Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture

Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture offers provocative insights into the sculpture produced primarily in Florence but in other regions as well, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Focusing on the achievements of such artists as Donatello and Michelangelo, this volume demonstrates how the methodologies of cultural anthropology, aesthetics, conservation, political theory, and literary analysis, among others, can be successfully applied to the study of sculpture. Among the themes explored in this collection of essays, many written specially for this edition and others revised and updated, are the relationship of sculpture to nature, as well as to the cultures of Greece and Rome; the role of patronage; the development of new forms, such as the statuettes and portraiture; and the creation of public monuments as vehicles of propaganda. Also emphasized are the techniques of creating sculpture in a variety of media, including bronze, marble, wood, stucco, and terracotta.

Review: '... brings together a fascinating body of cognate material that it will take me at least some time to digest and feed back into the study of sculpture.' Charles Avery, Renaissance Studies