Northern Renaissance Art (Trade Version)

Customer Reviews:

Art historian must have!.......2007-09-28

Just buy it. You won't be sorry. Great images and lots of informative discussion of imagery.

The Other Half of the Renaissance.......2007-08-25

Books on the Renaissance can be quite confusing to non-specialists. For example, Shakespeare classes in English schools discuss him as a Renaissance writer. Yet art teachers describe his near contemporary, Rubens, as the quintessential Baroque artist!
So exactly what does Northern Renaissance Art cover? Is it an age that can be separated, marked out and surveyed by political or religious activities? And by northern what is meant? Is Switzerland the home of northern art? Can it be made in Italy? And what makes it significant and different from the universally recognized world of Italian Renaissance Art, where the term 'art' is always capitalized?
Well, the truth lies pretty much with all of the above. As Snyder shows, several distinct cultures fall into this very large historical category. If you're buying this book as a student for a class, I can only hope you have more than one semester to give to the material. Northern Renaissance Art covers an enormous time period and many countries. It approaches in diversity the far better known works and ideas of the Italian Renaissance. No one seriously discusses the Italian Renaissance in a single semester - the material is taught in a series of classes. The same limitations and requirements should apply to teaching the Northern Renaissance. Art history today no longer focuses on aesthetic questions of style; as a result a student faces a lifetime's study of a period's culture and history.
However, there are some basics. If one word could define what separates the two worlds of the Italian and Northern Renaissance - that word would have to be naturalism. Northern European artists revel in achievements of realism that far surpass the Italians, who, while perfectly capable of such stylistic work, prefer a more intellectually formalized approach. Indeed, Michelangelo dismissed northern artist's attention to nature and care for photographic details as incidental, and excessively ephemeral, when contrasted to his Italian art which used images for projecting deeper spiritual values. The public, however, was delighted with the landscapes, and their non-abstract openness. Many artists from the north specialized in landscape, and it became a manner so associated with them that it was not uncommon for Italian painters to hire Northern artists to fill in the 'less important' landscape backgrounds of their larger canvases.
The Italian Renaissance differed also in that it was singularly connected to the revival and reappreciation of ancient 'pagan' works of art. These antiquities provided a challenge, as well as a reawakening, for the artists and thinkers of Italy. In the north artists did not have at hand magnificent works of ancient architecture or sculpture: as a result intellectual challenges were quite different; though initially tied to the Italian thinking, the northern artists more and more shifted focus onto their own immediate world. As the fifteenth century closed they became attuned to newer discoveries from the exploration of new (not ancient)worlds by sea, and the individuals emancipation brought about through the beginnings of Protestant thought. For moderns this means that the Northern Renaissance often appears closer to us and our own post photographic record of the world. The artist's sense of intimacy with nature seems little different than what most of us know as landscape art. Their religious works also convey a striking ease with space less contrived than our eyes find the representation of space in most Italian painting of the same era. All made the more attractive for being so accessible. Some of this difference marks profound religious and philosophical differences - northern art has about it some of the fervor of emancipation - there is here a reflection of the Armana naturalism revolting against the old art of a more dogmatic less individualistic Egypt. Eventually Italian artists would adapt to this new naturalism, especially in the north of Italy in Venice, in the works of Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian.
This book introduces the reader to the early Flemish master painters, such as Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, the later great German artists, such as Durer and Holbein and Grunewald, and the strange inner universe of Bosch. Topping off the age are the works of one of the grandest of all humanists, Pieter Bruegel the elder. And these are just some of the great painters! There remains a wealth of sculpture and architecture, drawing and craft work. Moreover, the Northern Renaissance is also an artistic universe filled with fresh new theories and a milieu profoundly effected by the great religious upheaval of the Reformation.
Snyder gives as good an overview of so much material as one could hope for - his work replete with an enormous number of images, many of which have for nearly half a millenium been accepted as iconic. The text treats the material with a practised consideration, born of many years study. However; the impetus of the book is to direct the reader further afield, and this is indisputably the author's greatest achievement and the point of such a survey work. The real jewels for readers will be enlarging these discoveries by travel and on site awareness, these efforts made more satisfying through study of specific texts directed at the new artists whose work transforms your view of what the Renaissance was.

The Northern Renaissance.......2006-02-26

I am using this book as a text in school and I am quite impressed. I bought this book (hardcover) for half the price of the paper back version sold at my school. The text in interesting, not dry. The images are good reproductions. The only thing that I don't admire about the book is that some of the images are printed in black and white.

