The Biography of the Object in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Renaissance Studies Special Issues) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405139552 ISBN 13: 9781405139557

Publisher: WB, 2006

Synopsis

Material culture is not static: objects are created, used and re-used, sometimes for centuries, and their lives interact with those of the people who made and used them. The essays in this book discuss the ‘social lives’ of objects in late-medieval and renaissance Italy, ranging from maiolica, through sculpture and prostitutes’ jewellery, to miraculous painted images.

• Demonstrates the continued life of these objects well past the deaths of their creators and patrons.
  
• Contains a series of original contributions by young scholars, representing a broad range of approaches.

About this title

About the Author

Roberta J.M. Olson is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She has worked as Curator of Drawings at the New-York Historical Society for seven years.

Patricia L. Reilly is Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College. She is currently finishing a book on Raphael, Giorgio Vasari and the development of what she terms the ‘Florentine Visual Vernacular’.

Rupert Shepherd is based in the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum. His previous employment included two years as a research fellow at the University of Sussex, working on the collaborative project The Material Renaissance: Costs and Consumption in Italy c.1300-1650.

From the Back Cover

The famous call, made nineteen years ago by Appadurai and Kopytoff, that students of material culture should study the ‘social life’ of things has, until now, had a limited effect upon students of the Italian Renaissance. The essays in this book – part of the recent burgeoning interest in Italian Renaissance material culture – rise to Appadurai and Kopytoff’s challenge, examining the ‘lives’ led by objects in late medieval and Renaissance Italy: their creations, lives and subsequent after-lives.

Situating objects and their biographies in their cultural, social and economic contexts, the contributors discuss the ‘social lives’ of a range of objects in late-medieval and Renaissance Italy: maiolica, sculpture, artists' autobiographies, plate for the table, cassoni, glassware, prostitutes’ jewellery, miraculous painted images, choir-screens, chapels, and antiquities. An introductory essay discusses the forms of evidence at the disposal of students of material culture and their relationship to the objects whose lives they seem to illuminate.

Situating objects and their biographies in their cultural, social and economic contexts, the contributors discuss the ‘social lives’ of a range of objects in late-medieval and Renaissance Italy: maiolica, sculpture, artists' autobiographies, plate for the table, cassoni, glassware, prostitutes’ jewellery, miraculous painted images, choir-screens, chapels, and antiquities. An introductory essay discusses the forms of evidence at the disposal of students of material culture and their relationship to the objects whose lives they seem to illuminate.

Edition details

• Publisher: WB
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1405139552
• ISBN 13: 9781405139557
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156
• Editor: Olson Roberta J.M.