Displaying items by tag: renaissance

In our era of rapid prototyping and 3D printing, technologies that promise to transform the production of everything from medical devices to skyscrapers, it is easy to lose sight of how three-dimensional objects came into being in the predigital age. One way into this question is through drawing. What role did it play in the production of Renaissance sculpture, some of the most ambitious and technically accomplished ever produced? Or, as Columbia University art historian Michael Cole puts it, “Why did sculptors draw?”

his is the problem at the center of “Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculptors’ Drawings from Renaissance Italy,” currently on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and co-curated by Mr. Cole and Oliver Tostmann, formerly of the Gardner and now Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn.

Yet, Italian art experts have become so worried about the state of the 15th-century fresco dubbed “the greatest picture in the world”, that they have embarked on a major restoration project.

The work was only made possible with a hefty donation from a private citizen.

Piero della Francesca’s "The Resurrection," on display in Sansepolcro in north-east Tuscany, is widely hailed as one of the masterpieces of late 15th-century Italian art.

The fall museum season is the biggest of the year, and this one is particularly good for fans of Renaissance art. This week alone two exhibitions highlighting the period open in this part of the country, including "Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy" at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

"Sanctity Pictured" remains on view through Jan. 25. The Frist Center is the exhibition's only venue.

During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Augsburg, Germany enjoyed a cultural golden age. Situated at the confluence of two large rivers and near important Alpine passes, Augsburg had thrived on trade with Italy and enjoyed the influence of the Italian Renaissance. It was the home of two leading banking families, the Fuggers and Welsers, both of whom repeatedly made crucial loans to the often cash-strapped Habsburg emperors. Indeed, the Houses of Fugger and Welser were to the Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V what the House of Rothschild would be to the 19th-century governments of Europe. Consequently the grateful imperial favor bestowed upon Augsburg nurtured the city’s fine arts.

A Renaissance silver-gilt and enamel salt cellar, bequeathed by collector Michael Wellby to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, has been identified as Nazi loot. It will thus be returned to the descendants of its pre-WWII owner.

The intricate piece is one of the 500 silverware items—believed to be worth in excess of £10 million—donated to the museum in 2012 by Wellby, a former friend of Professor Timothy Wilson, the museum's Keeper of Western Art.

The name Pieter Coecke van Aelst, though plenty illustrious-sounding, is not widely known — or at least, according to the curators behind his current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not nearly as well known as it ought to be. A Netherlandish artist-of-all-trades active in the early- to mid-16th century, Coecke was a contemporary of Raphael, supported the fledgling Pieter Bruegel the Elder (who would go on to marry Coecke’s daughter), and was collected competitively by King Henry VIII and Cosimo de Medici, among others. And still, he is often relegated to the annals of art history. The Met’s “Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry,” on view through January 11, 2015, represents his first-ever major solo exhibition.

Of course, part of Coecke’s lesser notoriety may be connected to that of his primary medium.

Spain’s minister of education, culture and sport, José Ignacio Wert, has dispelled any fears that some of the Museo del Prado’s Renaissance masterpieces could be transferred to a planned Royal Collections museum, due to open in 2016. Appearing on Spanish television, Wert assured viewers that the issue “has been resolved” and that the transfer of the works “will not happen”, reports EFE news agency.

Bellini. Botticelli. Titian. "Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums" celebrates the richness of Italy’s artistic legacy. It features religious paintings of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, along with secular Neoclassical and genre paintings of the nineteenth century—with the principal artistic centers, such as Bologna, Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, and Venice, represented. Milwaukee is the only Midwest stop on the tour of this rare exhibition.

Opening with some of the earliest and most refined examples of Italian painting, including Sandro Botticelli’s stunning "Annunciation," the exhibition unfolds chronologically.

Florence officials ordered the closure of many of the Tuscan city's museums on Friday, including the famed Uffizi Gallery, while technicians checked for damage after a particularly violent storm.

The museums house some of the greatest treasures of the Renaissance and the Uffizi is home to masterpieces by Fra Angelico, Boticelli, Raphael and others.

The Dallas Museum of Art’s Paintings Conservation Studio has restored what the DMA calls “a rare example of early Renaissance Spanish painting, St. Bonaventure with the Tree of Life.” You can see it today in the museum’s European galleries.

Conservation is part of the new era at the Dallas Museum of Art, as mandated by director Maxwell Anderson, who came to the DMA in 2012. Along those lines, the museum has some big news.

Its Paintings Conservation Studio, an Anderson creation, has restored what the DMA calls “a rare example of early Renaissance Spanish painting, St. Bonaventure With the Tree of Life.” You can see the painting today by going to the DMA’s European galleries.