<p>During the fifteenth century, Florence emerged as one of Europe's most important city-states. This fresh and insightful book investigates the fascinating intersection of art, politics, and gender in the public sphere of Florence at this time. Adrian W. B. Randolph identifies a pivotal moment in the history of public art when Florentines visually encoded political and social relations within gendered categories. Randolph shows how "engaging" political symbols were grounded in a revolutionary way in amorous discourses that drew on metaphors of affection, desire, courtship, betrothal, marriage, homo- and hetero-eroticism, and procreation. This book emphasizes the sculpture of Donatello and the Medici family's efforts to seek legitimacy through artistic patronage. To characterize the political function of art, however, the book also encompasses a broad array of media-including paintings by Botticelli, portrait medals, and especially engravings-and tracks a number of important political developments. During the course of the fifteenth century, as tensions grew between Florence's explicit republicanism and a waxing politics of personal charisma, art was employed to alleviate the uneasiness, Randolph argues. First an oligarchical government and then three generations of Medici rulers, recognizing the importance of political appearances, carefully crafted images of themselves, their city, and the consensual relation they imagined existing between the two. Randolph casts new light on these artistic practices to arrive at a new and convincing view of the connections among politics, gender, and art in quattrocento Florence.</p>

Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence

Arts & Photography

Randolph, Adrian W. B.

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

<p>This groundbreaking book spans the fields of art history, material culture, and gender studies in its examination of a range of objects from Italian Renaissance society.  Addressing painted and sculpted portraits, marriage and betrothal gifts, and paxes, Adrian W. B. Randolph uses themes such as family and individual memory, windows, perspectival space, and touch to investigate how these items were experienced at the time, particularly by women.  Rather than focusing on the social contexts of the objects, this original study deals with the objects themselves, asking how individuals lived with, looked at, and responded to complex things that at the time hovered between the nascent category of art and the everyday. Accompanied by beautiful and engaging accounts and illustrations of late-14th- and 15th-century Italian art, this compelling and thought-provoking argument makes the case for an alternate account of art and experience that challenges many conceptions about Renaissance art.</p>

Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art

Inspired by the discovery and excavation of ancient Roman treasures, patrons, artists, and scholars from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries strove to recreate the legendary greatness of classical Rome in paintings, sculptures, and on paper. The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College's collections are rich in such representations imparting the spirit of the architecture, mythology, and antiquities of the Eternal City. This illustrated catalogue considers a selection of vivid and imaginative Renaissance and Enlightenment artistic and intellectual interpretations of Rome's classical monuments and antiquities in the context of the city's cultural, political, and social history. In the tradition of sophisticated curatorial thinking at the Hood, the thematic grouping of the pieces suggests a highly nuanced approach to issues of place, memory, status, iconography, aesthetics, and historical imagination. Essays by T. Barton Thurber, "Survival and Revival of the Classical Tradition: Antiquity in Rome from the Baroque Era to the Age of Enlightenment", and Adrian W. B. Randolph, "How Great Rome Was the Ruins Teach': Antiquity in Renaissance Rome", provide general overviews of the circumstances inspiring the featured representations of Rome. Introduction by Derrick R. Cartwright; bibliography.

Antiquity in Rome: From the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment

Thurber, T. Barton

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Hood Museum of Art

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Books by Randolph, Adrian W. B.