Stephen Campbell

Stephen Campbell and Michael Cole introduce Italian Renaissance art in this easy-to-follow chronological survey. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, their book makes new approaches accessible to students and non-specialist readers, telling the story of art in the great centres of Rome, Florence and Venice while profiling a range of other cities and sites throughout Italy. The book uses a novel decade-by-decade structure, which allows students to follow the chronology easily, as well as enabling collaborative works to be discussed in their entirety, and ensuring that discussion of minor centres can be brought in as needed. It presents the classic canon of Renaissance painting and sculpture in full, while expanding the scope of conventional surveys by offering a more thorough coverage of architecture, decorative and domestic arts, and print media. Rather than emphasizing artists biographies, this new account concentrates on the works, discussing means of production, the places for which images were made, the concerns of patrons, and the expectations and responses of the works first viewers. Renaissance art is seen as decidedly new, a moment in the history of art whose concerns persist in the present. Dazzlingly ambitious and fiercely intelligent, this is very much a book of today, which seems destined to remain the survey of choice for years to come David Ekserdjian, Leicester University. A fine and original new introduction to Italian Renaissance art [it] generates new perspectives on the progress and parameters of an entire visual tradition Tom Nichols, University of Aberdeen.

Campbell and Cole, respected teachers and active researchers, draw on traditional and current scholarship to present complex interpretations in this new edition of their engaging account of Italian Renaissance art. The book’s unique decade-by-decade structure is easy to follow, and permits the authors to tell the story of art not only in the great centres of Rome, Florence and Venice, but also in a range of other cities and sites throughout Italy, including more in this edition from Naples, Padua and Palermo. This approach allows the artworks to take centre-stage, in contrast to the book’s competitors, which are organized by location or by artist. Other updates for this edition include an expanded first chapter on the Trecento, and a new ‘Techniques and Materials’ appendix that explains and illustrates all of the major art-making processes of the period. Richly illustrated with high-quality reproductions and new photography of recent restorations, it presents the classic canon of Renaissance painting and sculpture in full, while expanding the scope of conventional surveys by offering a more thorough coverage of architecture, decorative and domestic arts, and print media.