This publication offers a new, revised edition of a work that was hailed, when it first appeared, as 'the most useful art-historical reference book to have been published in recent decades'. It is a Handbook of Sources, documenting and illustrating the most significant antique works of art known to Renaissance artists. More than 500 illustrations show Greek and Roman statues, mythological and historical reliefs as well as triumphal arches together with Renaissance drawings, engravings, bronzes and paintings to demonstrate how and where these classical monuments were discovered and recorded, and how they were copied, adapted, combined and transformed into the style and iconography we now recognize as Renaissance art.
The authors, Professor Phyllis Bober and Dr Ruth Rubinstein, based their selection on the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture known in the Renaissance, begun at the Warburg Institute in London as a reference catalogue, but continuously extended thereafter and now transferred into a modern web-based database system accessible on the internet. The auhors arranged their illustrative material and their encyclopaedic catalogue thematically, giving full descriptions and history of each antique work, listing Renaissance representations and adaptations, and citing relevant literature. In addition, the myths and legends featured in the classical works are retold briefly in each case to help the reader follow the narrative particularly in the many sarcophagus reliefs reproduced.
Although the book has been reprinted twice since its first appearance, only minor revisions had until now been included. Sadly, neither author has lived to see the present publication, but corrections and additions to the Catalogue and the Appendices continued up to the time of their deaths, and Ruth Rubinstein spent the last decade of her life preparing this second edition with substantial catalogue revisions and significant additions to the Bibliography.
In addition to Phyllis Bober's introductory essay, which considers the cultural impact of classical Antiquity on Renaissance masters, the handbook also includes two important Appendices: an annotated Index of Renaissance Artists and Sketchbooks, and a descriptive and illustrated Index of Renaissance Collections.
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