The Northern Renaissance.......2006-02-26

A Truly Superb Book.......2006-02-01

The book truly is superb in both commentary and the reproductions of the paintings accompanying the text. It is stunningly beautiful and truly captures the feeling and depth of the Renaissance in northern Europe.

The Mirror of the Artist: Northern Renaissance Art in its Historical Context

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Must have for art historians!
PERFECT!
Good introduction
An exciting survey
Art of the Northern Renaissance in historical context

The Mirror of the Artist: Northern Renaissance Art in its Historical Context
Craig Harbison
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Northern Renaissance Art (2nd Edition)
The Northern Renaissance A&I (Art and Ideas)
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Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)

ASIN: 0131833227

Customer Reviews:

Must have for art historians!.......2007-09-28

Art historian and art history student must hav. The book contains fabulous images and amazing insight into the period in which the images were created.

PERFECT! .......2007-03-09

THIS BOOK ARRIVED WITH PERFECT TIMING AND CONDITION!
I WAS VERY PLEASED!

Good introduction.......2006-11-04

Overall, this is a good introduction to Northern Renaissance art and the cultural mindset that produced it.

Like many works of revisionist history, this book is a bit heavy-handed at times in its effort to prove that Northern art is as worthy of study as Italian Renaissance art. But overall, the contrast between the two different artistic traditions is effective.

An exciting survey.......2001-07-18

I've loved the art of this period for years, but had little academic grounding in it. This book lets me return to old favorites with new eyes.

This, in common with other volumes in the "Perspectives" series, offers high quality (though small) reproductions of important works, up-to-date analysis and discussion of the art and the contexts in which it was created. Harbison's tone is informative, if ocasionally a little too sententious. But it's a very small price to pay, given the overall excellence of his work in this volume. It's obvious that Harbison loves this period, and he transmits his excitement for these works to the reader in concise language that is accessible to a lay audience.

Of particular interest is the discussion of how the Northern Rennaisance related to and differed from what was going on in Italy at the time. The only major weakness: not enough of a focus on Durer. But it's hard to get sufficient focus on any artist in a book this condensed.

An excellent book for those familiar with the period, or those wanting to get acquainted with a school of art often unjustly overshadowed by its southern contemporary.

Art of the Northern Renaissance in historical context.......2001-01-31

Informative, smart and well-written, Craig Harbison's "The Mirror of the Artist" provides an excellent, brief introduction to the sensibility, historical context, and practice of art in the North. From the attitude toward realism, to patronage among the growing class of government bureaucrats, to the market for art or the influence of the Reformation, the book offers an enhanced understanding of artistic interest and social situations in which the paintings were made -- without ever forgetting their aesthetic dimension. The best tribute I can offer is that I immediately went back to Amazon to order Harbison's "Jan Van Eyck: The Play of Realism", a $35 large format paperback. Minor quibble: Although well-illustrated for a paperback this size, with the book just about 6.25" x 9.5", more details should have been illustrated when details were discussed in larger works. (I'm still looking for the barely visible figure of the devil above the cow in the "Portinari Altarpiece".) But this is a rare problem.

The European Discovery of America: Vol 1: The Northern Voyages A.D. 500-1600 (European Discovery of America, the Northern Voyages A. D. 50)

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The Classic Account of the Discovery of North America
Comprehensive Survey of the Discoverers
A must reference book for home library
Back To St. Brendan and the Irish Monks
An area of exploration often neglected

The European Discovery of America: Vol 1: The Northern Voyages A.D. 500-1600 (European Discovery of America, the Northern Voyages A. D. 50)
Samuel Eliot Morison
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The European Discovery of America: Vol 2: The Southern Voyages A.D. 1492-1616 (European Discovery of America, the Southern Voyages 1492-161)
Admiral Of The Ocean Sea - A Life Of Christopher Columbus
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Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

