Series: Renaissance Lives

One of the most brilliant and original authors and architects of the entire Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti's output encompassed engineering, surveying, cryptography, poetry, humour, political commentary and more. He employed irony, satire and playful allusion in his written works, and developed a sophisticated approach to architecture that combined the ancient and modern. Born into the Florentine elite, Alberti was nonetheless...

Painter, poet and actor Salvator Rosa was one of the most engaging and charismatic personalities of seventeenth-century Italy. Although a gifted landscape painter, he longed to be seen as the pre-eminent philosopher-painter of his age. This new account traces Rosa's strategies of self-promotion, and his creation of a new kind of audience for his art. The book describes the startling...

A new interpretation of Tycho Brahe's pivotal role in the emergence of empirical science. The Danish aristocrat and astronomer Tycho Brahe personified the inventive vitality of Renaissance life in the sixteenth century. Brahe lost his nose in a student duel, wrote Latin poetry, and built one of the most astonishing villas of the period, as well as the observatory Uraniborg,...

The Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was a prolific writer, polymath and prodigious collector who amassed the largest collection of naturalia in sixteenth-century Europe, as well as hundreds of coloured drawings detailing them. Many of these drawings found their way into his illustrated publications, most of which were published posthumously. Ulisse Aldrovandi provides a concise yet comprehensive portrait of Aldrovandi, paying...

Bernard Palissy and the Arts of the Earth, by François Quiviger, delves into the life of Bernard Palissy, a French Renaissance artisan philosopher who challenged conventional views. Palissy perceived intelligence and consciousness across all forms of life—soils, plants, animals—boldly rejecting human superiority long before the advent of modern environmentalism. Palissy was renowned for his craftsmanship in creating ceramic ware, fountains,...

In this highly original study, Troy Thomas examines Caravaggio's life and art in relation to his most profound achievement: the creation of modernity. He focuses on the inherent tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities in Caravaggio's art—key areas often ignored by other experts. Structured thematically and chronologically, the book begins with an in-depth look at the artist's early life and works, which...

A critical biography of René Descartes, whose first principle ("I think therefore I am.") reshaped modern philosophy. Often called 'the father of modern philosophy', René Descartes' contributions to philosophy, mathematics, and natural science set the intellectual agenda for the seventeenth century. In this biography and assessment of his works, based on the most up-to-date research, Steven Nadler follows Descartes from...

Erasmus of Rotterdam emerged from a humble background and, through remarkable perseverance, skill, and vision, became a powerful intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was renowned for his vigorous opposition to war, intolerance, and hypocrisy, while his irony and subtlety often confused both friends and opponents alike. His ideas significantly influenced the rise of the Reformation...

In this engaging account, now in paperback, Bernadine Barnes uses new research to show how Michelangelo's art was seen in its own time. The original setting is reconstructed for works that have been moved, modified or left incomplete. Michelangelo's consideration of his audience changed throughout his career: sometimes he produced work for conventional religious settings and at other times he...

Rudolf II: The Life and Legend of the Mad Emperor offers a fresh perspective on the Habsburg ruler, shedding new light on a reign often coloured by myths of madness. Contrary to popular belief, Rudolf was not a passive recluse but an engaged monarch, navigating the complexities of state affairs with a moderate hand amid turbulent times. By contextualising his...

A fresh account of the life, ideas, and art of the beloved Northern Renaissance master.In sixteenth-century Northern Europe, during a time of increasing religious and political conflict, Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel explored how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critical eye and peerless paintbrush to mankind's labors and pleasures, its foibles and rituals of daily life, portraying landscapes, peasant...

Rembrandt van Rijn and the Netherlands grew up together. The artist, born in Leiden in 1606, lived during the tumultuous period of the Dutch Revolt and the establishment of the independent Dutch Republic. He moved to Amsterdam, a cosmopolitan centre of world trade, and became the city's most fashionable portraitist. His attempts to establish himself with the powerful court at...

Offering particular insight into Filippino Lippi's artistic problem-solving, an innovative look at the Renaissance master. The first monograph in a generation, and the first study in English in over eighty years, this book presents a new understanding of the Renaissance master-artist Filippino Lippi. Celebrated as 'ingenious' by Vasari in 1550, Filippino was highly praised and influential, then fell out of...

A clear-eyed portrayal of the audacious Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The art history public has long been both fascinated and repelled by renowned Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. He was a murderer, thief, lover of all genders, servant and rival of popes and princes, as well as an ingenious artist. In his legendary autobiography, the Vita, Cellini describes his activities vividly...

