At the beginning of the fifteenth century, painters and sculptors were seldom regarded as more than artisans and craftsmen, but within little more than a hundred years they had risen to the status of "artist." This book explores how early Renaissance artists gained recognition for the intellectual foundations of their activities and achieved artistic autonomy from enlightened patrons. A leading authority on Renaissance art, Francis Ames-Lewis traces the ways in which the social and intellectual concerns of painters and sculptors brought about the acceptance of their work as a liberal art, alongside other arts like poetry. He charts the development of the idea of the artist as a creative genius with a distinct identity and individuality. Ames-Lewis examines the various ways that Renaissance artists like Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Dürer, as well as many other less well known painters and sculptors, pressed for intellectual independence. By writing treatises, biographies, poetry, and other literary works, by seeking contacts with humanists and literary men, and by investigating the arts of the classical past, Renaissance artists honed their social graces and broadened their intellectual horizons. They also experienced a growing creative confidence and self-awareness that was expressed in novel self-portraits, works created solely to demonstrate pictorial skills, and monuments to commemorate themselves after death.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, painters and sculptors were seldom regarded as more than artisans and craftsmen, but within little more than a hundred years they had risen to the status of "artist." This book explores how early Renaissance artists gained recognition for the intellectual foundations of their activities and achieved artistic autonomy from enlightened patrons. A leading authority on Renaissance art, Francis Ames-Lewis traces the ways in which the social and intellectual concerns of painters and sculptors brought about the acceptance of their work as a liberal art, alongside other arts like poetry. He charts the development of the idea of the artist as a creative genius with a distinct identity and individuality. Ames-Lewis examines the various ways that Renaissance artists like Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Dürer, as well as many other less well known painters and sculptors, pressed for intellectual independence. By writing treatises, biographies, poetry, and other literary works, by seeking contacts with humanists and literary men, and by investigating the arts of the classical past, Renaissance artists honed their social graces and broadened their intellectual horizons. They also experienced a growing creative confidence and self-awareness that was expressed in novel self-portraits, works created solely to demonstrate pictorial skills, and monuments to commemorate themselves after death.
This book contains all of Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings on the heart and its physiology, accompanied by re-translations of all of the associated notes. All Leonardo's drawings have been interpreted in the light of modern knowledge by a practicing cardiac clinician and anatomist. The veracity of his work is proven against contemporary dissections of cardiac structure and comparison of his illustrations with contemporary images generated by Magnetic Resonance scanners and high definition ultrasound will astound the reader. Perhaps the most interesting element is the re-dissection of the Ox heart set against Leonardo’s own drawings. His place in the greater scheme of anatomical development will be put into context with his ideas of man’s place in the microcosm/macrocosm continuum.
Through the works of the major fifteenth-century draughtsmen - Pisanello, Jacopo Bellini, Pollaiuolo, Ghirlandaio, Carpaccio and Leonardo da Vinci - Francis Ames-Lewis then explores new types of drawing evolved during the century: the free sketch contrasting with the frozen control of the model-book, the exploratory study of the nude, the preparatory compositional sketch and the cartoon.
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