ASIN: 0195082710

Book Description

The late Samuel Eliot Morison, a former U.S. Navy admiral, was also one of America's premier historians. Combining a first-hand knowledge of the sea and transatlantic travel with a brilliantly readable narrative style, he produced what has become nothing less than the definitive account of the great age of European exploration. In his riveting and richly illustrated saga, Morison offers a comprehensive account of all the known voyages by Europeans to the New World from 500 A.D. to the seventeenth century. Together, the two volumes of The European Discovery of America tell the compelling stories of the many intrepid explorers who made what was then a journey frought with danger--figures as diverse as Leif Ericsson, Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Martin Frobisher, Magellan, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Francis Drake to name but a few. They also follow the adventures of lesser-known but no less interesting mariners and offer a detailed look at those who set them forth on their travels. In the first volume, The Northern Voyages--winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for History--Morison re-creates the lives and perilous times of those who claimed to have seen the shores of North America in the 600 years after the Norsemen first landed. He brings to his account a rare immediacy, making the drama and unpredictability of their voyages as significant in relation to the people of their era as the astronauts' journeys have been for our own times. Morison also offers a fascinating look at the imaginary lands reported by early travelers (such mythical places as Antilia and the Seven Cities, the glorious Kingdoms of Norumbega and Saguenay, and Hy-Brasil the Isle of the Blest) and examines as well the alleged discoverers of these lands. With warmth and wit he distinguishes fact from fiction, and imaginary explorers and their exploits from actual men and events. In the second volume, Morison turns his attention to the navigators who negotiated the waters of the Caribbean and the treacherous coasts of South America, even following them as they ventured ashore to the dark inland of the southern continent. The Southern Voyages begins with the events leading up to Columbus's arrival in San Salvador in 1492 and concludes with the discovery of the southernmost bit of land, Cape Horn, by Dutch explorers in 1616. In between, Morison retraces the routes of all the great mariners, including a step-by-step account of Magellan's voyage that would take him around the world. Morison has enlivened his narrative with a wide range of source material from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and South America, in the process shedding new light on questions that have divided scholars througout history: Did Sir Francis Drake discover San Francisco Bay? Was Amerigo Vespucci a great explorer or a fraud--or a little of both? What role did the French have in the European discovery of Brazil? Each volume brims with contemporary illustrations, maps (many of them specially drawn for this history) and photographs (often taken by Morison himself as he flew at low altitude along the coastal routes of explorers), which together identify virtually every allusion to land and sea made by the great European navigators in their ship logs and their later accounts. With the 500th anniversary of the European arrival in America came much controversy over Columbus's true legacy. With its lively and engaging style, and with its unsurpassed understanding of the age, The European Discovery of America helps put the era of exploration in much-needed perspective. Anyone interested in the history of America, indeed, in the history of Western Civilization, will find these volumes absolutely essential.

Customer Reviews:

The Classic Account of the Discovery of North America .......2006-03-24

Morison was a Harvard professor, a Navy Admiral, a sailor, and a good writer and he turned out two hefty volumes about the discovery of the Americas. This volume concerns European travelers to North America before 1600. Volume 2 is about the southern voyages of Christopher Columbus, Magellan, and others.

Morison begins his account with the mythical St. Brendan, proceeds onward to the Vikings, examines the claims of other pre-Columbian "disoverers" of America, and then gets to Cabot, Cartier, and the 16th century explorers. He ends the book with a description of the attempt to found the first British colony in the United States at Roanoke Island, NC. Following each chapters he describes his sources and the work of other historians and discusses some of the more outrageous theories about pre-Columbian discoveries.

The book is enhanced by Morison's own experience as a sailor. He is able to refute some of the fantasies of other historians with his on-the-ground and sea experiences. One of the most interesting chapter in the book describes English ships and the life at sea of sailors in the 16th century. Good illustrations and maps enhance the text.

Morison doesn't have much interest and empathy for the Indians the early explorers encountered, nor the forces in Europe that caused the European explorers to trust their fortunes to hazardous journeys. He's a man who celebrates the romance of the sea -- and casts a baleful eye on those sailors and historians who fail to live up to his high standards of seamanship and scholarly endeavor. That this is the best book ever written on the discovery and early exploration of North America is almost without dispute. It's a shame that it has been allowed to go out of print.

Smallchief

Comprehensive Survey of the Discoverers.......2004-09-10

When not compiling the history of the United States Navy in World War II, Morison had a passion for chronicling the discovery of the New World. His two volume set constitutes the best, if not the only, repository of each and all European discoverer in the Americas, and this volume captures not only Columbus but also Scandinavian (Leif Eriksson), French (Cartier, Verrezano), English (Cabot) and a host of other expeditions. Also superbly illustrated with often stunning photos by the author of the Eastern seaboard, Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A must reference book for home library.......2004-04-11

Premier historian Morison brings in very narrative form discoveries of America. Decribes one by one each voyage to north of Virginia, and even discusses those that never took place. Seasoned mariner himself, details to reader not only specific voyages, but explains social environment of the era. One chapter tells about ships and seamen. This helps understand what and how the discoverers were thinking, and how they proceeded.

