ABSTRACT

This study reveals the broad material, devotional, and cultural implications of sculpture in Renaissance Venice.

Examining a wide range of sources—the era’s art-theoretical and devotional literature, guidebooks and travel diaries, and artworks in various media—Lorenzo Buonanno recovers the sculptural values permeating a city most famous for its painting. The book traces the interconnected phenomena of audience response, display and thematization of sculptural bravura, and artistic self-fashioning.

It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance history, early modern art and architecture, material culture, and Italian studies.

chapter |25 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|75 pages

Stone Mediators

chapter 2|41 pages

Dreamworlds and Studioli

Sculptures for the Imagination

chapter 3|55 pages

Making and Breaking

chapter 4|57 pages

Signed in Stone