Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy

Arts & Photography

Spike, John T.

History & Criticism

Univ of Washington Pr

This twelve-volume series for the general reader reproduces works of art representing the resources of all eighteen curatorial departments of the Museum.

Europe in the Age of Monarchy (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Italian Baroque Paintings from New York Private Collections (Publications of the Art Museum, Princeton University)

The description for this book, Italian Baroque Paintings from New York Private Collections, will be forthcoming.

Princeton University Press

Caravaggio and His World : Darkness and Light (THE ART GALLERY)

Capon, Edmund

Gardners Books

Bold and realistic, the narrative power of Masaccio's entire body of work is explored in this elegant volume. In just seven years before his death at the age of twenty-six, Masaccio (1401-1428) developed a fully naturalistic and dramatic style that inaugurated Renaissance painting. His best-known work is the fresco cycle in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence (painted with Masolino), one of the world's artistic landmarks. Recently restored, these frescoes - with all of Masaccio's other works - are shown in stunning detail in this volume. An opening essay places the painter in his historical and art-historical context, emphasizing Masaccio's innovations. The second part of the book presents two dozen important paintings in full-spread or full-page reproductions with enlarged details and annotated brief essays for each. The last section is an illustrated catalogue raisonne of all of Masaccio's works, from the frescoes on public view in the Brancacci Chapel to other panels in Europe and the United States. John T. Spike's lucid, authoritative text traces Masaccio's artistic development with particular attention to the artist's connection to Donatello and Brunelleschi. He proposes a new reading of the iconography of the influential Brancacci Chapel, and discusses the extent of Filippino Lippi's over-painting in the chapel, based on information gleaned from recent ultraviolet and infrared photography that appears in this volume. Comprehensive and engaging, this profusely illustrated exploration of Masaccio's genius opens new lines of inquiry that will be explored for decades to come.

Masaccio

Individual Artists

Abbeville Press

Called "Angelico" for his inimitable depictions of paradise, this artist (1400? -1455) and Dominican friar succeeded Masaccio as the foremost painter of the early Renaissance in Italy. Fra Angelico's painting has been beloved for centuries since as an emblem of the flowering genius of quattrocento Florence. In his engaging new appraisal, John Spike reveals the unexpectedly innovative qualities of Angelico's art, including his use of linear and geometric perspective (even before the publication of Leon Battista Alberti's famous treatise). Another of Angelico's inventions was the Renaissance altarpiece known as the sacra conversazione (sacred conversation), in which the Virgin and Child and saints, formerly each rigidly enclosed in separate panels, now gesture and relate to each other within a clearly unified space. Fra Angelico had a lifelong fascination with the written word, and as Spike persuasively demonstrates, the accuracy of his Greek, Latin, and Hebrew inscriptions reveal his participation in the linguistic studies that flourished in Florence and Rome in the first half of the fifteenth century. He created some of the most visionary and learned compositions of his century, from his Deposition for the private chapel of the humanist Palla Strozzi to the extensive commissions in Rome for the erudite Pope Nicholas v. In this volume Spike presents a major discovery: the secret program of the forty frescoes in the cells of the Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence. All previous studies of this artist had concluded that the subjects and arrangement of these frescoes, the artist's masterworks, were chosen at random, or by the friars themselves. Instead, as the author now shows, Fra Angelico drew upon the mystical writings of the early church fathers to construct a spiritual exercise organized into three ascending levels of enlightenment. The San Marco frescoes can finally be seen as not only the most extensive cycle of works by any single painter of this century, but indeed the most complete pictorial expression of Renaissance theology. With fresh insights that will influence studies of quattrocento art for years to come, Spike uses his perceptive eye and judicious readings of documents to reassess the works of Angelico, his masters, and his assistants. This essential volume contains an extensive essay on the artist's life and work, followed by large color plates with detailed discussions of individual works. Finally, a catalog presents the artist's oeuvre, as revised by the author's new attributions. With lavish details of Angelico's works and an up-to-date bibliography, this volume is not only a feast for the eyes but an indispensable resource for anyone interested in this critical period of the Renaissance.

Fra Angelico

Caravaggio

A leading expert on Caravaggio's life and work unveals this beautifully illustrated survey of the great painter's work, revealing his most famous paintings alongside his most shocking and controversial work.

Spike, Michele K.

Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi Da

Every extant work by Caravaggio is reproduced in color in this lavish newly updated volume, the long-awaited result of more than 20 years of research by a leading authority on the artist. In an engaging and informed text, John T. Spike explores in detail Caravaggio's scandalous life and provocative work. Placing Caravaggio within the broad panorama of society and ideas at the turn of the 17th century, the author sets a richly detailed stage for an artist who has been called "the first modern painter." Caravaggio (1571-1610) reflected in his canvases his own desires and spiritual crises to an extent no one ever had imagined possible, and he shocked his contemporaries by portraying the saints and virgins of Christianity with the faces and bodies of his companions and lovers in Rome's demimonde. Accompanying the book is a critical catalog on CD-ROM in which all of Caravaggio's extant paintings, as well as lost and rejected works, are thoroughly described. Each entry specifies the work's medium, dimensions, location, and provenance, and provides an annotated bibliography of sources. Most of the entries conclude with a brief technical analysis. Much of this scientific data, of prime importance for attribution and dating, has not previously been published. With its fresh insights, as well as judicious readings of the documents and the physical evidence of the paintings themselves, Caravaggio is the most thorough study on the artist to date, and it will no doubt remain a definitive monograph for many years to come. This revised edition includes a new preface and updated bibliography.

Celebrates the life and career of the twentieth century realist who expressed radical views in his 1930's cityscapes as well as creating airy landscapes of Southhampton and Maine

Fairfield Porter: An American Classic

Biographies & Memoirs

Abrams

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Spike, John T.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Spike, John T.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Spike, John T.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy

Europe in the Age of Monarchy (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

Italian Baroque Paintings from New York Private Collections (Publications of the Art Museum, Princeton University)

Italian Baroque Paintings from New York Private Collections (Publications of the Art Museum, Princeton University)

Caravaggio and His World : Darkness and Light (THE ART GALLERY)

Masaccio

Fra Angelico

Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Fairfield Porter: An American Classic