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A controversial reassessment of Mary Tudor’s efforts to eradicate Protestantism and restore Catholicism in mid-sixteenth-century England, written by a leading authority on the history of Christianity.

The Italian Inquisition, or Holy Office, was established in 1542, stimulated partly by the earlier Spanish operation. While Spain’s “black legend” affected opinions of the Inquisition in Italy, this pioneering book shows that there were significant differences between their operations, targets, and casualties.

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This biography of Joan of Arc paints a vivid portrait of the teenaged French peasant girl whose charisma and sheer force of will electrified those around her and struck terror into the hearts of the English soldiers and leaders.

This lavishly illustrated book explores medieval Castilian culture and the Arabic, Hebrew, and Christian strands that are inextricably woven into its fabric. The authors paint a vivid portrait of the culture through its arts, architecture, poetry and prose, all enriched by dynamic interaction with disparate cultures and peoples.

This groundbreaking book is the first to investigate the idea of religious tolerance in Spain, Portugal, and their New World colonies during the era of the Inquisition. Surprisingly, a variety of common people believed in freedom of conscience and rejected the exclusive validity of the Catholic Church. The author explores why this was so and how the New World influen...

Crushed by the Romans in the first century A.D., the ancient Druids of Britain left almost no reliable evidence behind. This captivating book by a world expert examines what is known of the Druids, then explores how and why they have been repeatedly reinvented to play varying roles in English, Scottish, and Welsh history.

Untangling the myths and legends of many centuries, this definitive biography gives us the real Eleanor of Aquitaine—wife of two kings, mother of two kings, a tenacious and ambitious twelfth-century queen who carved a unique position for herself in a society hostile to the idea of a woman in power.

This accessible and informative history brings the classical Islamic world alive, illuminating its importance to the cultural history of Europe and America as the inheritor and interpreter of Graeco-Roman traditions.

This book, the first comprehensive treatment in English of the ideology and practice of the Inquisitional censors of Mexico, shatters long-held beliefs about the Inquisition. Martin Nesvig challenges the idea that the Inquisition was a monolithic institution and demonstrates how the persecution of heresy also grew into the persecution of books.

This extraordinarily wide-ranging volume gathers together historian J. H. Elliott’s recent writings on politics, art, culture, and ideas in Europe and the colonial worlds from 1500 to 1800. Elliott’s many admirers will welcome this accessible collection of his influential and thought-provoking articles, lectures, and essays.

In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition.

This lively book recounts the long and colorful history of hunting in Britain, from William the Conqueror’s establishment of royal forests to the fierce debates provoked by the Hunting with Dogs Act of 2004. Hunting has always been a source of social conflict, the book shows, and understanding this history can provide useful insights into divisive issues today....

This sweeping, global history explores how the Virgin Mary, scarcely mentioned in the Gospels, rose to become our most prominent female figure. The book is groundbreaking in scope, encompassing sixteen centuries and a wealth of historical sources and visual materials from Christian cultures around the world.

One of our most influential theater figures takes a provocative look at how Shakespeare’s plays were influenced by misogyny, racism, elitism, and other social and sexual prejudices of his age, and how he managed to transcend them and write universal works of art.

In these fascinating pages, one of the greatest Renaissance architects ­leads readers through the churches and antiquities of Rome in the year 1554. Now published together in an English-language volume for the first time, Palladio’s guidebooks unveil the timeless charm of the city’s ancient and medieval wonders.

While “spin” may seem a political tool of modern times, British monarchs were practicing the art of image management even in the sixteenth century. This book is the first to examine in detail how Tudor kings and queens, notably Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, sought to sustain and enhance authority by carefully crafting their public imag...

This book tells the extraordinary story of a sixteenth-century family afflicted with a rare genetic condition that made them unusually hairy. Neither mocked nor shunned, the three Gonzales sisters were welcomed in the courts of Europe, and their lives offer fascinating insights into their times and attitudes toward beastliness, monstrosity, and gender.

This brilliant new portrait of Protestant reformer John Calvin reveals his human complexity, the sources of his convictions, and how he inspired and transformed the sixteenth-century world. The book captures a man at once arrogant, charismatic, unforgiving, generous, and shrewd.

This readable and engaging book by an acclaimed historian is the only wide-ranging synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment.

A timeless story of love, morality, and tragedy, Fernando de Rojas’s novel Celestina is second only to Don Quixote in its importance in Spanish-language literature.

