Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

by Ross King

Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing. . . . Fascinating." (Los Angeles Times) By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi, goldsmith and clockmaker, was an unkempt, cantankerous, and suspicious man-even by the generous standards according to which artists were judged in fifteenth-century Florence. He also designed and erected a dome... (more)

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

by Ross King

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel. With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture David ), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the... (more)

Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

Following the “absolutely superb”(Diane Haeger, author of The Secret Bride ) Mademoiselle Boleyn , novelist Robin Maxwell delves into the life of Caterina—the adventurer, alchemist, and mother of Leonardo da Vinci. Caterina was fifteen years old in 1452 when she bore an illegitimate child in the tiny village of Vinci. His name was Leonardo, and he was destined to change the world forever. Caterina suffered... (more)

Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

In an age of wonderous beauty and terrible secrets, one man searches for his destiny... In the majestic heart of Florence, a beautiful golden-haired boy is abandoned and subjected to cruelty beyond words. But Luca Bastardo is anything but an ordinary boy. Across two centuries of passion and intrigue, Luca will discover an astonishing gift—one that will lead him to embrace the ancient mysteries of alchemy and... (more)

The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall

by Christopher Hibbert

It was a dynasty with more wealth, passion, and power than the houses of Windsor, Kennedy, and Rockefeller combined. It shaped all of Europe and controlled politics, scientists, artists, and even popes, for three hundred years. It was the house of Medici, patrons of Botticelli, Michelangelo and Galileo, benefactors who turned Florence into a global power center, and then lost it all. The House of Medici picks up... (more)

I, Mona Lisa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

“My name is Lisa di Antonio Gherardini Giocondo, though to acquaintances, I am known simply as Madonna Lisa. My story begins not with my birth but a murder, committed the year before I was born…” Florence , April 1478: The handsome Giuliano de’ Medici is brutally assassinated in Florence’s magnificent Duomo. The shock of the murder ripples throughout the great city, from the most renowned artists like... (more)

Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's

Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's

by R. A. Scotti

Out of the clash of genius and the caprice of popes came the most glorious monument of the Renaissance It was the splendor—and the scandal—of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe—the millenniumold St. Peter’s Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle’s grave—to build a better basilica. Construction of the new... (more)

Art in Renaissance Italy (3rd Edition)

by John T. Paoletti

KEY BENEFIT : A glance at the pages of Art in Renaissance Italy shows at once its freshness and breadth of approach, which includes thorough explanation into how and why works of art, buildings, prints, and other forms of visual production came to be. The authors also discuss how men and women of the Renaissance regarded art and artists, why works of Renaissance art look the way they do, and what this means to... (more)

The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance: How Brunelleschi and Ghiberti Changed the Art World

The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance: How Brunelleschi and Ghiberti Changed the Art World

by Paul Robert Walker

The two brilliant young Florentine artists Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti first competed to design a set of bronze doors for the Church of St. John the Baptist. The victory went to Ghiberti, who spent fifty years creating the magnificent doors and who cast a second set so exquisite that Michelangelo deemed them worthy to stand at the Gates of Paradise. Brunelleschi took a different path, redefining... (more)

The Passion of Artemisia

by Susan Vreeland

Recently rediscovered by art historians, and one of the few female post-Renaissance painters to achieve fame during her own era, Artemisia Gentileschi led a remarkably "modern" life. Susan Vreeland tells Artemisia's captivating story, beginning with her public humiliation in a rape trial at the age of eighteen, and continuing through her father's betrayal, her marriage of convenience, motherhood, and growing fame... (more)

Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work

by Ronald Lightbown

Every aspect of Botticelli's work--his devotional and secular art, portraits, illustrations, and depictions of classical myth--are examined with a text that is a perfect complement to the magnificent art. 350 illustrations, 250 in full color.

Michelangelo A&I (Art and Ideas)

by Jen Green

A rebellious youth who chose a career as an artist against his father's wishes, Michelangelo (1475-1564) went on to be recognized as one of the outstanding talents of his age. Such was the degree of fame and wealth that he acquired that he became a legend within his own lifetime. In the centuries since his death his work has been almost universally admired, and he has been cast as the prototype for artistic... (more)

Michelangelo & the Sistine Chapel

by Robin Richmond

A comprehensive study of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel creations describes its recent restoration, features a double gatefold that illustrates the entire ceiling, and includes a history of the artist and the chapel.

Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (Book of Hours of Pannonhalma 1-11)

Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (Book of Hours of Pannonhalma 1-11)

by Roger S. Wieck

This book features 107 of the finest examples of illuminated pages from medieval and Renaissance Books of Hours. Roger Wieck's comprehensive text introduces the Book of Hours--a "bestseller" for three hundred years--to the general reader, discussing its iconography, the artists who illuminated this genre, and its role as a religious text in the lives of its owners. As a collection of both stirring words and... (more)

Florence: A Portrait

by Michael Levey

Nestled in the Apennines, cradle of the Renaissance, home of Dante, Michelangelo, and the Medici, Florence is unlike any other city in its extraordinary mingling of great art and literature, natural splendor, and remarkable history. Intimate and grand, learned and engaging, Michael Levey's Florence renders the city in all of its madness and magnificence.

History of Italian Renaissance Art (6th Edition)

History of Italian Renaissance Art (6th Edition)

by David G. Wilkins, Frederick Hartt

This book focuses on works of art, their creators, and the circumstances affecting their creation. This revision is designed to provide readers with a more streamlined approach to understanding Italian Renaissance art without losing the enthusiasm and appreciation that Hartt demonstrated for this area and which earlier editions of this book conveyed so successfully. Italy and Italian Art; Duecento Art in... (more)

History Notes, Vol 1 for World's History, The, Volume 1 (to 1500)

History Notes, Vol 1 for World's History, The, Volume 1 (to 1500)

by Howard Spodek

A true exploration of world history, The World's History links chronology, themes, and geography in eight units, or parts of study, each emphasizing a single theme–origins, cities, empires, religion, trade, migrations, revolutions, and technology. Geographically, each part covers the entire globe, though specific topics place greater emphasis on specific regions. Rich in primary sources–both written and... (more)

Western Civilization: Sources, Images, and Interpretations : To 1700

Western Civilization: Sources, Images, and Interpretations : To 1700

Volume 1 of this anthology of primary, visual and secondary sources provides an introduction to the sources historians use, the kinds of interpretations historians make and the history of Western civilization from the Renaissance to the present. A broad selection of documents, photographs, maps and charts is presented along with introductions, commentaries, guides and questions designed to place each section in a... (more)

Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance 1470-1510

Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance 1470-1510

by Steffi Roettgen

This is the second volume of a survey of the surviving Italian Renaissance frescoes.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: italian renaissance

by Ross King

by Ross King

by Robin Maxwell

by Traci L. Slatton

by Christopher Hibbert

by Jeanne Kalogridis

by R. A. Scotti

by John T. Paoletti

by Paul Robert Walker

by Susan Vreeland

by Ronald Lightbown

by Jen Green

by Robin Richmond

by Roger S. Wieck

by Michael Levey

by David G. Wilkins, Frederick Hartt

by Howard Spodek

by Steffi Roettgen

by Wallace K. Ferguson, Geoffrey Bruun