Despite its obvious qualities, Revaluing Renaissance Art, edited by me
and Gabriele Neher, has been put out of print by the publishers. Gaby
and I have bought up the remaining copies, and are able to offer these
brand new books for sale via Amazon.co.uk at the significantly
discounted price of £15 (original list price £57.50). To take advantage
of this opportunity:
1) go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0754601692
2) select 'used and new' from the 'More buying choices' box on the right
of the page
3) find the item with 'rupertshepherd' as the seller
4) click on the 'Add to basket' button and complete your purchase as normal

Although copies are listed on Amazon.co.uk, we are happy to despatch
copies to any country.

A brief reminder of the book:

Revaluing Renaissance Art
Edited by Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd
Ashgate, 2000
approx. 258 pages, 42 black-and-white illustrations
hardback
ISBN 0 7546 0169 2


Reviews

'... an engaging guide to new perspectives on the definition and the
appreciation of Renaissance art in its time and for ours.' (Patricia
Rubin, Times Literary Supplement)

'... we cannot make judgements until we have thought more about what
exactly we mean by worth or value. This book makes a valuable
contribution to the maturation of this process.' (Carol M. Richardson,
The Art Book)

'... a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on consumption
and consumerism in the Renaissance ...' '... scholars will find
Revaluing Renaissance Art to be an engaging and worthy text,
particularly for its varied viewpoints and the multiplicity of 'values'
it documents and investigates.' (Rosi Prieto Gilday, CAA.reviews)

'... Revaluing Renaissance Art offers some interesting insights on the
evaluation of knowledge and things in Renaissance Italy.' (Mary
Bergstein, Renaissance Quarterly)

'The essays meet a felt need and are often eye-opening ... it must be
said that the book is good value for money.' (Leonard R.N. Ashley,
Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance: travaux et documents)

'These essays are equally valuable to historians, art historians, and
feminists, even scholars who study the history of science, and add new
dimensions to modern understanding of the complex world of the
Renaissance.' (Sara Nair James, The Sixteenth Century Journal)


Summary

Michelangelo gave his painting of Leda and the Swan to an apprentice,
rather than hand it over to the emissary of the Duke of Ferrara, who had
commissioned it. He was apparently disgusted by the failure of the
emissary - who seems to have been more used to buying pigs than
discussing art - to accord the picture and the artist the value they
deserved.

Any discussion of works of art and material culture implicitly assigns
them a set of values. Whether these values be monetary, cultural or
religious, they tend to constrict the ways in which such works can be
discussed. The variety of potential forms of valuation becomes
particularly apparent during the Italian Renaissance, when relations
between the visual arts and humanistic studies were undergoing rapid
changes against an equally fluid social, economic and political background.

In this volume, thirteen scholars explicitly examine some of the complex
ways in which a variety of values might be associated with Italian
Renaissance material culture. Papers range from a consideration of the
basic values of the materials employed by artists, to the manifestation
of cultural values in attitudes to dress and domestic devotion. By
illuminating some of the ways in which values were constructed, they
provide a broader context within which to evaluate Renaissance material
culture.


Contents

* Introduction, Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd
* The price of quality: factors influencing the cost of pigments during
the Renaissance, Jo Kirby
* 'Artefici' and 'huomini intendenti': questions of artistic value in
sixteenth-century Italy, Ben Thomas
* 'Dante Alighieri poeta fiorentino': cultural values in the 1481 Divine
Comedy, Sally Korman
* Mantegna's Parnassus: reading, collecting and the studiolo, Stephen J.
Cambell
* Alfonso I d'Este, Michelangelo and the man who bought pigs, Charles M.
Rosenberg
* New, old and second-hand culture: the case of the Renaissance sleeve,
Evelyn Welch
* Evaluating textiles in Renaissance Venice, Mary Rogers
* Revaluing dress in history paintings for quattrocento Florence,
Caroline Campbell
* The Madonna and Child, a host of saints, and domestic devotion in
Renaissance Florence, Jaqueline Marie Mussacchio
* Images of Saint Catherine: a re-evaluation of Cosimo Rosselli and the
influence of his art on the woodcut and metal engraving images of the
Dominican third order, Anabel Thomas
* Voting with their feet: art, pilgrimage and ratings in the
Renaissance, Robert Maniura
* Madness, reason, vision and the cosmos: evaluating the drawings of
Opicinus de Canistris (1296–c.1351), Catherine Harding
* Bibliography
* Index