An important new study of the work of Tullio Lombardo, whose innovations in stone parallel the achievements on canvas of Bellini, Titian, and Giorgione—the Venetian master painters of the Renaissance

Full of extraordinary stories and insights, this book tells the captivating history of human preoccupation with longevity and immortality. From the beginnings of the scientific revolution to the medical and genetic research of today, scientists and philosophers have engaged with zeal in the quest to prolong human life.

Seizing the Hungarian throne at fifteen, the effervescent Matthias Corvinus reigned long (1459-1490) and extraordinarily well. This book is the first in English to tell the gripping story of the Raven King and of the fate of his fabled 2000-volume library. Dispersed across Europe after his death, the king’s exquisite volumes have been pursued with fervor for ce...

This ground-breaking book, the first to examine Milton’s thinking about matter and substance throughout his entire poetic career, seeks to alter the prevailing critical view pertaining to Milton’s philosophy.

Challenging and overturning assumptions that da Vinci believed sculpture to be an inferior medium, this innovative book looks at the sculptural projects that the artist undertook, as well as the late Renaissance sculptures that were indebted to him.

An important reexamination of the establishment and early history of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, based almost entirely on new documentary discoveries.

This fascinating and original book focuses on the Italian Renaissance marketplace and the activity of shopping. With new information on nearly every page, the book investigates consumption by people of different classes, the provision of foodstuffs, acquiring antiquities and holy relics, who shopped, and where they went to buy goods that were needed or simply wanted.

A distinguished group of scholars discusses all aspects of the earliest manifestations of pre-Gutenberg image printing, from technical experimentation to religious propaganda.

Constituting a major reappraisal of the cultural role of the Church during the 17th century, illustrated essays call attention to the paradoxical nature of the most characteristic visual forms of Spanish Catholicism and reassess these images’ role in the practice of belief.

This important publication brings together for the first time nearly all of the sixty drawings attributed to the great Italian Mannerist painter and poet Bronzino, demonstrating the artist’s technical virtuosity and his mastery of anatomy and perspective.

In Bannockburn, Robert the Bruce’s vastly outnumbered Scottish troops spectacularly defeated the English army led by Edward II. This groundbreaking book brings the battle to life with colorful detail and fresh insights, explaining what happened in the years leading to 1314, how the battle unfolded, and the impact of its legacy in both Scotland and England.

In this major new account of the fall of the Roman Empire, prizewinning author Adrian Goldsworthy examines the painful centuries of the superpower’s decline. Bringing history to life through the stories of the men, women, heroes, and villains involved, the author uncovers surprising lessons about the rise and fall of great nations.

Studying illustrations from nearly 50 rarely seen manuscripts dating from the 9th to the early 14th century, this volume is the first to examine in depth the achievements of medieval draftsmen.

The discovery of native peoples in the Atlantic world came as a shock to Columbus and other European explorers. This fascinating book uses the vivid eyewitness accounts of diaries and letters to uncover what these first encounters were like and why the initial sense of wonder gave way to vicious exploitation.

Averroes (1126-1198), a Muslim philosopher, physician, and jurist, is most famous for his commentaries on the surviving works of Aristotle. This translation of Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima brings to English-language readers a central work of medieval philosophy.

An important study by a leading expert on this extraordinary and previously unknown illuminated Byzantine manuscript representing the apogee of Constantinopolitan craftsmanship around 1100.

The kings of Aksum formally became Christian during the second quarter of the 4th century, making Ethiopia the second country in the world (after Armenia) officially to adopt the new faith. This landmark book is the first to integrate historical, archaeological, and art-historical evidence to provide a comprehensive account of Ethiopian Christian civilization and its...

This engaging book explores the demand for spices: why were they so popular, and why so expensive?  Paul Freedman surveys the history, geography, economics, and culinary tastes of the Middle Ages to uncover the surprisingly varied ways that spices were put to use--in elaborate medieval cuisine, in the treatment of disease, for the promotion of well-being, and to...

This engaging book is the first to gather together the hundreds of colorful legends told in cultures across the globe about Alexander the Great, conqueror of the ancient world. Richard Stoneman shows how the mythical exploits of Alexander have resonated for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and in eastern and western cultures, for more than 2000 years.

This book presents the most comprehensive portrait yet of Richard Hakluyt, a contemporary of Shakespeare and the indefatigable promoter of English colonies in the New World. Studded with nearly fifty illustrations, the book offers a fresh view of Hakluyt’s milieu, his place in the international debates of his time, and his role in establishing an English America.

What was going on in Europe (a relatively minor peninsula in world terms) that enabled it by 1000 A.D. to become a driving global force? This sensational interdisciplinary work by a leading archaeologist reorients our understanding of Old Europe’s success, uncovering a set of complex factors that have gone unrecognized until now.

