This beautiful book provides a survey of European painting between 1260 & 1510. It is based largely on the collection of early Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery in London, one of the finest & most comprehensive collections in the world. In an extensive introduction the authors explain the background of religious belief & devotional practice for which many of the paintings were created & the secular requirements & ambitions that influenced them. They discuss the social context in which art was created & then displayed in the street, the palace or the church & they consider the role of the patron & the dealer. They describe the artist's workshop, consider the role of apprentices & assistants, discuss the influence of guilds & courts & explore the reasons why new subjects & techniques were introduced & earlier traditions survived. They then supply the first full modern account of the materials & techniques of the early Renaissance artist, including the preparation of panels, the application of gold leaf, & the use of tempera & oil paint. There follows a detailed examination of some seventy of the finest & best known paintings in the Gallery, including masterpieces by Duccio, van Eyck, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, Bouts, Giovanni Bellini, Memling, Raphael & Leonardo. Reviews ' Giotto to Dürer is neither a straightforward guide book nor a conventional history of Renaissance painting, but an introduction to many of the things one needs to understand in order more fully to appreciate the art of the Renaissance, a culture alien to our own in many ways.... [ The] most original, most interesting, most useful & most readable art book of the year….’ Laurence B. Kanter, New York Times Book Review. '... Historical, technical, biographical, stylistic & much other information is conveyed with rare grace, intelligence & skill. This is a work that no reference or personal library concerned with European art of the fourteenth, fifteenth & early sixteenth centuries can do without, essential reading for any student of painting between 1300 & 1520....', Colin Eisler, Renaissance Quarterly. Authors Jill Dunkerton is Restorer at the National Gallery. She is a regular contributor to the National Gallery Technical Bulletin. Susan Foister is Deputy Director & Curator of Early Netherlandish, German & British Paintings at the National Gallery. Dillian Gordon was until 2010 Curator of Italian Paintings before 1460 at the National Gallery. Her publications include The Wilton Diptych (2015) & The Italian Paintings Before 1400 (2011). Nicholas Penny was Director of the National Gallery from 2008 to 2015. His many publications include three volumes on the National Gallery’s sixteenth-century Italian paintings & Frames in the Closer Look series. ...

The sitter is identified from the letter he holds, which is addressed to ' Nobili Joanna Christophoro Longono Amico'. He is known to have been resident in Milan from 1494-98. The parapet bears an inscription meaning ' You know not what sort of person you we ...

This work is a portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini & his wife, but is not intended as a record of their wedding. His wife is not pregnant, as is often thought, but holding up her full-skirted dress in the contemporary fashion. Arnolfini was a member of a merchant family from Lucca living in Bruges. The couple are shown in a well-appointed interior. The ornate Latin signature translates as ' Jan van Eyck was here 1434'. The similarity to modern graffiti is not accidental. Van Eyck often inscribed his pictures in a witty way. The mirror reflects two figures in the doorway. One may be the painter himself. Arnolfini raises his right hand as he faces them, perhaps as a greeting. Van Eyck was intensely interested in the effects of light: oil paint allowed him to depict it with great subtlety in this picture, notably on the gleaming brass chandelier. ...

De Vries (about 1560-1626) was born in The Hague. He trained in the workshop of Giovanni Bologna in Florence, & worked in Milan, Rome, Turin & Augsburg before settling in Prague from about 1593 as court sculptor to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. This sculpture is modelled on a bronze (of similar size) by him. It was probably carved in Italy in the first half of the eighteenth century. ...

God the Father is shown with an orb & with his hand raised in blessing. This painting was formerly catalogued as a work by Masaccio & said to be probably from the frame of his Pisan altarpiece, of which the ' Virgin & Child' (also in the Collection) i ...

Men in the foreground play golf; one is about to strike the ball with his club ('kolf'). On the horizon is a windmill & the skyline of Haarlem, dominated by the outline of the Grote Kerk. In the figure group pentimenti (alterations made by the artist to ...

Author Maryan W. Ainsworth is a curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jan Gossart (c. 1472-1532) has long been recognized for his pivotal role in disseminating & transforming the art of antiquity & the Italian Renaissance style in the North. This catalogue raisonné of the Netherlandish painter, draftsman, & printmaker is the first major publication on the artist in more than forty years. His achievement is reevaluated here in light of the many discoveries revealed by recent scholarship & new technical examination of the paintings. Among the topics discussed are the impact of Gossarts trip to Rome; the influence of his patron Philip of Burgundy; his simultaneous work in Gothic & new antique modes; the attribution of all his extant drawings, including a number of newly found sheets; the first serious consideration of his prints; & the evolution of his working methods & painting techniques. ...

The painting's alternative title, ' Le Nouveau Ne' (The New Born) is inscribed on the support. This genre subject is typical of the artist's compositions in which he portrayed characters in historical costume engaged in domestic or courtly scenes. Highly de ...

This painting, together with another ' Group of Heads', was formerly attributed to Annibale Carracci. Both works are copies of the heads at the lower extremities of Correggio's destroyed fresco of ' Coronation of the Virgin' in the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista, Parma. A number of fragments of Correggio's original fresco showing heads of angels are also in the Collection. ...

This painting, together with another ' Group of Heads', was formerly often attributed to Annibale Carracci. Both works are copies of the heads at the lower extremities of Correggio's destroyed fresco in the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista, Parma. A number ...