This work provides an exploration of what Italian Renaissance writers, patrons, and viewers thought about the iconography of the works of art around them. Looking at a great number of period texts, this book shows how Renaissance people often struggled to understand even straightforward iconographic meaning, let alone veiled or difficult subject matter. The author considers a broad range of sources, including diaries, letters, artist contracts, inventory entries, biographies, and art theory. The early texts are presented in English translation — including clarifying quotes in Italian and Latin — with citations giving the published source for the original language texts. This is the first book to consider the broad range of texts on this subject as it studies the full chronological span of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento, and looks at architecture as well as painting and sculpture. Much published work on the question of Renaissance iconography has called attention to difficult subject matter. There were, to be sure, some sophisticated patrons and learned humanist advisors, but works of veiled or obscure meaning were rare, and, as this book shows, knowledge of the significance was usually limited to that first small circle of the original patron, artist, and advisor. The book will be vital reading for art historians, but will also be of interest to a broad range of students and scholars of the Renaissance period.

Subject Matter in Italian Renaissance Art: A Study of Early Sources (Volume 460) (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies)

Arts & Photography

Manca, Joseph

History & Criticism

ACMRS Press

Explore the beauty and history of Mount Vernon―and the inquisitive, independent mind of its famous architect and landscape designer.
Winner of the John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize of the Foundation for Landscape Architecture
On the banks of the Potomac River, Mount Vernon stands, with its iconic portico boasting breathtaking views and with a landscape to rival the great gardens of Europe, as a monument to George Washington’s artistic and creative efforts. More than one million people visit Mount Vernon each year―drawn to the stature and beauty of Washington’s family estate.
Art historian Joseph Manca systematically examines Mount Vernon―its stylistic, moral, and historical dimensions―offering a complete picture of this national treasure and the man behind its enduring design. Manca brings to light a Washington deeply influenced by his wide travels in colonial America, with a broader architectural knowledge than previously suspected, and with a philosophy that informed his aesthetic sensibility. 
Washington believed that design choices and personal character mesh to form an ethic of virtue and fulfillment and that art is inextricably linked with moral and social concerns. Manca examines how these ideas shaped the material culture of Mount Vernon.
Based on careful study of Washington’s personal diaries and correspondence and on the lively accounts of visitors to his estate, this richly illustrated book introduces a George Washington unfamiliar to many readers―an avid art collector, amateur architect, and leading landscape designer of his time.

George Washington's Eye: Landscape, Architecture, and Design at Mount Vernon

History

Americas

Johns Hopkins University Press

The Shakers are known for self-denial and austerity in everyday living and their material world, as embodied by the heavenly simplicity and purity of their chairs and blanket chests. Yet the believers also enjoyed a diversity of visual pleasures, from flowers, sunsets, rainbows, and the northern lights as seen at home to waterfalls, ocean waves, and dramatic cliffs viewed while traveling across America. In Shaker Vision, Joseph Manca explores original texts, especially diaries and travel journals, and material culture to demonstrate that Shakers enjoyed a remarkably deep experience of the visual world. Shakers shared tastes with mainstream Americans and often employed a similar aesthetic vocabulary, but all within a belief system that made them distinct. In addition to their well-known ascetic architecture, furniture, and handicraft styles, they expressed themselves through ornate and detailed spiritual art and in vivid, visionary experiences. Based on firsthand accounts of the believers themselves, this richly illustrated volume will dramatically change how we assess the visual world of this uniquely American religious sect.

Shaker Vision: Seeing Beauty in Early America

University of Massachusetts Press

From the Antiquity to the twentieth century, this sculpture collection offers a truly original vision of Western art. Here are the most sensual and harmonious masterworks to the most provocative and minimalist sculptures. Sculpture shapes the world and our concept of beauty, leaving everlasting silhouettes and always creating new intriguing ones. These masterworks are the mirror of an era, of an artist and his public and through this sculpture gallery, one visits not only the history of art, but History as well. Between the acclaimed ideals of beauty and the most controversial works, 1000 Sculptures of Genius will give you a true panoramic view of Western sculpture. Along with numerous references, comments on masterworks and biographies, this work enables the reader to rediscover the Western world heritage and is the perfect guide for art students and statuary lovers.

