Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700
About the Book Series
A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies.
Reframing Seventeenth-Century Bolognese Art: Archival Discoveries
1st Edition
Edited
By Babette Bohn
December 01, 2025
These ground-breaking essays, all based on original archival research, consider the evolving interest in Bolognese art in seventeenth-century Italy, particularly focusing on the period after the death of Guido Reni in 1642. Edited by Bolognese specialists Raffaella Morselli and Babette Bohn, the ...
Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World
1st Edition
Edited
By Suzanna Ivanic, Mary Laven, Andrew Morrall
December 01, 2025
This collection of essays offers a comparative perspective on religious materiality across the early modern world. Setting out from the premise that artefacts can provide material evidence of the nature of early modern religious practices and beliefs, the volume tests and challenges conventional ...
Representing from Life in Seventeenth-century Italy
1st Edition
By Sheila McTighe
December 01, 2025
In drawing or painting from live models and real landscapes, more was at stake for artists in early modern Italy than achieving greater naturalism. To work with the model in front of your eyes, and to retain their identity in the finished work of art, had an impact on concepts of artistry and ...
Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women
1st Edition
Edited
By Erin Griffey
December 01, 2025
For women at the early modern courts, clothing and jewellery were essential elements in their political arsenal, enabling them to signal their dynastic value, to promote loyalty to their marital court and to advance political agendas. This is the first collection of essays to examine how elite ...
Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300-1550
1st Edition
By Anne L. Williams
December 01, 2025
Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300.1550 is the first book to reclaim satire as a central component of Catholic altarpieces, devotional art, and veneration, moving beyond humor's relegation to the medieval margins or to the profane arts alone. The book challenges humor's perception ...
Sense Knowledge and the Challenge of Italian Renaissance Art: El Greco, Velázquez, Rembrandt
1st Edition
By Giles Knox
December 01, 2025
Giles Knox examines how El Greco, Velaìzquez, and Rembrandt, though a disparate group of artists, were connected by a new self-consciousness with respect to artistic tradition. In particular, Knox considers the relationship of these artists to the art of Renaissance Italy, and sets aside ...
Somaesthetic Experience and the Viewer in Medicean Florence: Renaissance Art and Political Persuasion, 1459-1580
1st Edition
By Allie Terry-Fritsch
December 01, 2025
Viewers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were encouraged to forge connections between their physical and affective states when they experienced works of art. They believed that their bodies served a critical function in coming to know and make sense of the world around them, and intimately ...
Still-Life as Portrait in Early Modern Italy: Baschenis, Bettera and the Painting of Cultural Identity
1st Edition
By Ornat Lev-er
December 01, 2025
Still-Life as Portrait in Early Modern Italy centers on the still-life compositions created by Evaristo Baschenis and Bartolomeo Bettera, two 17th-century painters living and working in the Italian city of Bergamo. This highly original study explores how these paintings form a dynamic network in ...
Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity
1st Edition
By Nazanin Hedayat Munroe
December 01, 2025
This book examines a group of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century figural silks depicting legendary lovers from the Khamsa (Quintet) of epic Persian poetry. Codified by Nizami Ganjavi in the twelfth century, the Khamsa gained popularity in the Persian-speaking realm through illustrated manuscripts ...
The Art and Government Service of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei (c. 1421 - c. 1495): Visual Propaganda and Undercover Agency for the Republic of Siena
1st Edition
By Anabel Thomas
December 01, 2025
In 1454 the Sienese painter Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei faced litigation from the Mercanzia in Siena for defaulting on a contract from one of the leading Franciscan confraternities in the city. Two fellow Sienese artists, Giovanni di Paolo and Sano di Pietro, had recently completed a new ...
The Art of Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721-1782)
1st Edition
By Christina Lindeman
December 01, 2025
The Art of Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721–1782) is the first English-language monograph on this exceptional German artist that critically examines Therbusch’s artworks and career as a history and mythological painter, portraitist, and maker of synthetic pigments within the German and international ...
The Codex Borbonicus Veintena Imagery: Visualizing History, Time, and Ritual in Aztec Solar-Year Festivals
1st Edition
By Catherine DiCesare
December 01, 2025
The sixteenth-century pictorial manuscript known as the Codex Borbonicus contains a remarkable record of the eighteen Mexica (or “Aztec”) festival periods of twenty days, known as veintenas, celebrated during the 365-day solar year. Because its indigenous artists framed the Borbonicus veintenas ...