From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale Un Pr | 2005 | ISBN: 1588391426/0300107161 | English | PDF | 384 pages | 71.63 Mb
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale Un Pr | 2005 | ISBN: 1588391426/0300107161 | English | PDF | 384 pages | 71.63 Mb
In this fascinating book, Fra Carnevale—heretofore a mysterious, quasi-legendary figure—emerges as a well-defined and pivotal artist in Renaissance Florence. In presenting their case, the authors take the reader from the workshop of Filippo Lippi in Florence to Urbino, capital of Federico da Montefeltro’s duchy in the region of the Marches. It was a road most memorably traveled by Piero della Francesca, who worked in Florence in 1439 and became Federico’s favorite artist. This book shows that other lesser known artists like Fra Carnevale also took the same path.
Among the many other artists—painters and sculptors—crucial to Fra Carnevale’s formation and discussed in this volume are Domenico Veneziano, Luca della Robbia, Pesellino, and Agostino di Duccio. Essays by Keith Christiansen, Andrea De Marchi, and Matteo Ceriana and a documentary appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo and Matteo Mazzalupi transform our knowledge of this exciting moment in the history of Renaissance art.
In 1934 the Italian government lifted restrictions governing the gabled Barberini Collection in Rome, making it possible for two intriguing fifteenth-century paintings to be put on the international art market. Within just two years both had been sold—one to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the other to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Neither their authorship nor their subjects were certain, but their ambitious depiction of architecture no less than their discursive, anecdotal approach to narration made them unique among Early Renaissance paintings. Who was their author? What was their function? How to explain their mastery of perspective and their sophisticated architectural settings? Building on over a century of scholarship as well as completely new archival information, this catalogue proposes answers to all three questions. In doing so, it examines the art of Florence in the 1440s and the work of, among others, Fra Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, Luca della Robbia, and Michelozzo. It then turns to the introduction of Renaissance style north of the Appenines, in the region of the Marches, and to the culture of the court at Urbino in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, dominated by its ruler, Federico da Montefeltro, the humanist-architect Leon Battista Alberti, and the sublime painter Piero della Francesca.
Sponsor's Statement
Director's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Contributors to the Catalogue
In Search of Fra Carnevale, A "Painter of High Repute"
Emanuela Daffra
Florence: Filippo Lippi and Fra Carnevale
Keith Christiansen
Fra Carnevale, Urbino, and the Marches: An Alternative View of the Renaissance
Andrea De Marchi
Fra Carnevale and the Practice of Architecture
Matteo Ceriana
Catalogue
Fra Carnevale in Florence
Catalogue 1–27
Fra Carnevale in Urbino and the Marches
Catalogue 28–47
Biographies
Documentary Appendices
Documents in the Florentine Archives
Andrea Di Lorenzo
Documents in the Urbino Archives
Matteo Mazzalupi
Documents in the Barberini Archives
Livia Carloni
Technical Essays
Observations on the Technique and Artistic Culture of Fra Carnevale
Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini
Plates
Carpentry and Panel Construction
Ciro Castelli and George Bisacca
Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits
Director's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Contributors to the Catalogue
In Search of Fra Carnevale, A "Painter of High Repute"
Emanuela Daffra
Florence: Filippo Lippi and Fra Carnevale
Keith Christiansen
Fra Carnevale, Urbino, and the Marches: An Alternative View of the Renaissance
Andrea De Marchi
Fra Carnevale and the Practice of Architecture
Matteo Ceriana
Catalogue
Fra Carnevale in Florence
Catalogue 1–27
Fra Carnevale in Urbino and the Marches
Catalogue 28–47
Biographies
Documentary Appendices
Documents in the Florentine Archives
Andrea Di Lorenzo
Documents in the Urbino Archives
Matteo Mazzalupi
Documents in the Barberini Archives
Livia Carloni
Technical Essays
Observations on the Technique and Artistic Culture of Fra Carnevale
Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini
Plates
Carpentry and Panel Construction
Ciro Castelli and George Bisacca
Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits
The Art Book
"This is an excellent book. … outstanding scholarly essays."
Choice Reviews Online
"… lavish …"
"This is an excellent book. … outstanding scholarly essays."
Choice Reviews Online
"… lavish …"
Keith Christiansen is Jayne Wrightsman Curator of Italian Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with essays by Emanuela Daffra, Keith Christiansen, Andrea De Marchi, Matteo Ceriana, Andrea Di Lorenzo, Matteo Mazzalupi, Livia Carloni, Roberto Bellucci, Cecilia Frosinini, Ciro Castelli, and George Bisacca.