What was it like to participate in the Crusades? This vividly written book recreates for the first time the experience of medieval European crusaders, from the elation of taking up the cross, through years of staggering privation, to the difficult adjustment upon returning home.

This provocative biography of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, sheds new light not only on the man who served as closest adviser to Queen Elizabeth I for forty years but also on the entire Elizabethan period. More interesting—and more subversive—than has been thought, Cecil was supremely self-assured, cunning, obsessive, powerful, and fascinating.

This book provides a lively account of Charles II’s Long Parliament, drawing on unofficial contemporary accounts—letters, memoirs, diaries, scofflaw pamphlets and more—to uncover an accurate historical picture for the first time.

Robert Knecht, a renowned expert on Renaissance France, provides a definitive account of the court of France during a century that began in glory and descended into horrifying civil war. The book explores daily life at the court, the court’s intellectual and cultural importance, and how it evolved in response to a succession of monarchs.

This elegantly written book—a major reinterpretation of Spain’s theater of kings in the Golden Age—examines Spanish drama’s complex relations with the culture of absolutism and the rise of the modern state.

This book is the first to offer a full account of dance in Renaissance culture and society, showing how it was at the core of social activity and was connected in important ways with most major issues of the period.

This first comprehensive survey of Renaissance artworks made to celebrate love and marriage features nuptial portraits, birth trays, erotic prints and drawings, and paintings by artists including Titian and Lotto.

A beautifully illustrated and lively account of life behind the walls of a Florentine Renaissance palace, as seen through the art and objects that surrounded the family.

This elegantly written book is the definitive account of Paracelsus the Great, preeminent physician, astrologer, occultist, and radical activist of the early Reformation.

This intriguing book—the first to study honor and interpersonal violence in early modern Spain—challenges the notion that Spain was a culture obsessed with honor and marked by violence in its defense. Examining criminal records of the era, the book uncovers how non-elite men and women actually settled honor-related disputes.

In this enthralling account of the entwined histories of Britain, Spain, and their empires in the Americas, distinguished historian J. H. Elliott offers us history on a grand scale. He interweaves the histories of the two great Atlantic civilizations, providing rich insights into both while revealing aspects of their dual history that influence the Americas to this day.

Hubbub takes us on a not-for-the-squeamish tour of pre-Industrial Revolution England, where city streets are crowded, noisy, filthy, and reeking of smoke and decay. Focusing on offenses to the eyes, ears, nose, taste buds, and skin, the book explores the daily experience of the rich and the poor and paints a nuanced and highly detailed portrait of English city life.

This captivating book is the first to focus on the array of ordinary men and women who shared a keen interest in nature and scientific inquiry in Elizabethan London. Throughout the vibrant city, lawyers, prisoners, midwives, merchants, and others developed the tools and techniques, as well as the collaborative yet contentious culture, that became the hallmarks of the...

In this pathbreaking book, a leading historian of science and medicine presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce—not religion—inspired the rise of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Cook taps vast archival evidence to show how commerce in the Dutch Golden Age changed citizens’ values and triggered the Scientific Revolution.

James Raven presents a lively and original history of the English book trade and the printers, booksellers, and entrepreneurs who promoted its development from the advent of printing to 1850. Introducing a cast of heroes and heroines, villains, and rogues, he presents an entirely new view of the business of books and how it was conducted.

In a remarkable feat of detective work, Hugh Trevor-Roper presents the first full biography of Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the versatile Huguenot doctor who served King James I as physician, European emissary, and high-level spy. The book shines fresh light on Mayerne’s life and wide-ranging interests—literary, scientific, political, artistic, and conspiratorial.

Capturing sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings, this book offers a unique glimpse of life in England in the late medieval period. Not only were inhabitants’ physical experiences unlike our own, they also perceived their world differently. The book looks at life in a wide range of households, including saints and queens, to illuminate a world now gone. 

This biography separates for the first time the facts from the myths surrounding Venice’s most powerful, controversial, and tragic doge. The book explores the political conflict, warfare, and family heartbreak that marked Francesco Foscari’s tumultuous reign (1423-1457), as well as the process by which he came to embody Venice itself.

The Second Crusade (1145-1149) was an extraordinarily bold, but largely unsuccessful, attempt to defeat “unbelievers” in the Holy Land, Iberia, and northeastern Europe. This definitive book casts new light on the origins, planning, and execution of the Second Crusade, uncovering its profound impact on both Europe and the Middle East.

This hauntingly beautiful study explores how the English, in the centuries before the Norman Conquest, located themselves literally and imaginatively in the world. Nicholas Howe examines Anglo-Saxon representations of “place” in their texts and arrives at fascinating conclusions about how these migratory peoples made the island of Britain their home.

