dust jacket, kept in mylar cover. Beautiful over sized art book 222 pages full color plates, covers all of Dossi's fresco murals and paintings. Kept in mylar cover

Dosso Dossi Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara

Imagination, sensual delight, a sharp wit—these qualities were enormously prized in sixteenth-century Ferrara, where one of the most cultured and powerful courts of the High Renaissance held sway. Dosso Dossi was the idiosyncratic, brilliant painter most responsible for turning those values into a glorious artistic reality. Dosso's rich color schemes are akin to those of his fellow North Italian Titian; he learned something about innovative composition from Raphael and about the force of the body from Michelangelo, but his paintings have a very individual appeal. In leafy natural surroundings containing an array of animals and heavenly bodies, events unfold that are often enigmatic, enacted by characters whose interrelationships elude definition. Dosso's painted world shares the spirit of contemporaneous epic poetry - such as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso - imbued as it is with mystery and transformation, energy and invention. Along with his predecessor Giorgione, Dosso was one of the first painters to improvise on the canvas. Rather than following careful preparatory drawings, he composed and recomposed as he painted - a remarkably free process that is clearly revealed in new x-ray and infrared photographs. Dosso's virtuosic painting performance was thus itself a kind of magical invention. The play of his imagination is evident not only in the many pictures representing mythological or literary subjects but also in his religious paintings, which are lyrical and original, filled with spectacular visual effects and touches of humor. When Ferrara's fortunes changed, at the end of the sixteenth century, most of Dosso's paintings were taken to Rome and ultimately dispersed. For this exhibition, almost all the surviving paintings have been brought together; in the catalogue entries each one receives a fresh and comprehensive scholarly discussion. The catalogue also contains essays that describe Dosso's artistic career and the highly charged world of the court at Ferrara and that probe the visual poetry and subtle wit of his work. The illuminating results of an extensive campaign of technical examination, undertaken in connection with the exhibition, are discussed and illustrated in additional essays and in observations that accompany the catalogue entries throughout. The book includes a full review of the scholarly literature, color reproductions of the paintings, many comparative illustrations, a chronology, and a complete bibliography. [This book was originally published in 1998 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]

An authoritative and comprehensive celebration of the life and work of one of the most prominent artists of the Venetian Renaissance\nMeticulously researched and luxuriously illustrated, this volume offers a comprehensive view of Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460/1466–1525/1526), whose work has been admired for centuries for its fantastical settings enriched with contemporary incident and detail. Capturing the sanctity and splendor of Venice at the turn of the sixteenth century, when the city controlled a vast maritime empire, Carpaccio combined careful observation of the urban environment with a taste for the poetic in his beloved narrative cycles and altarpieces.\nProviding a new lens through which to understand Carpaccio’s work, a team of distinguished scholars explores various aspects of his art, including his achievement as a draftsman. In addition to emphasizing the artist’s innovative techniques and contributions to the development of Venetian Renaissance painting, this study includes an in-depth consideration of the fluctuations in the reception of Carpaccio’s work in the five hundred years since the artist’s death.\nPublished in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington\nExhibition Schedule:National Gallery of Art, Washington 
(November 20, 2022–February 12, 2023)\nPalazzo Ducale, Venice 
(March 18–June 18, 2023)

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice

Cima da Conegliano

Cambridge University Press

This publication presents a catalogue raisonnâe of the oeuvre of an artist who has determined the history of art. It is aimed at both specialised readers and at a wider public.

Titian

Phaidon Press

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

Books by Humfrey, Peter

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

The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice

Painting in Renaissance Venice

Painting in Renaissance Venice

Lorenzo Lotto

Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance

Dosso Dossi Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara

Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice

Cima da Conegliano

Titian