From Mythos to Logos: Andrea Palladio, Freemasonry and the Triumph of Minerva explores how myth was used to encode architecture and frescoed interiors with insights that promote peace, freedom and kindness as ways of being in the world. The author, Michael Trevor Coughlin argues that Freemasonry took root in the Italian city of Vicenza as early as 1546, and that its precepts, conveyed through the intersection of myth and philosophy, were disseminated widely in buildings and images, as well as texts, prescribing tolerance and an understanding of the divine that exists in each and everyone.

In Glorious Temples or Babylonic Whores, Anne-Françoise Morel offers an account of the intellectual and cultural history of places of worship in Stuart England. Official documents issued by the Church of England rarely addressed issues regarding the status, function, use, and design of churches; but consecration sermons turn time and again to the conditions and qualities befitting a place of worship in Post-Reformation England. Placing the church building directly in the midst of the heated discussions on the polity and ceremonies of the Church of England, this book recovers a vital lost...

This monograph studies the constructions of ‘impressive’ historical descent manufactured to create ‘national’, regional, or local antiquities in early modern Europe (1500-1700), especially the Netherlands. This was a period characterised by important political changes and therefore by an increased need for legitimation; a need which was met using historical claims. Literature, scholarship, art and architecture were pivotal media that were used to furnish evidence of the impressively old lineage of states, regions or families. These claims related not only to Classical antiquity (in...

In Augustinian Art and Meditation in Renaissance Florence, Antonia Fondaras reunites the fifteenth-century altarpieces painted by Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, Filippino Lippi, and other masters for the choir of the Augustinian church of Santo Spirito in Florence. Departing from a conventional focus on artist and patron, the author illuminates the engagement of the Augustinian Hermit friars with the composition and iconography of these pictures, and discusses how they were used to fashion the choir into a space suited to the friars’ institutional and spiritual ideals. Fondaras includes a...

Co-Honorable Mention for the 2021 Book Award by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG) In Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives, Martha Moffitt Peacock provides a novel interpretive approach to the artistic practice of Imaging Women of Consequence in the Dutch Golden Age. From the beginnings of the new Republic, visual celebrations of famous heroines who crossed gender boundaries by fighting in the Revolt against Spain or by distinguishing themselves in arts and letters became an essential and significant cultural tradition that reverberated throughout the long...

In Tracing the Visual Language of Raphael’s Circle to 1527, Alexis Culotta examines how the Renaissance master’s style – one infused with borrowed visual quotations from other artists both past and present – proved influential in his relationship with associate Baldassare Peruzzi and in the development of the artists within his thriving workshop. Shedding new light on the important, yet often-overshadowed, figures within this network, this book calls upon key case studies to convincingly illustrate how this visual language and its recombination evolved during Raphael’s Roman...

Rembrandt: Studies in his Varied Approaches to Italian Art explores his engagement with imagery by Italian masters. His references fall into three categories: pragmatic adaptations, critical commentary, and conceptual rivalry. These are not mutually exclusive but provide a strategy for discussion. This study also discusses Dutch artists’ attitudes toward traveling south, surveys contemporary literature praising and/or criticizing Rembrandt, and examines his art collection and how he used it. It includes an examination of the vocabulary used by Italians to describe Rembrandt’s art,...

The Gouda Windows (1552–1572): Art and Catholic Renewal on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt offers the first complete analysis of the cycle of monumental Renaissance stained-glass windows donated to the Sint Janskerk in Gouda, after a fire gutted it in 1552. Central among the donors were King Philip II of Spain and Joris van Egmond, Bishop of Utrecht, who worked together to reform the Church. The inventor of the iconographic program, a close associate to the bishop as well as the king, strove to renew Catholic art by taking the words of Jesus as a starting point. Defining Catholic religion based...

Over the course of his career, Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) created altarpieces rich in theological complexity, elegant in formal execution, and dazzlingly brilliant in chromatic impact. This book investigates the spiritual dimensions of those works, focusing on six highly-significant panels. According to Steven J. Cody, the beauty and splendor of Andrea’s paintings speak to a profound engagement with Christian theories of spiritual renewal—an engagement that only intensified as Andrea matured into one of the most admired artists of his time. From this perspective, Andrea del Sarto —...

Lomazzo's Aesthetic Principles Reflected in the Art of his Time explores the work of the Milanese artist-theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538–92) and his influence on the circle of the Accademia della Val di Blenio and beyond. Following reflections on Lomazzo's fortuna critica, the accompanying essays examine his admiration of Gaudenzio Ferrari; Lomazzo’s painted oeuvre; his influence on printmaking with Giovanni Ambrogio Brambilla; on drawing and painting with Aurelio Luini; on the decorative arts and the embroideress Caterina Cantoni; his pupils Giovanni Ambrogio Figino and Girolamo...