Earthly delights

Jones, Jonathan

£30.00

A new, narrative history of the Renaissance that takes in the whole of Europe and its global context, written by one of the UK’s foremost art critics and respected writers on art. What was the ‘Renaissance’? In the nineteenth century this flowering of creativity and thought was celebrated as the birth of the modern world. Today many historians are sceptical about its very existence. ‘Earthly Delights’ rekindles the Renaissance as a seismic change in European mentalities, in a panoramic history that encompasses Florence and Bruges, London and Nuremberg.

In stock

Publish Date: 19/10/2023
ISBN: 9780500023136 Category: Tag:

Description

A new narrative history of the Renaissance that takes in the whole of Europe and its global context, written by one of the UK’s foremost art critics.

What was the ‘Renaissance’? In the nineteenth century this flowering of creativity and thought was celebrated as the birth of the modern world. Today many historians are sceptical about its very existence. Earthly Delights rekindles the Renaissance as a seismic change in European mentalities, in a panoramic history that encompasses Florence and Bruges, London and Nuremberg. Artists from northern as well as southern Europe, including Leonardo, Bosch, Bruegel and Titian, star in a captivating and beautifully illustrated narrative that sets their lives against a period of convulsive change across a continent that was finding itself as it ‘discovered’ the world.

Art critic and writer Jonathan Jones tells the story of Renaissance artists as pioneers, adventurers and ‘geniuses’, a Renaissance concept. Albrecht Dürer gazes with wonder on Aztec art in Brussels in 1520, Leonardo da Vinci tries to perfect a flying machine, Hieronymus Bosch finds inspiration in West African ivory carvings imported by the Portuguese to Antwerp. A then unknown Netherlandish painter, Pieter Bruegel, arrives in 1550s Rome just as Michelangelo is striving in the same city to raise the new St Peter’s Basilica towards heaven. From Atlantic voyages to Germanic woods, Italian palazzi to the royal castle of Prague, this was an age when people dared to experiment with the occult and dabble in utopias: to think and create new worlds.

Additional information

Weight 1144 g
Dimensions 246 × 254 × 36 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Hardback

Pages

336

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

709.024 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K