The painter's practice in Renaissance Tuscany / Anabel Thomas.

By: Thomas, Anabel .

Material type: materialTypeLabel

BookPublisher: Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1995Description: xix, 398 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cm.ISBN: 0521445647.Subject(s): Painting, Renaissance -- Italy -- Tuscany | Painting, Italian -- Italy -- Tuscany | Art patronage -- Italy -- Tuscany -- History -- 15th century | Artists and patrons -- Italy -- Tuscany -- History -- 15th century | Artists' studios -- Italy -- Tuscany -- History -- 15th centuryDDC classification: 759.5

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
General Lending	MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending	759.5 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		00053738

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This unique and fully illustrated study of the painter's practice in Renaissance Tuscany focuses on paintings not only as art but also as products of a process of manufacture. Anabel Thomas presents a complete picture of the commissioning, production and marketing of paintings, examining such aspects as the way in which the painter and his business functioned from day to day, how the subjects and their style were decided, the constraints on cost and design, and the division of labour within and between workshops. Her study is based on material which has hitherto not been generally accessible, and draws in particular on the detailed workshop account book of the painter Neri di Bicci, little known now but highly regarded at the time, much of whose work survives and is closely documented. The result is a new perspective on the construction of Italian Renaissance art.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [365]-381) and index.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

1 The Renaissance art market
2 The Renaissance city
3 Setting up the business
4 Getting business
5 Doing business
6 Production of the merchandise: practical matters
7 Completion of the merchandise: payment
8 Completion of the merchandise: delivery
9 The workshop as a business enterprise
10 The workshop and stylistic development
11 The patron and conoisseurship
12 Epilogue: the painter's practice - new perspectives on Neri di Bicci

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

By no means the good read of Michael Baxandall's Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972) or of Martin Wackernagel's The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist (CH, May'82), this assemblage of data about the practical aspects of painting production benefits from the 1976 publication of Neri di Bicci's record book. Thomas supposes that this likable, though less than stellar, third-generation head of a gothicizing shop left us valuable information about the art market as a whole. The effects of Florentine curfew on apprentice life, the varieties of window covering available, the varieties of paint brushes for sale provide interesting asides, as does the excursus on copies and replicas. No one would deny the importance and intricacy of the information, but the argument limps along, decrying the "elitist" view in favor of the centrality of workshop practice. Given such conclusions as "there is much evidence to suggest that Renaissance patrons were happy to adopt the prevailing styles, and particularly when they were reproduced in less costly materials," we might better have been given a data base. P. Emison University of New Hampshire