Renaissance [Unknown Binding]

Andrew Graham-Dixon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0563383968 | ISBN-13: 978-0563383963 | Publication Date: October 2002

After a thousand years of magic and mysticism, the Renaissance re-kindled the desire of mankind to understand themselves and the world around them. This volume examines the Renaissance, its myths, its pioneers and its remarkable legacy.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA-Because the author is an art historian, his central focus is on art and architecture, but he also considers the politics, morality, and philosophy that engendered their development. Smaller than most textbooks and laced with beautiful full-color and black-and-white reproductions, the book will appear much less daunting to students than most other art-history tomes. The author's sense of humor and enthusiasm for his subject are palpable throughout. The organization is loosely chronological, but each chapter explores a different argument, such as whether the Renaissance can be clearly distinguished from the Middle Ages or its relationship to the Reformation. While the narrative is lively and provocative, it presupposes a general knowledge of and interest in the period. Graham-Dixon has drawn extensively from primary sources from the world of politics, religion, literature, and art. While this makes for fascinating reading, it may create frustration for students who are seeking information about a particular artist or work. Section headings within chapters and the index alleviate the problem somewhat. In any case, the extra effort is well rewarded since the author includes intriguing stories of the artists' lives and works along with his own ideas about an artist's or city's contribution to the period. A treasure for budding Renaissance scholars.
Cathy Horowitz, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Companion to a BBC television series, this effort is a gracefully written and up-to-date, if not particularly innovative, lay reader's introduction to Renaissance art and the cultural milieu that spawned it. While spanning the breadth of avant-garde European art between c.1300 and c.1600, Graham-Dixon, formerly chief art critic for the London Independent, necessarily and appropriately focuses on the seminal Italian achievement. Thus, the bulk of the text is given over to canonic figures ranging from Giotto to Michelangelo. The concise intelligence of Graham-Dixon's characterizations of both artists and art are neatly matched by the vivid articulation of the classical and medieval influences that helped give shape to the epoch. In addition, the author discusses religion, humanistic thought, the changing social status of the artist, and the larger historic ebb and flow without which coherent discourse about the era's art is not possible. Despite a certain contentious attraction toward intellectual straw men and insufficient illustration, this vivacious advanced primer will, it is hoped, attain the wide readership it manifestly merits.DRobert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 336 pages
• Publisher: BBC Pubns (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0563383968
• ISBN-13: 978-0563383963
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,801,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lucid essay on the renaissance, January 24, 2000

By 

Mike Wheeler (Birmingham, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Renaissance (Hardcover)

This is an excellent introduction to the development of renaissance art. The book begins by examining the religio-cultural origins of the Italian renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. It then travels through Italy, encompassing the movement in Florence, Venice and Rome, examining the reasons behind artistic developments through the artists and their sometimes notorious employers. The tone is lively and witty throughout and never less than intelligent. The author clearly has a great reverence for his subject and conveys this love throughout without ever becoming overly sentimental. The photographic reproduction of the artworks discussed is also superb and unlike many books definitely follows the text so thereader has no difficulty following the arguments that Graham-Dixon puts forward. Well worth reading

5.0 out of 5 stars Exemplary Art Writing, December 14, 2011

By 

David Bowen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Renaissance (Hardcover)

Andrew Graham-Dixon's The Renaissance is a work of unqualified brilliance in art writing. Yet it cannot quite be treated as an introduction to absolute beginners. Some general knowledge of the Renaissance, its basic history, geographical spread and prominent individuals and families, as well as of the Reformation is assumed. This book isn't an ideal first time encounter with Donatello, Michelangelo or Titian; but there are plenty of other single-author studies and catalogues for that. What makes Graham-Dixon's book so special is his masterful prose style combined with his daring (confident and original) keen-eyed observations on numerous but judiciously selected works ranging from Venice to Holland. Supporting these highly imaginative yet politic observations, he intersperses throughout very brief and compact yet eloquent historical synopses--whether of a city such as Florence or Venice, or whole epochs such as the Reformation. Again, however, his intention is not to write a history lesson, but to consistently relate the history of the times to the subject at hand, Renaissance art. Most helpful in this regard, of course, are his brief biographical summaries of the most important of artists and patrons here. He eschews everything except for the relevant details of a life, and he is aware this entails describing the less pleasant aspects of these individuals as well. In fact, without understanding something of the late Michelangelo's rugged unadorned zeal his works of those last years will not be as well understood; likewise, without understanding Donatello's not so very humanist outlook his later works especially will not be looked at quite so deeply. It goes without saying that a painting so enigmatic as The Ambassadors cannot begin to be intelligently speculated on without some understanding of the artist's situation at that time.