Each chapter is followed by discussion of source materials (rare these days). Those who are interested to find out more, will have ready shopping list of additional books, as well as their evaluation by Morison.

(...)

Many pictures.

Back To St. Brendan and the Irish Monks.......2001-10-26

In this volume Morison goes back to the voyages of St. Brendan and the Irish monks as well as those of Norsemen such as Leif Erickson. The first post-Columbian voyages the author describes are those of John Cabot in 1497-1498 and the book ends with a discussion of the experiences of the second Virginia colony in 1587.

Morison is an entertaining writer who offers many original insights.

Some of his thorough research was done as a passenger on a small twin-engined plane flown along the same coasts which were discovered by Cabot, Cartier and Verrazzano.

An area of exploration often neglected.......1998-08-12

In reporting the discovery of the Americas the popular focus of historians has been on the voyages of Columbus and others in the southern latitudes. The early northern explorers, in search of the elusive north west passage to Cathay, sailed in waters far more hostile than their southern compatriots. Morison has a great love for his subject and wealth of knowledge. He clearly details the personalities of the leaders of these early expeditions and the dangers they faced. This is a most enjoyable read filled with wit and knowledge, which has left me searching for other titles by the author.

Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 15001625 (Ideas in Context)

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Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 15001625 (Ideas in Context)
Andrew Fitzmaurice
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521822254

Book Description

Andrew Fitzmaurice reveals that English expansion was profoundly neo-classical in its inspiration, and that humanist traditions were extremely influential in the early development of the American colonies. Until now, accounts of early American colonization, and of European colonization in general, have placed great emphasis upon the links between colonization and the aggressive agendas of modern times claimed by historians and literary scholars.

Download Description

Humanism and America is the first major study of the impact of the Renaissance and renaissance humanism upon the English colonisation of America. The analysis is conducted through an interdisciplinary examination of a broad spectrum of writings on colonisation, ranging from the works of Thomas More to those of the Virginia Company. Andrew Fitzmaurice shows that English expansion was profoundly neo-classical in inspiration, and he excavates the distinctively humanist tradition that informed some central issues of colonisation: the motivations of wealth and profit, honour and glory; the nature of and possibilities for liberty; and the problems of just title, including the dispossession of native Americans. Dr Fitzmaurice presents a colonial tradition which, counter to received wisdom, is often hostile to profit, nervous of dispossession and desirous of liberty. Only in the final chapters does he chart the rise of an aggressive, acquisitive and possessive colonial ideology.

Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

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Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0754605892

The northern European renaissance: A Milliken full-color transparency-duplicating book

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The northern European renaissance: A Milliken full-color transparency-duplicating book
Marilyn Chase
Manufacturer: Milliken
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006W5WP0

The Northern Renaissance A&I (Art and Ideas)

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The Northern Renaissance A&I (Art and Ideas)
Jeffrey Chipps Smith
Manufacturer: Phaidon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0714838675

Book Description

An exploration of a highly innovative and exciting period of art following the careers of artists such as Van Eyck, Dürer and Holbein. Jeffrey Chipps Smith analyses the context of the time, such as the Protestant Reformation and the discovery of the Americas. He offers the reader an insight into domestic, civic and court life illustrated by some of the most exquisite artworks ever created.

Women, Art, And Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520ÃÂ1580: Negotiating Power (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World) (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)

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Women, Art, And Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520ÃÂ1580: Negotiating Power (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World) (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)
Katherine A. McIver
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0754654117

Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (Teach yourself history)

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Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (Teach yourself history)
Margaret Mann Phillips
Manufacturer: The English Universities Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007ITNEY

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a Baroque pearl
Laborious read!
Traditional painters and Van Eyck fans will love this book!

