#renaissance-art

#renaissance-art

Artists have been raiding the toolkits of the Old Masters with new urgency of late, borrowing and reworking Renaissance and Baroque compositional drama, symbolism, and increasingly, their labor-intensive methods. While much of that renewed interest has centered on oil painting, this May three artists—Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Bühler-Rose, and Nick Doyle—are pointing to another Renaissance inheritance: the decorative woodworking traditions of intarsia and marquetry.

The Ashmolean warmly welcomes this acquisition of a painting by one of the most important artists in the Western tradition, and we're so pleased that it will remain in the UK. We recognise the value of the Klesch Collection's commitment to lending works to public institutions.

Pallabazzer recommends seeing the historic center of Florence at different times of the day. In the early morning, you'll get to experience it "without noise and the pressing pace of crowds." Midday brings droves of visitors, but the destination is "bathed in sunshine." In the evening, "the lights of the street lamps stretch out over the Lungarni [the streets along the Arno River], creating a truly magical effect."

Marciari brought me to a very different place: the luxurious, languid heat of late-summer Rome, in one of the final years of the 16th century. There, an ordinary boy has been made to hold a heavy basket of fruit for far longer than he'd like in a hot, airless studio, and a young, unknown painter is on the precipice of greatness.

A previously unknown drawing by the German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung Grien has been rediscovered in a wooden box belonging to the family of the woman who sat for the portrait 500 years ago. Drawings by Baldung are extremely rare, with only a handful known in private collections. One with a direct-line provenance by descent from the original sitter is an unprecedented find.

Some of the garments on display appear to recall details from individual works at the Pinacoteca. A cluster of dark garments with white accents, including a black-and-white sequined suit and a velvet tailcoat adorned with a floral brooch, emphasise the chiaroscuro dramatism of Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus (1606). Nearby, mannequins in sand-coloured blouses and cotton trench coats recall the veiled Muslim women kneeling in Bellini's vast St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria (1504-1507).

At a Christie's auction in 1989, a seemingly unremarkable marble sculpture was identified by Patricia Wengraf as Giambologna's 'Fata Morgana', once deemed lost.