The Great Painters of the Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance is one of the most stimulating periods in all cultural history. Yet the more that is written about it, the h arder it gets to describe this exciting epoch adequately. Scholarship meanders into endless historical and aesthetic reflection, exp ertise gets bogged down in minute detail. Both these volumes are based on Giorgio Casari`s celebrated distinction between ?disegno? (underlying intellectual structure) and ?colore? (the sensual qualities of color), as well as Heinrich Wolfflin`s closely related co ncepts of the ?linear? and the ?painterly? contrasting Florance with central Italy. Venice with Upper Italy. Equally, though, these volumes show us time and again how porous the dividing lines are...

• author: Eberhard Konig