ART HISTORY 338
16th-CENTURY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART
A Bibliography

For your reference and use in this course, here is a brief list of some of the basic sources for 16th-century Italian Renaissance art and architecture. Even the general literature is vast in number and subject, so use the titles below as the beginnings of more extensive research. Please remember also that there is also a Bibliography page attached to almost every one of the online Lives of Giorgio Vasari.

Here's a link to the books on reserve for this course.

Surveys and General Works

• Kenneth Clark (with Martin Kemp). Leonardo da Vinci. 1989. Full introductory study by one of the major experts on Leonardo.

• Bruce Cole. Italian Art: 1250-1550: the Relation of Renaissance Art to Life and Society. New York, 1987.

• Howard Hibbard. Michelangelo. 1985. Excellent overall study.

• Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny. Raphael. 1987. Excellent text and beautifully illustrated.

• Peter and Linda Murray. The Art of the Renaissance. New York, 1963, 1991. On the Renaissance in Northern and Southern Europe.

• John Paoletti and Gary M. Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy. New York, 1997. A thematic approach to the art of the Italian Renaissance.

• Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters. The Art of Renaissance Venice: architecture, sculpture, and painting, 1460-1590. Chicago, 1990.

• Patricia Lee Rubin. Giorgio Vasari: Art and History. New Haven, 1995.

• Johannes Wilde. Michelangelo: Six Lectures. Oxford, New York. 1978. Excellent introduction to the life and art of Michelangelo.

• Heinrich Wolfflin. Classic Art: an Introduction to the Italian Renaissance. London, 1952.

• Michael Levey. Early Renaissance.. London, 1967.
• Michael Levey. High Renaissance. London, 1975.
• John Shearman. Mannerism. London, 1967.

  These three are part of a series of short paperbacks describing the art of the period in Southern and Northern Europe.

Painting

• Susanna Biadene, ed. Titian, ca. 1488-1576. Munich, 1990.
• Patricia Fortini Brown. Venice and antiquity: the Venetian sense of the past. New Haven, 1996.
• David Chambers. The Imperial Age of Venice : 1380-1580. New York, 1971.

• Walter Friedlaender. Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting. New York, 1957.

• Rona Goffen. Piety and patronage in Renaissance Venice : Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans. New Haven, 1986.
• Rona Goffen. Giovanni Bellini. New Haven, 1989.
• Rona Goffen. Titian's Women New Haven, 1997.
• Rona Goffen. Titian's "Venus of Urbino" Cambridge and New York City, 1997. A collection of essays by different authors.
• Rona Goffen. Renaissance rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2002.

• Charles McCorquodale. Bronzino. London, 1981.

Sculpture

• Charles Avery. Florentine Renaissance Sculpture. London, 1970; 1987. A good handbook for Florence; moving from the Pisani to Mannerism and the Late Renaissance.
• Bruce Boucher. The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino. New Haven, 1991. 2 vols.
• Roberta J. M. Olson. Italian Renaissance Sculpture. London and New York, 1992. A handy and well-done one volume survey.

• John Pope-Hennessy. An Introduction to Italian Renaissance Sculpture. In three volumes:
  1. Italian Gothic Sculpture.
  2. Italian Renaissance Sculpture.
  3. Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture.

Use the third edition of 1985, for it has a section on "recent" scholarly work. While this is somewhat behind the times, it has the advantage of including the considerations on subsequent studies by the man considered to have been perhaps the most influential of Italian Renaissance scholars of the second half of this century.

Architecture

• Bruce Boucher. Andrea Palladio : the architect in his time. New York City, 1998.
• Deborah Howard. The Architectural History of Venice. Rev. & enlarged ed., New Haven, 2004.
• Deborah Howard. Jacopo Sansovino: architecture and patronage in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, 1975.

• Ralph Lieberman. Renaissance Architecture in Venice. London, 1982. Beautifully done by an art historian who is also a professional photographer.

• Peter Murray. Renaissance Architecture. New York, 1971.

• Wolfgang Lotz. Architecture in Italy: 1500-1600. Revised by Deborah Howard. New Haven, 1995. Not as useful as it could have been--for bizarre legal reasons the text could only be updated with a short preliminary chapter, rather than truly revised. However, the new large format with the excellent illustrations is some compensation.

• Wolfgang Lotz. Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture. A collection of some of Lotz's shorter articles. Includes basic studies such as "Notes on the Centralized Church of the Renaissance."
• Lionello Puppi. Palladio Drawings. New York City, 1990.

• Rudolf Wittkower. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London, 1962.

City/Regional/Thematic Treatments

• Patricia Fortini Brown. Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. New York, 1997.
• Loren Partridge. The Art of Renaissance Rome, 1400-1600. New York, 1997.
• A. Richard Turner. Renaissance Florence: the Invention of a New Art. New York, 1997.

  These three are all from the same "Perspectives" series.

• Giulio Carlo Argan. The Renaissance City. New York, 1969. An introduction to ideas about urban design in the Italian Renaissance.

• Eric Cochrane. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries 1527-1800. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973. Not an art history book, but an absorbing account of Florence after the Renaissance left town..
• Bruce Cole. The Renaissance Artist at Work. New York, 1983.

• David Franklin, ed. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Renaissance in Florence. 2005.

• Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters. The Art of Renaissance Venice. Chicago, 1990. The first full survey of Venetian Renaissance art and architecture.
• Christina Acidini Luchinat et al. The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2002. Here's a review.
• Lauro Martines. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence 2006.

(Top Right)
Alessandro Vittoria.  Feminone.  1550s.  Main door, 
Marciana Library, Venice.