Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600

Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Richard A. Goldthwaite
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art patronage
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy represents a departure from previous studies, both in its focus on demand and in its emphasis on the history of the material culture of the West. By demonstrating that the roots of modern consumer society can be found in Renaissance Italy, Richard Goldthwaite offers a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the history of modern consumerism--a movement which he regards as a positive force for the formation of new attitudes about things that is a defining characteristic of modern culture.

Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600

Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Richard A. Goldthwaite
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art patronage
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book

Book Description
Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy represents a departure from previous studies, both in its focus on demand and in its emphasis on the history of the material culture of the West. By demonstrating that the roots of modern consumer society can be found in Renaissance Italy, Richard Goldthwaite offers a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the history of modern consumerism--a movement which he regards as a positive force for the formation of new attitudes about things that is a defining characteristic of modern culture.

In Praise of Commercial Culture

In Praise of Commercial Culture PDF Author: Tyler COWEN
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029933
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.

The Economy of Renaissance Florence

The Economy of Renaissance Florence PDF Author: Richard A. Goldthwaite
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421400596
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
Winner, 2010 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize, the Renaissance Society of America2009 Outstanding Academic Title, ChoiceHonorable Mention, Economics, 2009 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers Richard A. Goldthwaite, a leading economic historian of the Italian Renaissance, has spent his career studying the Florentine economy. In this magisterial work, Goldthwaite brings together a lifetime of research and insight on the subject, clarifying and explaining the complex workings of Florence’s commercial, banking, and artisan sectors. Florence was one of the most industrialized cities in medieval Europe, thanks to its thriving textile industries. The importation of raw materials and the exportation of finished cloth necessitated the creation of commercial and banking practices that extended far beyond Florence’s boundaries. Part I situates Florence within this wider international context and describes the commercial and banking networks through which the city's merchant-bankers operated. Part II focuses on the urban economy of Florence itself, including various industries, merchants, artisans, and investors. It also evaluates the role of government in the economy, the relationship of the urban economy to the region, and the distribution of wealth throughout the society. While political, social, and cultural histories of Florence abound, none focuses solely on the economic history of the city. The Economy of Renaissance Florence offers both a systematic description of the city's major economic activities and a comprehensive overview of its economic development from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance to 1600.

A Rich and Tantalizing Brew

A Rich and Tantalizing Brew PDF Author: Jeanette M. Fregulia
Publisher: Food and Foodways
ISBN: 1682260879
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The history of coffee is much more than the tale of one nonessential good--it is a lens through which to consider various strands of world history, from food and foodways to religion and economics and sociocultural history. A Rich and Tantalizing Brew traces the history of the coffee bean, beginning with its cultivation and brewing as a private pleasure in the highlands of Ethiopia and Yemen before its emergence as a common comfort, first in the Muslim world, then across the Mediterranean to Italy, other parts of Europe, and beyond to India and the Americas. At each of these stops the brew gathered ardent aficionados and vocal critics, all the while reshaping the social landscape. Taking its conversational tone from the chats often held over a steaming cup, A Rich and Tantalizing Brew offers a critical and entertaining look at how this bitter beverage, with a little help from the tastes that traveled with it--chocolate, tea, and sugar--has connected people to each other both within and outside of their typical circles, inspiring a new context for sharing news, conducting business affairs, and even plotting revolution.

The Renaissance in Europe

The Renaissance in Europe PDF Author: Margaret L. King
Publisher: Laurence King Publishing
ISBN: 9781856693745
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
"The Renaissance is usually portrayed as a period dominated by the extraordinary achievements of great men: rulers, philosophers, poets, painters, architects and scientists. Leading scholar Margaret King recasts the Renaissance as a more complex cultural movement rooted in a unique urban society that was itself the product of many factors and interactions: commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague, invasion and other social factors. Together with literary and artistic achievements, therefore, today's Renaissance history includes the study of power, wealth, gender, class, honour, shame, ritual and other categories of historical investigation opened up in recent years. Tracing the diffusion of the Renaissance from Italy to the rest of Europe, Professor King marries the best work of the last generation of scholars with the findings of the most recent research, including her own. Ultimately, she points to the multiple ways in which this seminal epoch influenced the later development of Western culture and society."--Jacket.

