“Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers/faculty.”
(Choice, 1 November 2013)
“I highly recommend the very important and fascinating book http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118306112.html” Italian Renaissance Art: Understanding its Meaning by Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, to any historians, art critics, art history and Renaissance history students and academics, and to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the real meaning and currents that were present in Renaissance Italy. This book will transform how you view the art and the artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, and guide you toward thinking of the Renaissance as an important idea and not as a time period.”
(Money Talks, 13 April 2013)
“Joost-Gaugier’s book makes a major contribution to our thinking about Italian Renaissance art. Her fresh ideas will be useful for students as well as for advanced scholars.”
– Joseph Manca, Rice University
“Superseding earlier textbooks full of oversimplified description, Professor Joost-Gaugier’s book teaches students how to read and discuss art. Its central insight―that the Renaissance was an idea that motivated artists of the time―is supported by the author’s sensitive interpretations.”
– Luba Freedman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
“An engaging introduction to the subject, with a welcome emphasis on art’s formal language. Students will relish Joost-Gaugier’s descriptions of Renaissance paintings that evoke their luscious colors, and her erudite narrative enlivened by a personal perspective.”
– Mary D. Garrard, Professor Emerita, American University
From the Inside Flap
“Joost-Gaugier’s book makes a major contribution to our thinking about Italian Renaissance art. Her fresh ideas will be useful for students as well as for advanced scholars.”
Joseph Manca, Rice University
This enlightening volume offers a new interpretation of the Renaissance, a major movement in the history of art. Guided by one of the world’s leading Renaissance art history scholars, readers embark on a journey of discovery that will transform their understanding of these transformative years in the history of civilization. Detailed interpretations of works of art and architecture that were produced during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy help us to understand the true meaning of this term. Eschewing jargon and lengthy footnotes, the author frames the aesthetics of the Renaissance as a struggle between scientifically inspired problem-solving and irrational, intuitively based perception. Some artists and architects emerge as thoughtful intellectuals devoted to experimentation (the avant-garde) while others rely on the repetition of older methods (the conservatives). Because these opposite tendencies co-existed and interfaced with each other, it has been difficult to discover the true meaning of the Renaissance.
Accordingly, this richly illustrated work teaches its readers a visual method for “reading” and making sense of works of art and architecture, focusing on their characteristics as they were invented and developed throughout the Italian peninsula from Venice to Sicily, in order to understand their development and fully appreciate their significance. The events that occurred in the world of Italian art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reveal the breathtaking modernity of Renaissance art and debunk the old-fashioned idea that Renaissance art is “old fashioned.” On the contrary, they suggest that what happened in Italy in the Renaissance art world is of fundamental importance to understanding the struggles within the modern art of our own time.
From the Back Cover
“Joost-Gaugier’s book makes a major contribution to our thinking about Italian Renaissance art. Her fresh ideas will be useful for students as well as for advanced scholars.”
Joseph Manca, Rice University
This enlightening volume offers a new interpretation of the Renaissance, a major movement in the history of art. Guided by one of the world’s leading Renaissance art history scholars, readers embark on a journey of discovery that will transform their understanding of these transformative years in the history of civilization. Detailed interpretations of works of art and architecture that were produced during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy help us to understand the true meaning of this term. Eschewing jargon and lengthy footnotes, the author frames the aesthetics of the Renaissance as a struggle between scientifically inspired problem-solving and irrational, intuitively based perception. Some artists and architects emerge as thoughtful intellectuals devoted to experimentation (the avant-garde) while others rely on the repetition of older methods (the conservatives). Because these opposite tendencies co-existed and interfaced with each other, it has been difficult to discover the true meaning of the Renaissance.
Accordingly, this richly illustrated work teaches its readers a visual method for “reading” and making sense of works of art and architecture, focusing on their characteristics as they were invented and developed throughout the Italian peninsula from Venice to Sicily, in order to understand their development and fully appreciate their significance. The events that occurred in the world of Italian art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reveal the breathtaking modernity of Renaissance art and debunk the old-fashioned idea that Renaissance art is “old fashioned.” On the contrary, they suggest that what happened in Italy in the Renaissance art world is of fundamental importance to understanding the struggles within the modern art of our own time.
About the Author
Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier is a three-time graduate of Harvard University (AB, AM, PhD) and an internationally known art historian. She has taught and lectured in numerous universities internationally and has chaired departments at several American universities. Professor Joost-Gaugier has written extensively on Italian art and architecture and has authored more than 200 publications, including six books. Her work has been supported by numerous research grants and published in international journals, exhibition catalogues, and conference proceedings. In 2005 she was awarded an honorary Phi Beta Kappa by Harvard University for Lifetime Achievement.
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