Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy. This item is unavailable.Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy

Objects of all sorts may tell stories and transmit messages. The ways in which many Renaissance art objects were read were determined by an alliance of interests: on the one hand, members of a wealthy elite were attempting to distinguish themselves from more ordinary mortals through their buying, and on the other, the commentators (often in the pockets of the elite) were both moulding and reflecting their choices. It was not enough that these objects were expensive. Their interpretation was shaped by the study of the glories of ancient Greece and Rome, and scholars worked hard to present the buying of art objects in the best possible light. They could do so only if goods were of the right kind; they had to be magnificent or splendid, while leaving room for the appreciation of their aesthetic qualities and the talent and art of their makers.

Luke Syson is Curator of Medals at The British Museum. He is co-editor with Nicholas Mann of The Imoge of the Individual: Portaits in the Renaissance (British Museum Press, 1997). Dora Thornton is Curator in charge of the Renaissance collections in the Department of Medieval and Modern Europe at The British Museum. She is the author of The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (Yale University Press, 1997).