Casting an entirely new light on England’s break with Rome, this masterful book reveals Henry VIII as a prime mover of religious policy during twenty critical years in English history. G. W. Bernard focuses on how and why the king was thinking as he was and shows that Henry was no mere pawn or bewildered believer, but a deliberate, ruthless, and brilliant strategist.

Edward I—one of the outstanding monarchs of the English Middle Ages—pioneered legal and parliamentary change in England, conquered Wales, and came close to conquering Scotland. A major player in European diplomacy and war, he acted as peacemaker during the 1280s but became involved in a bitter war with Philip IV a decade later. This book is the definitive account of a remarkable king a...

In this widely acclaimed biography, Bertram Wolffe challenges the traditional view of Henry VI that excuses his weaknesses on the grounds of saintly piousness and innocence. Drawing on widespread contemporary evidence, Wolffe describes the many failures of Henry’s reign—including the collapse of justice, the loss of French territories, and the final disintegration of his governmentR...

In this vivid biography, here updated and reissued with a new preface, Frank Barlow reveals an unconventional, flamboyant William Rufus—a far more attractive and interesting monarch than previously believed. Weaving an intimate account of the life of the king into the wider history of Anglo-Norman government, Barlow shows how William confirmed royal power in England, restored the ducal right...

This highly praised biography reassesses James II (1633-1701), a king who failed to understand his subjects and who was also misunderstood by them.  John Miller discusses the human failings, the gulf between the Catholic king and his Protestant subjects, and the sheer bad luck that led to James’s downfall, despite his many laudable attributes. The book also examines the political, diplo...

This new biography of Edward VI, the boy king who died at 16 after ruling England for only six years, reveals for the first time his significant personal impact on the history of his country. Jennifer Loach portrays Edward as healthy and vigorous (contrary to previous views), precocious, highly educated, and decisive, and she details the dramatic context in which his reign played out.

In this important new book original contributions from an international panel of experts offer historical and anthropological perspectives on the Western family, focusing on family life in Italy from ancient Rome to the present. Using methods ranging from symbolic to quantitative analysis, the authors discuss a wide variety of topics, from matchmaking, marriage, and divorce to childrearing, sexual...

A distinguished Oxford historian presents an absorbing study of the main personalities and the influences that molded the history of Western Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth century, describing the chief forms of social, political, and religious organization.

Focusing on the rich visual culture of the seventeenth century—from portraits and fashion plates to literary sources—this novel and beautiful book is an indispensable account of what people wore in Stuart England and how it related to the time’s cultural climate.

This volume contains a wide-ranging English-language collection of Savonarola’s works. Demonstrating the extent of the Dominican friar’s impact on the debates of the Italian Renaissance, the book includes his sermons and treatises on pastoral ministry, prophesy, politics, moral reform, and excommunication, and his final writings before dying at the stake.

Many royal leaders, both past and present, have understood the intimate connection between power and the way it is packaged. This intriguing book explores how European royals, including Louis XIV, Napoleon I, and Princess Diana, have carefully controlled their styles of dress and how the right costume, at the right time, can transform and define a monarch’s reputation.

This is the story of a battle for a unified faith that plunged Spain into 350 years of terror. Joseph Pérez explores the frightening history of the Spanish Inquisition—its interrogations, torture, and executions; the inner workings of its councils and courts; its methods of policing information and enforcing behavior—as well as its long-term impact on the nation.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thousands of women confessed to being witches and were put to death. Why were older women the most frequent victims? Why did they confess? This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches, particularly in Germany, as well as a deeper exploration of the psychology of witch-hunting in modern culture.

The history of Greece between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the birth of the modern Greek state offers a series of national and human dramas played out between races, cultures, and religions. Cheetham pays particular attention to the interplay of cultural differences between east and west during this long but, hitherto, little known period.

Challenging many common assumptions about the glamour of medieval warfare, this highly readable history recreates the real war experience of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England. Filled with anecdotes and illustrations, it examines how English medieval armies fought, how men were recruited, how the troops were fed, supplied, and deployed, what new weapons were developed, and what structure w...

On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family’s house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman on the charge of ritual murder--the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. In this engrossing book, R. Po-chia Hsia reconstructs the events of t...

Here Steven B. Smith offers a new reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. He asserts that it is a celebration of human freedom and its attendant joys and responsibilities and that it belongs among the great founding documents of the Enlightenment.

In The Cabala of Pegasus, the great sixteenth-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno attacked the narrow-mindedness of all universities that resisted his advocacy of intellectual freethinking. This book, the first English translation of Bruno’s influential work, contains both the English and Italian versions as well as helpful annotations.

