The emergence of the modern Western artwork is sometimes cast as a slow process of secularization, with the devotional charge of images giving way in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to a focus on the beauty and innovation of the artwork itself. Our understanding of art in this pivotal age is badly distorted, focused almost exclusively on religious and civic images. Even many Renaissance specialists believe that little secular painting survives from before the late fifteenth century, and its appearance becomes a further argument for the secularizing of art.
This book asks how...
The emergence of the modern Western artwork is sometimes cast as a slow process of secularization, with the devotional charge of images giving way ...
Wood or stone, wax or silk - materials shaped the meaning of early modern art. Transformed and crafted from the matter of nature, art objects were the physical embodiment of both the inherent qualities of materials and the forces of culture that used and produced them. The making and marketing of art depended upon the manipulation of both exotic and everyday materials; and interest in materials and objects reached a peak in the years between 1250 and 1750, spurred on by expanding networks of global trade, nation-building, and scientific exploration. Drawing on new research and models from...
Wood or stone, wax or silk - materials shaped the meaning of early modern art. Transformed and crafted from the matter of nature, art objects were the...
