Discover the incredible skills and techniques of the great Italian Masters with this essential guide. Covering Fra Angelico through Masaccio, this book provides unique insights into the works and lives of some of the most important artists in history. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

With illustrations that demonstrate the rich colors and intense light that imbue Fra Angelico’s work, this book takes a deeper look at one of the master painters of the Florentine Renaissance. One of the great fifteenth-century masters, Fra Angelico was one of several painters who shaped the beginnings of the Florentine Renaissance. Although, because of his occupation as a friar, he is sometimes considered separately from his contemporaries, including Masaccio, Masolino, Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Nanni di Banco, and Filippo Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance examines his early works and shows that not only was he a participant in the artistic culture of the time, but also a key innovator. Angelico’s breakthrough work from the mid-1420s, the Prado’s great Annunciation altarpiece, is regarded as the first Renaissance-style altarpiece in Florence. Published to accompany the exhibition “Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance” at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, this book reveals the results of the Prado’s extensive conservation and technological research efforts on The Annunciation, as well as two other recently acquired Angelico paintings: the Alba Madonna and the Funeral of Saint Anthony Abbot. Vividly illustrated and deeply illuminating, this book investigates the origins of the Florentine Renaissance and positions Angelico at the heart of the story.

A novel investigation into art pedagogy and constructions of national identities in Britain and Ireland, this collection explores the student-master relationship in case studies ranging chronologically from 1770 to 2013, and geographically over the national art schools of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Essays explore the manner in which the Old Masters were deployed in education; fuelled the individual creativity of art teachers and students; were used as a rhetorical tool for promoting cultural projects in the core and periphery of the British Isles; and united as well as divided opinions in response to changing expectations in discourse on art and education. Case studies examined in this book include the sophisticated tradition of 'academic' inquiry of establishment figures, like Joshua Reynolds and Frederic Leighton, as well as examples of radical reform undertaken by key individuals in the history of art education, such as Edward Poynter and William Coldstream. The role of 'Modern Masters' (like William Orpen, Augustus John, Gwen John and Jeff Wall) is also discussed along with the need for students and teachers to master the realm of art theory in their studio-based learning environments, and the ultimate pedagogical repercussions of postmodern assaults on the academic bastions of the Old Masters.