Some pictures are easily appreciated at first glance, but others - often the most rewarding - require some explanation before they can be fully understood. This clearly written and enjoyable book is intended to increase pleasure and stimulate thought. It tackles many aspects of looking at paintings as well. Starting with familiar ideas, Dr Susan Woodford moves on to explore subtler, less obvious concepts. For example, she shows how paintings can be appreciated as patterns on a flat surface emotional effect; how ordinary objects can conceal hidden meanings and how knowledge of tradition improves our understanding of revolutionary works.

     In January 1342, King Robert the Wise died. Ruler of one of the largest, wealthiest and most sophisticated kingdoms in Europe, he named as his sole heir his sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Joanna, or, if she died without issue, her thirteen-year-old sister Maria. Born in a male-dominated world in the passionate south of Italy, and surrounded by ambitious male cousins with an equal claim to the crown, will these sisters be able to maintain control over their kingdom? With only their wits, beauty, and the love of their people to aid them, Joanna and Maria, bound together by their strong love and fierce rivalry, are prepared to do anything to hold onto their beloved Kingdom. Start reading The Girl Who Would Be Queen by multi-award-winning author Jane Ann McLachlan today.

    Literally meaning "pictures of the floating world", ukiyo-e refers to the famous Japanese woodblock print genre that originated in the 17th century and is practically synonymous with the Western worlds visual characterization of Japan. Though Hiroshige captured a variety of subjects, his greatest talent was in creating landscapes of his native Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and his most famous work was a series known as "100 Famous Views of Edo" (1856-1858). This book provides an introduction to his work and an overview of his career.About the Series: Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a concise biography

    After five hundred years, the most notorious mystery of the Renaissance is finally solved. The Italian Renaissance is remembered as much for intrigue as it is for art, with papal politics and infighting among Italy's many city-states providing the grist for Machiavelli's classic work on take-no-prisoners politics, The Prince. The attempted assassination of the Medici brothers in the Duomo in Florence in 1478 is one of the best-known examples of the machinations endemic to the age. While the assailants were the Medici's rivals, the Pazzi family, questions have always lingered about who really orchestrated the attack, which has come to be known as the Pazzi Conspiracy.More than five hundred years later, Marcello Simonetta, working in a private archive in Italy, stumbled upon a coded letter written by Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, to Pope Sixtus IV. Using a codebook written by his own ancestor to crack its secrets, Simonetta unearthed proof of an all-out power grab by the Pope for control of Florence. Montefeltro, long believed to be a close friend of Lorenzo de Medici, was in fact conspiring with the Pope to unseat the Medici and put the more malleable Pazzi in their place.In The Montefeltro Conspiracy, Simonetta unravels this plot, showing not only how the plot came together but how its failure (only one of the Medici brothers, Giuliano, was killed; Lorenzo survived) changed the course of Italian and papal history for generations. In the course of his gripping narrative, we encounter the period's most colorful characters, relive its tumultuous politics, and discover that two famous paintings, including one in the Sistine Chapel, contain the Medici's astounding revenge.

    Performances of Aïda, La Bohème, Carmen, and Don Giovanni — the four operas most often performed — constitute approximately 75 percent of the yearly schedule of operas throughout the world.This volume contains everything the opera goer needs to derive full satisfaction from La Bohème except the musical score itself. Most important, it provides the complete text of the Italian libretto, just as it is actually sung; that is, where a singer repeats a phrase several times, each of the repetitions is given here. And facing the Italian text is a completely new translation of the libretto into modern, idiomatic English.In addition to the libretto and English translation, this edition provides a careful, concise summary of the plot of La Bohème and a complete list of the opera's characters. There is also a brief, highly informative introduction by the translator that traces Puccini's masterpiece back to its source in Henry Murger's autobiographical novel La Vie Bohème, illuminating the early history of the opera and its later development.Opera lovers can use this book with their own recordings of the opera, read it before attending a performance, or can easily take it along to the performance itself. Those who have regretted the lack of a good, authentic, readable edition of the Italian libretto of La Bohème, and have complained of the stodginess of existing English translations, will recognize in this book a first-rate aid to the understanding of one of Puccini's most celebrated operas.

    Inspired by the order and beauty inherent in nature, his groundbreaking work sets out the principles of distance, dimension and proportion; instructs the painter on how to use the rules of composition, representation, light and colour to create work that is graceful and pleasing to the eye; and stipulates the moral and artistic pre-requisites of the successful painter. On Painting had an immediate and profound influence on Italian Renaissance artists including Ghiberti, Fra Angelico and Veneziano and on later figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, and remains a compelling theory of art.

    She could neither read nor write, and she was the reviled victim in a public rape trial, rejected by her father, and later abandoned by her husband. Nevertheless, she was one of the first women in modern times to uphold through her work and deeds the right of women to pursue careers compatible with their talents and on an equal footing with men. This edition features a new introduction by the celebrated critic and writer Susan Sontag. Anna Banti, the pen name of Lucia Lopresti, was born in Florence in 1895. Trained as an art historian, she turned to novels, stories, and autobiographical prose in the 1930s. Artemisia, her second novel, published in 1947, is the most acclaimed of the sixteen works of fiction she published during her long life, and is considered a classic of twentieth century Italian literature. Her last, harrowingly confessional novel, A Piercing Cry (Un grido lacerante), appeared in 1981. Banti also wrote art criticism and monographs on painters (Lorenzo Lotto, Fra Angelico, Velázquez, Monet), literary criticism and film reviews, and translated novels by Thackery, Colette, Alain Fournier, and Virginia Woolf. She died in Ronchi di Massa (Tuscanny) in 1985.

    In Studies in Iconology, the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies.

