History of Italian Renaissance Art

For survey courses in Italian Renaissance art.

A broad survey of art and architecture in Italy between c. 1250 and 1600, this book approaches the works from the point of view of the artist as individual creator and as an expression of the city within which the artist was working.

When Frederick Hartt’s History of Italian Renaissance Art was first published more than forty years ago, it was a remarkable achievement. A large volume with dozens of color plates, it presented the story of Italian Renaissance art as it was appreciated and understood by one of the great scholars and teachers of the period. Professor Hartt revised and expanded the book twice before his death in 1991. In 1993, David G. Wilkins was invited to continue this process; the fourth edition was published in 1994. The fifth edition (2003) had color illustrations throughout the text and included new works chosen to enrich the story Professor Hartt had laid out more than thirty years earlier.

Wilkins has maintained the integrity of the story that Hartt first told so enthusiastically. The basic organization of his text has been retained, and the great majority of the works illustrated are those he originally chose. Throughout the years, new works have been added due to the advice of thoughtful reviewers, students, and colleagues.

The late Frederick Hartt was one of the most distinguished art historians of the twentieth century. A student of Berenson, Schapiro, and Friedlaender, he taught for more than fifty years, influencing generations of Renaissance scholars. At the time of his death he was Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Virginia. He was a Knight of the Crown of Italy, a Knight Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, an honorary citizen of Florence, and an honorary member of the Academy of the Arts of Design, Florence, a society whose charter members included Michelangelo and the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.

Hartt authored, among other works, Florentine Art under Fire (1949); Botticelli (1952); Giulio Romano (1958); Love in Baroque Art (1964); The Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal (1964); three volumes on the painting, sculpture, and drawings of Michelangelo (1964, 1969, 1971); Donatello, Prophet of Modern Vision (1974); Michelangelo's Three Pietàs (1975); and the monumental Art: A History o f Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, now in its fourth edition (1993).

David G . Wilkins is professor emeritus of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and former chair of the department. He has also served on the faculties of the University of Michigan in Florence and the Semester at Sea Program. He is author of Donatello (1984, with Bonnie A. Bennett); Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (1985); The Illustrated Bartsch: "Pre-Rembrandt Etchers," vol. 53 (1985, with Kahren Arbitman); A History o f the Duquesne Club (1989, with Mark Brown and Lu Donnelly); Art Past/Art Present, a broad survey of the history of art (fifth edition, 2005, with Bernard Schultz and Katheryn M. Linduff); and The Art of the Duquesne Club (2001). He was the revising author for the fourth and fifth editions of History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1994, 2003) and co-editor of The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1996, with Rebecca L. Wilkins) and Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (2001 with Sheryl E. Reiss). He was editor of The Collins Big Book of Art (2005).  In 2005 he also received the College Art Association’s national award for Distinguished Teaching in Art History.