Again, however, it is the indelible and eloquently lapidary quality of Graham-Dixon's writing that keeps the images of the works he has chosen echoing in the reader's mind long after the book has been closed. It has been a month since I did so, and I still find myself haunted by his brief description of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, no mere classical restaging, however sensually pagan and pageant-like--it is an elegantly dramatic depiction of one those `decisive moments' Titian excelled at. What is paramount in this work is the mutually reciprocal gaze between the two protagonists--even though Ariadne has just been abandoned by Theseus, his ship a receding shape in the background--carrying the moment of love at first sight.

Other stunning descriptions include a detail, The Last Supper, from Tilman Riemenschneider's large carved-wood retable. Graham-Dixon tells us that it's positioned in a way such that once a day a beam of penitential sunlight from the vault above strikes the gauntly stylized figure of Judas. All the figures are so stylized, characteristic of the Northern Renaissance's `pauperist aesthetic' the author describes the religious and political backgrounds of. Then there is Michelangelo's late Crucifixion of St. Peter is described in a yet more suitably rugged tone, the tone with which the master himself painted it--sans elegance, sans flattery.

Perhaps his most ingenious reading is of Giorgione's The Tempest. He speculates that it could have been meant as a tribute to the now totally obscure erotica dream-text Hypnerotomachia Poliphilo (a work of much interest to renowned scholar Frances Yates and contemporary fantasist John Crowley). Graham-Dixon's speculation here is again well informed, but not meant to be exhaustive. The author looks to various interpretations that could work for the same picture; none of them are outlandish and yet he accepts the implication that they might be contradictory. While he aims for logical consistency as a critic, he clearly has no desire for logical coherence in a work of art. His intention is to appreciate, endlessly, and thus to invite his readers to look closer and closer, more and more attentively.

Later in the book, his descriptions of late Renaissance paintings presenting a more anxious, almost fractured perspective (Pontormo) and a kind of fusion of pagan sensuality and the morbidity of Christian self-sacrifice (Correggio) are particularly intense, a reader's pleasure. The narrative of Graham-Dixon's book carries us up to the climactic point where Correggio's consistently worked out obsession with Ovidian metamorphosis lead to a near-obliteration of the distinction between art sacred and art profane. During what are clearly the autumn years of the Renaissance, the author gives a brief tour of some decadent pleasure palaces and gardens, including the Palazzo Te and the Villa d'Este. (Although he mentions some mediocre formula artists of the late Renaissance, Graham-Dixon thankfully does not mar his text with presenting any of their works. However, I recommend when coming across these names at least looking them up online. Some are so bad in their bloodlessly and muscularly homoerotic depictions they induce equal amounts laughter and dread. As the author notes, it was precisely such work the Church claimed was exemplary of the time in its de jure criminalization of `unchristian' art.) The narrative's coda points to the late-17th century Bernini's debt to both Michelangelo's almost impossibly elegant and monumental carving of stone into the perfect visual likeness of draped and layered fabrics and Correggio's morbid yet sacralized eroticism.

Lastly, while Graham-Dixon acknowledges his canonical precursors Vasari and Burckhardt, his criticisms of the idealizations and, in the case of Vasari, self-aggrandizements of these writers are very accurate and work to correct some of our deeply ingrained biases and misunderstandings concerning this inexhaustibly complex and dynamic era of European history.

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Interesting!, October 20, 2011

By 

VK (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Renaissance (Hardcover)

This is one of the most interesting books on the subject I've come across. It is well written, a pleasure to read, with detailed historical references, and many quality pictures. I would recommend it for anyone interested in art, history, or christianity.