    Russolo calls for an infinite expansion of musical vocabulary and sensibility in coordination with that of industrial machinery—“We must enlarge and enrich more and more the domain of musical sounds”—envisioning a machine-based music that would dispense entirely with inherited forms. This publication made the text widely available in English for the first time. Also included is a description of the “First Concert of Futurist Noise Instruments” in Modena, Italy on June 2, 1913.

    Charles Williams was one of the finest-not to mention one of the most unusual-theologians of the twentieth century. His mysticism is palpable-the unseen world interpenetrates ours at every point, and spiritual exchange occurs all the time, unseen and largely unlooked for. His novels are legend, and as a member of the Inklings, he contributed to the mythopoetic revival in contemporary culture.

    Since then, painting has been declared dead several times over, and contemporary art has now expanded to include just about any object, action, or event: dance routines, slideshows, functional hair salons, seemingly random accretions of waste. In the meantime, being an artist has gone from a join-the-circus fantasy to a plausible vocation for scores of young people in America.But why--and how and by whom--does all this art get made? How is it evaluated? And for what, if anything, will today's artists be remembered? In The Contemporaries, Roger White, himself a young painter, serves as our spirited, skeptical guide through this diffuse creative world.White takes us into the halls of the RISD graduate program, where students learn critical lessons that go far beyond how to apply paint to canvases. In New York, we meet the neophytes who assist established artists--and who walk the fine line between "assistance" and "making the art." In Milwaukee, White trails a group of friends trying to create a viable scene where rent is cheap, but where the spotlight rarely shines. And he gives us an intimate perspective on three wildly different careers: that of Dana Schutz, an emerging star who is revitalizing painting; Mary Walling Blackburn, whose challenging art defies market forces; and Stephen Kaltenbach, a '70s wunderkind who is back on the critical radar, perhaps in spite of his own willful obscurity.From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential book offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.

    It is a beautiful, mountainous region populated by fishermen and small farmers. Rosetta Costantino grew up in this rugged landscape—her father a shepherd and wine maker and her mother his tireless assistant.When her family immigrated to California, they re-created a little Calabria on their property, cooking with eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers from their garden, fresh ricotta made from scratch, and pasta fashioned by hand. A frugal people, Calabrians are master preservers, transforming fresh figs into jam, canning fresh tuna in oil, and sun-drying peppers for the winter. Now Rosetta shares her family's story and introduces readers to the fiery simplicity of Calabrian food. The first cookbook of a little-known region of Italy, My Calabria celebrates the richness of the region's landscape and the allure of its cuisine. This is a cookbook for our time: a reminder of how ingenious and resourceful cooks can create a gorgeous local cuisine.

    Nicknamed by their mentor, the famous illustrator Howard Pyle, The Red Rose Girls lived and worked at a picturesque former inn of the same name in an idyllic suburb on Philadelphia's Main Line. In the course of their years together they formed intimate bonds of friendship and love and enriched each other's professional lives by sharing ideas and inspiration. Smith and Green were prolific illustrators, celebrated for their work in children's books and periodicals such as Scribner's, Collier's, Harper's; and Oakley was a painter and muralist of national reputation whose work graces the interior of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg. Full-color illustrations and wonderful period photographs bring their work and milieu to life.

    Once again, his story features Amos Hatcher, the savvy private investigator of the art world.The story begins in New York, where Hatcher is galvanized into action by the brutal murder of Jake Sloane. Hatcher sleuthing takes him to Rome, where a series of random clues, most notably an obscene slogan spray-painted on the wall of the Caprese Collection, lead him closer to the thieves he is tracking. In the course of his investigation, Hatcher discovers that he is on the heels of a mastermind who seems to have a connection with the Red Brigades, an intimate knowledge of the art market, and a mysterious, uncanny obsession with Caravaggio.An inspired and suspenseful detective story, The Caravaggio Obsession is a fascinating portrait of the intrigues that plague the international art world. Unforgettable characters, a plot that never gives the reader pause, and the rich flavor of the "Eternal City" comprise this riveting and sophisticated novel of suspense.

    Now he shares the best of Italian home cooking while telling the story of his hardscrabble childhood, his success as a chef in the United States, and the women in his family who inspired him. In more than 150 delicious recipes, Viviani takes us from his family home, where his great-grandmother taught him to make staples like Italian Apple Cake and Homemade Ricotta, to the kitchen of a local trattoria, where he honed his craft cooking restaurant favorites like Gnocchi and the Perfect Tiramisu, and then across Italy where he studied each region's finest recipes, from Piedmont's Braised Ossobuco to Emilia Romagna's Perfect Meat Sauce. A gorgeously illustrated cookbook, Fabio's Italian Kitchen is a celebration of food and family that brings all the joy, fun, and flair that Fabio Viviani embodies to your kitchen. Fabio Viviani was born in Florence, Italy, and became a sous chef at Il Pallaio, a trattoria in Firenze, at the age of sixteen. He now works as the owner and executive chef of Cafe Firenze, a renowned Italian restaurant in Ventura County, California, and Osteria Firenze, a Los Angeles Italian eatery. He has appeared on Top Chef (season five), Top Chef All Stars, and Life After Top Chef. From growing up in a Florentine housing project to charming millions on Top Chef, Italian chef Fabio Viviani blends his amazing personal story with his favorite recipes from his home country. Fabio shares the best of Italian home cooking while telling the story of his own, hardscrabble Italian childhood (and subsequent success upon arrival in US) and especially the women in his life mother and great grandmother who taught him to cook and inspired him. The book will feature photos and over 150 recipes with stories, including Viviani staples (Italian Apple Cake, 7 Flavors Meat), restaurant favorites (Gnocchi, the Perfect Tiramisu), and recipes from his travels and apprenticeships across different regions of Italy (Braised Ossobuco from Piedmont, the Perfect Meat Sauce from Emilia Romagna).