A social history of the fifteenth-century German painter's influence. Emigrating from southern Germany in the late fifteenth century, painter Hans Memling sought success in Bruges, a vibrant commercial hub at the time. Rather than among the nobility or ecclesiastical institutions, he found his audience in the new urban middle class of merchant bankers, financiers, politicians, affluent clerics, and artisans. He...

This book is an original, cogent account of the singular Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522), providing a concise survey of his life within his social, cultural, and literary backdrop. Delving into the artist's deliberately idiosyncratic life, Piero di Cosimo shows how Piero chose to live in squalor and eat nothing but boiled eggs, which (according to Vasari's famous Lives...

The Italian Renaissance is conventionally thought of as the historical period that bore witness to the rise of the individual. Yet no other artist of the time begins to compare with Albrecht Dürer in terms of the almost obsessive interest he displayed in depicting his life, his dreams and his surroundings in his art. Exploring Dürer's life and times, the...

An accessible biography of the celebrated early Netherlandish painter, now in paperback. 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 been as equally...

In this engaging account, now in paperback, Bernadine Barnes uses new research to show how Michelangelo's art was seen in its own time. The original setting is reconstructed for works that have been moved, modified or left incomplete. Michelangelo's consideration of his audience changed throughout his career: sometimes he produced work for conventional religious settings and at other times he...

The Renaissance artist Raphael is known for his extraordinary frescoes, his sublime Madonnas, devotional altarpieces, architectural designs, and his inventive prints and tapestries. It was his use of ancient Roman models—classical sculptures, reliefs, and paintings—that formed his much admired classical style and influenced the styles of many later artists. In Raphael and the Antique, Claudia La Malfa gives a full...

Published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, this incisive and illuminating biography follows the three themes that shaped the life of Leonardo and forever changed Western art and imagination: nature, art and self-fashioning. Leonardo spent his childhood in the Tuscan countryside among farm workers before entering the most reputed artistic workshop of Florence. There he...

Machiavellian can signify duplicity and amorality in politics, but Machiavelli himself is far more complex than this cliché. A high-ranking Florentine government official and prolific writer of hugely influential political, military, and historical works, Machiavelli was also a vernacular poet, first-rank dramatist, and religious radical, rejecting not only the contemporary Catholic Church but Christianity itself. From champion of Florentine popular...

A major re-evaluation of Francisco de Zurbarán, master of Spain's Golden Age. Francisco de Zurbarán, master of Spain's Golden Age, painted with unmatched stillness and intensity. Famed for his monks, saints, and martyrs, he also created mesmerising still lifes, making fabrics shimmer and fruit glow with quiet presence. This book explores how Zurbarán's art captures the spiritual inwardness of seventeenth-century...

The Venetian painter known as Giorgione, or 'big George', died at a young age in the dreadful plague of 1510, possibly having painted fewer than twenty-five works. Many of these are among the most mysterious and alluring in the history of art. Paintings such as The Three Philosophers and The Tempest remain compellingly elusive, seeming to deny the viewer the...

A critical biography of one of the most celebrated prose stylists in early modern English. This book provides an overview of the life and work of the scandalous Renaissance writer Thomas Nashe (1567-c.1600), whose writings led to the closure of theaters and widespread book bans. Famous for his scurrilous novel, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), Nashe also played a central role...

Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy by Felicity Henderson delves into the life and work of Robert Hooke, England's first professional scientist and a groundbreaking figure in science communication. Hooke was unique among early scientists for leaving an intricate manual guiding others towards becoming 'experimental philosophers'. This biography begins with Hooke's scientific method, following his journey through the bustling shops of instrument...

A fresh reading of Aldus Manutius, preeminent in the history of the printed book. Aldus Manutius is perhaps the greatest figure in the history of the printed book: in Venice, Europe's capital of printing, he invented the italic type and issued more first editions of the classics than anyone before or since, as well as Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the most beautiful...

Born in Tuscany in 1304, Italian poet Francesco Petrarca is widely considered one of the fathers of the modern Italian language. His writings inspired the Humanist movement and, subsequently, the Renaissance. Despite this, Petrarch remains misunderstood. He was a man of contradictions—a Roman pagan devotee and a devout Christian, a lover of friendship and sociability, yet intensely private. Christopher S....

Peter Paul Rubens was the most inventive and prolific northern European artist of his age. Rubens’s Spirit discusses his life and work in relation to three interrelated themes: spirit, ingenuity and genius. It argues that Rubens and his reception were pivotal in the transformation of early modern ingenuity into Romantic genius. Ranging across the artist's entire career, the book explores...