Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Marina Belozerskaya

Getty Publications

2005

280 páginas

9h 20m

ISBN-13: 9780892367856

Inglês

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecturethe major arts. Yet contemporaries often held the minor artsgem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectaclesin much higher esteem. Isabella dEste, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as decorative or minor artsextravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.