Locating Renaissance Art - Week 9 - Introduction

Introduction
Carol Richardson writes that although Florence has been given pre-eminence in Renaissance art, the circumstances that led to its standing as a wealthy city state were reproduced in other cities across Europe, as international trade and banking developed. In the book she will consider some of these different centres, and the various influences that shaped them and that they in turn had on others.

1. Shifting boundaries
'the chapters in this book all consider the creation of works of art as products of 'communicative events' - between artists and their patrons, between one centre and another, and their patrons, between one culture and another' (CB2,p.16). A number of the chapters are to consider specific cities or artists. The trade in works of art and also movement of artists between centres.

2. Networks
This section reviews the connections between various centres, the trading and ecclesiastical postal and communication systems that were established and the manner in which foreign communities established themselves particularly looking at the German community in Venice and their commissioning of an altarpiece for their chapel by Albrecht Durer, Madonna of the Rose Garlands (1506) (CB2,P0.2,p.20)

3. Changing horizons
Notes on historical settings highlighting the changing boundaries and states throughout the Renaissance. This section highlights a European view of the Mediterranean at the centre of the world which gave the Italian peninsular a prominent position. The Renaissance also became centred on Italy because of the references to classical antiquity that were increasingly fashionable.

Conclusion
This book will take a wide 'historical' look at Renaissance art and how it was linked by the cultural, economic and political networks and developed in different centres rather than a closed view of Renaissance art being purely Italian.