1000 Sculptures of Genius

Bade, Patrick

Costello, Sara

Parkstone Press

 From its prehistoric origins to the conceptual modernity of the 20th century, sculpture has literally and figuratively moulded the art world. Offering an integral vision of the evolution of forms across civilisations and epochs, 30 Centuries of Sculpture presents the masterpieces of sculpture that, with their intriguing silhouettes, have shaped the current notion of beauty. Sculptures can reflect an era, an artist, or his public; this gallery in high relief presents, with its numerous references, detailed commentaries on works, and biographies of artists, an open door to history and art, and an ideal guide for both students and neophytes.

30 Millennia of Sculpture (30 Millennia of Art)

Charles, Victoria

Carl, Klaus H.

Spanning the history of art from the 13th century to the present, this book features 1000 paintings that are internationally recognised as works of genius and beloved cultural treasures. It is an artistic, cultural and educational resource as well as an essential tourist guide that will make readers want to visit the museums that house the various masterpieces.These are the most admired and significant paintings from around the world and will surely delight both the general public and art specialists.

1000 Paintings of Genius

McShane, Megan

Wigal, Donald

Mantegna was born in 1431. He trained in painting at the Padua School where Donatello and Paolo Uccello had previously attended. Even at a young age commissions for Andrea's work flooded in, for example the frescoes of the Ovetari Chapel of Padua. In a short space of time Mantegna found his niche as a modernist due to his highly original ideas; the use of perspective in his works. His marriage with Nicolosia Bellini, the sister of Giovanni, paved the way for his

Andrea Mantegna: And the Italian Renaissance (Temporis)

"Contemporary monuments [that] raise questions about which figures are remembered, and which histories preserved." —Hettie Judah, The Guardian 
With a career spanning over seven decades, Philadelphia-born, Paris-based sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud (born 1939) has long been an innovator in sculptural composition. Her materiality is characterized by the interplay between folds of cast bronze or aluminum and skeins of wool and silk which are knotted, braided, looped and woven. Pitting opposing qualities against one another—hard and soft, light against heavy and tactile versus rigid—the artist’s iconic monumental sculptures explore, in her own words, “reversing and upsetting the established order and the hierarchy of parts as only a true revolutionary does.” At an encyclopedic exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, these pieces feature alongside never-before-seen early bronze casts, in addition to new work created less than a year before the exhibition. The book features an illustrated chronology as well as a selection of the artist’s poetry and writing.

Infinite Folds

Hayford, Gus Casely

Individual Artists

Walther Konig

With more than 1,000 illustrations, this handsome book is an armchair tour through the world’s finest galleries and art museums. A celebration of the art of painting, the book's colorful pages are filled with masterworks by the greatest painters of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, including Rubens, Velázquez, Murillo, Renoir, Monet, Picasso, and many others. Each work is carefully reproduced and accompanied by detailed text that provides background information about the painting and the artist.

1000 Pinturas de los grandes maestros (Spanish Edition)

Wigal, Douglas

Numen

Showcasing exquisitely beautiful, provocative pieces that challenge readers to think about art in new ways, 1000 Esculturas de los grandes maestros represents an exhaustive history of sculpture in the West. Written by noted art historian Joseph Manca, the book traces the art form's development throughout five distinct periods — Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern. Readers discover masterpieces such as Hercules, the Venus de Milo, Pallas Velletri, and other stunning antiquities. They also learn about Jean-Antoine Houdon’s La Frileuse, banned from the Paris Salon for its frank depiction of the female form. Hundreds of other pieces, including works by Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Donatello, Picasso, and Henri Matisse, complete this survey. Accompanying each work is a full color photograph as well as important information. A glossary, artist biographies, and a chronology round out the book.

1000 esculturas de los grandes maestros / 1000 sculptures of the great masters (Spanish Edition)

Sculpture

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

Books by Manca, Joseph