Francis I

the knight-king

Francis I of France led one of the most colourful and influential courts of the sixteenth century. Known as the 'knight-king', he was a chivalric warrior, a strong ruler and a passionate patron of the arts and of the French nobility. While he faced setbacks ...

Benvenuto Cellini and the embodiment of the modern artist

The art history public has long been both fascinated and repelled by the renowned Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. He was a murderer, thief, lover of both genders, servant and rival of popes and princes, as well as an ingenious artist. In his legendary autobiography, the ...

Hans Memling and the Merchants

Emigrating from southern Germany in the late fifteenth century, painter Hans Memling sought success in Bruges, which was a vibrant commercial hub at the time. Rather than among the nobility or ecclesiastical institutions, instead he found his audience in the new urban middle class of ...

Rudolf II

the life and legend of the mad emperor

A reinterpretation of the Habsburgian ruler's reign as exemplary rather than reclusive. Rudolf II offers a fresh perspective on the Habsburg ruler, shedding new light on a reign often colored by myths of madness. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann argues that, contrary to popular belief, Rudolf ...

Piero di Cosimo

eccentricity and delight

An original survey of the Renaissance painter's life and work. This book is a concise survey of the life of the Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) within his social and cultural surroundings. Delving into the artist's deliberately idiosyncratic life, the book shows ...

Machiavelli

From Radical to Reactionary

From a leading expert on the life and works of Niccolò Machiavelli, a superb overview of the pivotal Renaissance philosopher, writer, and historian. "Machiavellian" can signify duplicity and amorality in politics, but Machiavelli himself was far more complex than this cliché. A high-ranking Florentine government ...

Caravaggio

and the creation of Modernity

Undeniably one of the greatest artists of all time, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio would develop a radically new kind of psychologically expressive, realistic art and, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, would lay the foundations for modern painting. His paintings defied tradition to such a ...

Hieronymus Bosch

visions and nightmares

In his lifetime the early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch was famous for his phantasmagoric images, and today his name is synonymous with the infernal. The creator of expansive tableaus of fantastic and hellish scenes-where any devil not dancing is too busy eating human souls-he has ...