I Rinascimenti in Europa 1480-1620

An unprecedented history of Renaissance art told not from the usual chronological point of view, but following an innovative geographical criterion by cultural areas.

Edited by an internationally renowned scholar and accompanied by a rich iconographic apparatus, the volume will analyze the artistic styles and movements that take on original regional and national declinations throughout Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, leading us to discover the variants and typical characteristics imprinted by each culture.

After a first chapter, which sketches a quick fresco of the artistic geography of the “early Renaissance” (15th century), the book recounts and analyzes in the second chapter the role of Rome caput mundi, master of a language forged on the prestigious models of antiquity. The third extensive chapter deals with the Habsburg Imperial Renaissance, peremptorily posing the question: is it permissible to speak of a Habsburg Renaissance? The fourth chapter is devoted to the Renaissance of the Valois, understood as the counterpart and rival of the Habsburg crown; while the fifth, “Centers and Peripheries: Two Metropolises Compared,” establishes a comparison of cultural areas that pivot on two major metropolises, Venice and Antwerp, re-proposing the question of territorial identity expressed by a variety of artistic modes, both local (“indigenous”) and “imported.” The sixth chapter examines the artistic production of the Alpine territory, questioning the characteristics of its peculiar type of Renaissance, while the following chapter sheds light on other forms and expressions of the artistic renaissance, from the “alternative” renaissances of popular extraction, neglected by official historiography, to the refined, experimental and “eccentric” ones; finally, the eighth chapter will indicate in brief the end of the Renaissance era.

BY
BERNARD AIKEMA – He has been a “guest professor” at Princeton and Harvard Universities in the United States and at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales and the Ecole Pratique des hautes études in Paris. He regularly gives courses, seminars, conferences and lectures at universities, museums and other scientific and cultural institutions in various European countries, the United States and Canada.