The Art of Arts: Rediscovering Painting
Anita Albus
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Northern Renaissance A&I (Art and Ideas)

ASIN: 0520229649

Amazon.com

The lovingly crafted little tome The Art of Arts might become a cult classic if there are enough Jan van Eyck fans out there--or enough readers who can chew their way through 775 footnotes--to make this work of special genius even an underground bestseller. It is filled with delectable details (for example, that an image of a mill in a landscape connotes a wanton woman, complete with a page of explanations why) and myriad perspicacious observations. In discussing such masterworks as van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, author Anita Albus draws the reader into a vanished world of alternative perspectives, painterly depths of color and atmosphere, and the mesmerizing minutiae of late-medieval and Renaissance symbolism. The last chapter of the book, "Of Lost Colors," combines metallurgy, history, meticulous scholarship, and the author's passionate comprehension of colors in a discussion of antique pigments and their physical properties and pictorial uses.

The book's mostly paragraph-long sentences may put off some readers, and the warm, wry, even sly prose--its liveliness, in other words--may raise the hackles of the dowdy art-historical crowd (not the stylish, open-minded one). But this miniaturist's view of the northern Renaissance will copiously reward those who peruse it slowly, especially artists. Although it is possible to become lost in some chapters, as Albus tiptoes unhurriedly toward some arcane, elusive point, in the end it's hard to resist the sort of book that declares of the late 17th century: "Research into arthropods was in the air." This volume is a work of art, complete in itself, meticulously ordered according to the artist's unique vision, and handsomely "framed" by a sensitive designer. --Peggy Moorman

Book Description

In this utterly original book, Anita Albus tells the story--in the birth and triumph of oil painting, the creation of perspective, and the very nature of paint itself--of how, when, and why the eye became king of all the senses.
Albus's subjects are the inventors of easel painting in oils, the van Eyck brothers and their followers. It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in northern Europe that oil painting radically changed the way we perceived the world: the ear, through which we had previously received all knowledge, was replaced in importance by the eye. A painter of distinction herself, Albus re-creates this revolutionary time in all its intricacies, its familiarity, and its strangeness.
The Art of Arts is thus both a dazzling cultural history and the story of two explosive inventions: the so-called third dimension of deep space through perspective, and the shockingly vivid colors of a new kind of paint. Albus makes abundantly clear how, taken together, these breakthroughs not only created a new art but altered forever our perception of the world.

Customer Reviews:

a Baroque pearl.......2005-02-17

Reed: No question, this is an interesting book for us Eyckians and lovers/conservators of old pigments. But for us non-academics/editorialists, it's tough love. It is laborious because of the over-ornamentation with trivia, digressions, and references that physically intrude on, and insinuate the text. It's hard to tell someone far more-educated than I to take a writing course, but there it is. Maybe the exhaustive Teutonic method, exhausting nonetheless.
The real value for me, ever-trying to portray the ethereal in this dysfunctional digital/photographic world, is the nearly-unique collection of clues and views about how and why the [Flemish Primitives] were able to put us in undiminishing communion with their subjects, to help us backtrack and do the same for ours. As the gangrenous/social/spiritual/artistic wounds of the last century slowly heal, works like Albus's can help artists and artlovers mirror, maybe catalyze, another age of deep empathy for others. So buy this book, put on your best red turban, nibble some Flemish chocolate, and start with your self-portrait, taking the Niederlanders' enormous care to appreciate the beauty of the image, and thus the person, in front of us. This time with just the hint of a smile as the warmth of dawn flows into the studio...

Laborious read!.......2004-10-26

This is a book that is required reading for my Renaissance art history class. As such, I approached the book with enthusiasm after initially thumbing through the pages. Visually, it is beautiful. There are many full page color illustrations and interesting typeface. However, I was soon disappointed by her disjointed writing style and over 700 footnotes. I labored through this one, only to find out in the end that she finds contemporary art soul-less and lacking. Her conclusion is disappointing!

Traditional painters and Van Eyck fans will love this book!.......2001-09-12

I have recommended this book to several people and now it is available in paperback! It contains many nuggests of information a traditional oil painter will treasure. For example, the lapis lazuli-based pigment used by Van Eyck in his paintings contained tiny flecks of stone which added richness and sparkle to the paint. It was also irregularly ground and refracts light differently than the modern homogeneous synthetic "ultramarine blue" pigment available today. It was precious in Van Eyck's time, but today lapis lazuli ultramarine is more costly than gold per ounce. Albus devotes much of the book to historical pigments and shares recipes for making them.
My complaint with the book is that it is a strangely-shaped volume (it is extremely narrow and tall) and is uncomfortable to hold. Still, the early chapters on Van Eyck's paintings and the historical pigments will entice painters interested in effects not possible with modern pigments.

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