A Renaissance Treatise on the Healing Properties of Gemstones
In early modern Europe precious and semiprecious stones were valued not only for their beauty and rarity but also for their medical and magical properties. Lorenzo de' Medici, Philip II of Spain, and Popes Leo X and Clement VII were all treated with expensive potions incorporating ground gems such as rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Medical and ......
The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy
During the fourteenth century in Western Europe, there was a growing interest in imitating the practices of a group of hermits known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Laypeople and religious alike learned about their rituals not only through readings from the Vitae patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers) and sermons but also through the images that ......
Sofonisba Anguissola (c.1532-1625), an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona to a noble family, was one of the first women artists of Europe to establish an international reputation during her lifetime. This book explores the evolution of Sofonisba Anguissola's art from her training in Cremona, through her service at the court of Philip II ......
Maerten de Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe
As a social phenomenon and a commonplace of internet culture, virality provides a critical vocabulary for addressing questions raised by the global mobility and reproduction of early modern artworks. This book uses the concept of virality to study artworks' role in the uneven processes of early modern globalization. Drawing from archival research ......
The Complete Story of the World's Most Famous Artwork
If you read one book on the Mona Lisa, let this be it. From the artwork to its theft and role in popular culture, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa provides the complete story, as written by a best-selling, Pulitzer finalist. Leonardo da Vinci's portrait, called the Mona Lisa, is without doubt the world's most famous painting. It achieved its fame not ......
Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic Wor
Explores sacred portraits in early modern Spain and Latin America and their use in mediating an individual's relationship to the divine, emphasizing the role of the spectator in the production of meaning.
Maerten de Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe
Examines internet virality as a critical framework for considering early modern artworks' global mobility and replication. Explores the role of artistic labor, gatekeepers, infrastructures, and social networks to reassess art's role in processes of globalization.
Examines the function of violence in the making of the anatomical image during the early modern era, exploring its effects on the production of knowledge and on concepts of the body.
