michael baxandall painting and experience

For this transaction to take place in a particular way many other social, political and economic aspects were involved. With a Marxist tint he posits the painting as a fossil of cultural life that testifies, amongst other things, that it was the result of a commercial agreement. This little book changed the mind of many art historians and not just those of Renaissance specialists. In spite of the simplicity of this idea, Baxandall carved a break through. At the core of his writings there is a solid thought: the ‘look’ or ‘style’ of any particular painting is the product of its times – social, economic, and cultural. And they also link in with Baxandall’s proposals in his slightly earlier Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition.

That may explain that its three chapters do not seem, in a first reading, to follow a unified and continuous line of argument. This book has as its origins a series of lectures that Michael Baxandall (1933 – 2008) gave at the University of London during the 70s.

Baxandall also defines and illustrates sixteen concepts used by a contemporary critic of painting, thereby assembling the basic equipment needed to explore fifteenth-century art.

The volume includes discussions of a wide variety of painters, including Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Luca Signorelli, Boccaccio, and countless others. Renaissance painting, for example, mirrors the experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style of pictures in a given historical period, this new edition to Baxandall's pre-eminent scholarly volume examines early Renaissance painting, and explains how the style of painting in any society reflects the visual skills and habits that evolve out of daily life. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy An introduction to 15th century Italian painting and the social history behind it, arguing that the two are interlinked and that the conditions of the time helped fashion distinctive elements in the painter's style.

Michael baxandall painting and experience