Connecting Art Markets

Connecting Art Markets PDF Author: Sandra van Ginhoven
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004334831
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Connecting Art Markets proposes that vertically-integrated art dealers operating on a large scale acted as cultural mediators, and offers an aggregate view that connects artistic and market developments at both sides of the Atlantic.

Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court

Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court PDF Author: Leah R. Clark
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108427723
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This book presents a new perspective on the Italian Renaissance court by examining the circulation, collection and exchange of art objects.

Old Women and Art in the Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior

Old Women and Art in the Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior PDF Author: Erin J. Campbell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317086058
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Though portraits of old women mediate cultural preoccupations just as effectively as those of younger women, the scant published research on images of older women belies their significance within early modern Italy. This study examines the remarkable flowering, largely overlooked in portraiture scholarship to date, of portraits of old women in Northern Italy and especially Bologna during the second half of the sixteenth century, when, as a result of religious reform, the lives of women and the family came under increasing scrutiny. Old Women and Art in the Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior draws on a wide range of primary visual sources, including portraits, religious images, architectural views, prints and drawings, as well as extant palazzi and case, furnishings, and domestic objects created by the leading artists in Bologna, including Lavinia Fontana, Bartolomeo Passerotti, Denys Calvaert, and the Carracci. The study also draws on an array of historical sources - including sixteenth-century theories of portraiture, prescriptive writings on women and the family, philosophical and practical treatises on the home economy, sumptuary legislation, books of secrets, prescriptive writings on old age, and household inventories - to provide new historical perspectives on the domestic life of the propertied classes in Bologna during the period. Author Erin Campbell contends that these images of unidentified women are not only crucial to our understanding of the cultural operations of art within the early modern world, but also, by working from the margins to revise the center, provide an opportunity to present new conceptual frameworks and question our assumptions about old age, portraiture, and the domestic interior.

Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580

Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580 PDF Author: Katherine A. McIver
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351871692
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Expanding interdisciplinary investigations into gender and material culture, Katherine A. McIver here adds a new dimension to Renaissance patronage studies by considering domestic art - the decoration of the domestic interior - as opposed to patronage of the fine arts (painting, sculpture and architecture). Taking a multidimensional approach, McIver looks at women as collectors of precious material goods, as organizers of the early modern home, and as decorators of its interior. By analyzing the inventories of women's possessions, McIver considers the wide range of domestic objects that women owned, such as painted and inlaid chests, painted wall panels, tapestries, fine fabrics for wall and bed hangings, and elaborate jewelry (pendant earrings, brooches, garlands for the hair, necklaces and rings) as well as personal devotional objects. Considering all forms of patronage opportunities open to women, she evaluates their role in commissioning and utilizing works of art and architecture as a means of negotiating power in the court setting, in the process offering fresh insights into their lives, limitations, and the possibilities open to them as patrons. Using her subjects' financial records to track their sources of income and the circumstances under which it was spent, McIver thereby also provides insights into issues of Renaissance women's economic rights and responsibilities. The primary focus on the lives and patronage patterns of three relatively unknown women, Laura Pallavicina-Sanvitale, Giacoma Pallavicina and Camilla Pallavicina, provides a new model for understanding what women bought, displayed, collected and commissioned. By moving beyond the traditional artistic centers of Florence, Venice and Rome, analyzing instead women's artistic patronage in the feudal courts around Parma and Piacenza during the sixteenth century, McIver nuances our understanding of women's position and power both in and out of the home. Carefully integrating extensive archival

The Empire of Stereotypes

The Empire of Stereotypes PDF Author: R. Casillo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403983216
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
This book places Germaine de Stael's influential novel, Corrine, or Italy (1807) in relation to preceding and subsequent stereotypes of Italy as seen in the works of Northern European and American travel writers since the Renaissance.