Italian Frescoes: the Flowering of the Renaissance, 1470-1510

Praised by historians and art lovers alike, Steffe Roettgens first volume on the frescoes of the early Italian Renaissance is the most comprehensive survey of the surviving fresco cycles painted from 1400 to 1470.

In this second volume, featuring paintings from 1470 to 1510, scores of new photographs document the brilliance of works by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Mantegna, Perugino, and Signorelli in palaces and chapels stretching from the Alps to Rome. Professor Roettgens concise and authoritative text illuminates such celebrated sites as the Tornabuoni Chapel in Florence, the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua.

She also reveals the charm of lesser-known works, such as those in the tiny northern town of Issogne, which capture fifteenth-century men and women bargaining and flirting at an outdoor market. Descriptive and interpretive essays on each of the seventeen cycles touch on all aspects of fresco painting: the artists and their patrons, cultural and historical conditions, local traditions, and technique. Each essay concludes with a diagram of the site, followed by a stunning series of full-page and double-page color plates of the wall paintings, many of them newly restored.

This second volume of Professor Roettgens survey builds on the strengths of Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance, and easily stands alone as a record of the spectacular art of a flourishing culture.