Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 183 pages, illustrations; 21 cm. Near fine. Tight, clean copy. Age toning. A fascinating, new interpretation of Italian Renaissance art. "Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style of pictures in a given historical period, this new edition to Baxandall's pre-eminent scholarly volume examines early Renaissance painting, and explains how the style of painting in any society reflects the visual skills and habits that evolve out of daily life. Renaissance painting, for example, mirrors the experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. The volume includes discussions of a wide variety of painters, including Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Luca Signorelli, Boccaccio, and countless others. Baxandall also defines and illustrates sixteen concepts used by a contemporary critic of painting, thereby assembling the basic equipment needed to explore fifteenth-century art. / Michael Baxandall , Reader of Renaissance Studies at the Warburg Institute, University of London, is also the author of Giotto and the Orators." - Publisher.. 2nd. Paperback. Very Good. 8vo.