In this lavishly illustrated study, Belting deals with the double history of perspective, as a visual theory based on geometrical abstraction (in the Middle East) and as pictorial theory (in Europe). Florence and Baghdad addresses a provocative question that reaches beyond the realm of aesthetics and mathematics: What happens when Muslims and Christians look upon each other and find their way of viewing the world transformed as a result?

This is Volume II (since 1500) of THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Second Edition. True to its title, THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE focuses on the Western experience, while also placing that experience in the wider context of developments in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. Accessible and clearly written, Cannistraro and Reich's text illustrates the causal connections across cultures and historical periods, conveying the record of human struggle and achievement, of conflict and community, of cultural diversity, of economic and technological developments, and of social change. The text's unique cultural perspective and theme and its unusually rich coverage of cultural history offer vivid images that communicate the full range of human experience. The "Perspectives" theme, which appears in every part and topic opener and in features, gives the book its unifying motif. Meanwhile, the book's flexible, modular structure ensures that you can easily adapt the text to your syllabus. THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE is also available in the following split options: THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Complete Volume, Second Edition (Contains Parts I-VIII) ISBN: 053461065X; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume I: To 1715, Second Edition (Contains Parts I-VI) ISBN: 0534610668; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume II: Since 1500, Second Edition (Contains Parts IV-VIII) ISBN: 0534610676; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume A: To 1500, Second Edition (Contains Parts I-IV) ISBN: 0534610692; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume B: 1300-1815, Second Edition (Contains Parts III-VII) ISBN: 0534610706; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume C: 1789-Present, Second Edition (Contains Parts VI-VIII) ISBN: 0534610714; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Alternative Volume: Since 1300, Second Edition (Parts III-VIII, Topics 20-95) ISBN: 0534610684.

This is Alternate Volume (since 1300) of THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Second Edition. True to its title, THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE focuses on the Western experience, while also placing that experience in the wider context of developments in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. Accessible and clearly written, Cannistraro and Reich's text illustrates the causal connections across cultures and historical periods, conveying the record of human struggle and achievement, of conflict and community, of cultural diversity, of economic and technological developments, and of social change. The text's unique cultural perspective and theme and its unusually rich coverage of cultural history offer vivid images that communicate the full range of human experience. The "Perspectives" theme, which appears in every part and topic opener and in features, gives the book its unifying motif. Meanwhile, the book's flexible, modular structure ensures that you can easily adapt the text to your syllabus.THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE is also available in the following split options: THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Complete Volume, Second Edition (Contains Parts I-VIII) ISBN: 053461065X; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume I: To 1715, Second Edition (Contains Parts I-VI) ISBN: 0534610668; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume II: Since 1500, Second Edition (Contains Parts IV-VIII) ISBN: 0534610676; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume A: To 1500, Second Edition (Contains Parts I-IV) ISBN: 0534610692; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume B: 1300-1815, Second Edition (Contains Parts III-VII) ISBN: 0534610706; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Volume C: 1789-Present, Second Edition (Contains Parts VI-VIII) ISBN: 0534610714; THE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE, Alternative Volume: Since 1300, Second Edition (Parts III-VIII, Topics 20-95) ISBN: 0534610684.

Edgerton shows how linear perspective emerged in early fifteenth-century Florence out of an artistic and religious context in which devout Christians longed for divine presence in their daily lives and ultimately undermined medieval Christian cosmology.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, 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” arts—extravagant 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.

In Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, Lyle Massey argues that we can only learn how and why certain kinds of spatial representation prevailed over others by carefully considering how Renaissance artists and theorists interpreted perspective. Combining detailed historical studies with broad theoretical and philosophical investigations, this book challenges basic assumptions about the way early modern artists and theorists represented their relationship to the visible world and how they understood these representations. By analyzing technical feats such as anamorphosis (the perspectival distortion of an object to make it viewable only from a certain angle), drawing machines, and printed diagrams, each chapter highlights the moments when perspective theorists failed to unite a singular, ideal viewpoint with the artist&’s or viewer&’s viewpoint or were unsuccessful at conjoining fictive and lived space.Showing how these &“failures&” were subsequently incorporated rather than rejected by perspective theorists, the book presents an important reassessment of the standard view of Renaissance perspective. While many scholars have maintained that perspective rationalized the relationships among optics, space, and painting, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies asserts instead that Renaissance and early modern theorists often revealed a disjunction between geometrical ideals and practical applications. In some cases, they not only identified but also exploited these discrepancies. This discussion of perspective shows that the painter&’s geometry did not always conform to the explicitly rational, Cartesian formula that so many have assumed, nor did it historically unfold according to a standard account of scientific development.

Representing an extraordinary lifetime of scholarship, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources offers a systematic account of major themes in Renaissance philosophy, science, and literature. Here, in some of Paul Oskar Kristeller's most comprehensive and ambitious writings, is an exploration of the distinctive trends and concepts of the Renaissance, grounded in detailed historical investigation.

A reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance, examining the complex and layered temporalities of Renaissance images and artifacts. In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians offer a subtle and profound reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood examine the meanings, uses, and effects of chronologies, models of temporality, and notions of originality and repetition in Renaissance images and artifacts. Anachronic Renaissance reveals a web of paths traveled by works and artists—a landscape obscured by art history's disciplinary compulsion to anchor its data securely in time. The buildings, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and medals discussed were shaped by concerns about authenticity, about reference to prestigious origins and precedents, and about the implications of transposition from one medium to another. Byzantine icons taken to be Early Christian antiquities, the acheiropoieton (or “image made without hands”), the activities of spoliation and citation, differing approaches to art restoration, legends about movable buildings, and forgeries and pastiches: all of these emerge as basic conceptual structures of Renaissance art. Although a work of art does bear witness to the moment of its fabrication, Nagel and Wood argue that it is equally important to understand its temporal instability: how it points away from that moment, backward to a remote ancestral origin, to a prior artifact or image, even to an origin outside of time, in divinity. This book is not the story about the Renaissance, nor is it just a story. It imagines the infrastructure of many possible stories.

"Traditional Oil Painting is that rare sourcebook that comprehensively covers the most advanced techniques and concepts of oil painting"--P. [2] of cover.

"His book...supplant[s] all others, even the immensely successful History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell."—A. C. Grayling Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. This landmark study of Western thought takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions many pieces of conventional wisdom. The book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's monumental History of Western Philosophy, "but Gottlieb's book is less idiosyncratic and based on more recent scholarship" (Colin McGinn, Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2001.