Vividly narrated with tales from every age in the life of England’s great river, The Thames is a delight to any reader with an interest in British history. From the prehistoric era of wooly mammoths to the riverside negotiation of the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century to WWII when Nazi bombers used the Thames as a visual guide, the river has witnessed national triumph and tragedy.

In this sequel to the widely praised Medieval Children, Nicholas Orme considers medieval schools in England—how they developed, what they taught, how they were run, and who attended them. Remarkably, these early schools anticipated nearly all the ideas, practices, and institutions of schooling today, the author shows.

What was childhood like for medieval boys and girls in England? Nicholas Orme draws on a vast range of sources to create the most complete and vivid picture of childhood in the Middle Ages ever written. With illustrations throughout, this book describes every stage of a child’s growth to adulthood and includes fascinating information on the special culture of children, their toys and games, ...

In this fascinating and richly illustrated book, John Henderson takes us directly into the wards of the Renaissance hospitals of Florence. Drawing on years of archival research, the author explores the civic role of the hospitals, their beautiful architecture and interior design, and their methods of treatment, many of which continue to influence healthcare practices today.

This riveting book takes the reader around the globe and through the centuries to discover how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain. Filled with colorful, entertaining, and sometimes excrucuating stories, the book describes humanity's checkered progress in the battle against pain and assesses the prospects for improved pain treatment in the future.

A renowned historian here presents a new view of the notorious Spanish Inquisition, arguing that there was less terror, bigotry, and persecution associated with it than has been previously believed. Based on thirty years of research, the book will revolutionize further study in the field.

This book, published four hundred years after Philip's death, is the first full-scale biography of the king. Placing him within the social, cultural, religious, and regional context of his times, it presents a startling new picture of him. Drawing on Philip's unpublished correspondence and on many other archival sources, Kamen reveals much about Philip the youth, the man, the husband, the father, ...

This fascinating book examines the symbiotic relationship that developed between the great Spanish Empire and Papal Rome during the period of the Spanish Golden Age and the Italian Renaissance. On the one hand, the large Spanish community in Rome played a decisive role in shaping Roman politics, economics, culture, society, and religion. On the other, the papacy influenced Spanish imperial politic...

Glyn Redworth here provides a definitive account of one of the most bizarre episodes in British history—the failed attempt in 1623 of the heir to the Stuart throne to win the Spanish Infanta as his bride. Redworth shows how efforts to secure a marriage between Europe’s leading Protestant and Catholic royal families led to diplomatic disaster, cultural misunderstanding, and religious co...

A man of many contradictions, the pirate Sir John Hawkins (cousin of Sir Francis Drake) made fortunes for himself, Queen Elizabeth, and other investors, and was knighted in 1588 for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada. He also established the British slave trade and at other points in his life committed treason, murder, and adultery. This riveting biography of Hawkins narrates the events of a...

Falconry was perhaps the most popular form of hunting among the aristocracy in medieval Europe. This book—the first broad history of English royal falconry during the period—describes the actual practice and conditions of the sport and the role of falconers in the English royal household.

This outstanding book explores the degree to which ordinary women of the early modern period in England had control over their own bodies. It shows how the social and economic pressures of daily life—the cost of having a child, the difficulty of prosecuting rape, the social ambiguities of widowhood—shaped the way women viewed and experienced their bodies.

Jonathan Riley-Smith here provides a comprehensive history of the Crusades: an account of the theology of violence behind the Crusades, the major Crusades, the experience of crusading, and the crusaders themselves. With a wealth of fascinating detail, Riley-Smith brings to life these stirring expeditions and the politics and personalities behind them. His book will be the standard and authoritativ...

Chivalry-- with its pageants, heraldry, and knights in shining armor -- was a social ideal that had a profound influence on the history of early modern Europe. In this richly detailed and eloquent book, a leading medieval historian discusses the complex reality of chivalry: its secular foundations, the effects of the Crusades, the literature of knighthood, and its ethos of the social and moral obl...

Dramatic social and economic change during the middle ages altered the lives of the people of Britain in far-reaching ways, from the structure of their families to the ways they made their livings. In this engagingly written economic history, Christopher Dyer provides a vivid new account of British medieval life from the Viking invasions through the Norman conquest to the colonial expansion of the...

This magisterial book provides an analysis of the course of Western intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400. The book is arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the twelfth-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in...

In this brilliant book, William J. Bouwsma amends the conventional view of the European Renaissance as the root and foundation of modern culture, arguing instead that while it had a beginning and a climax, the Renaissance also had an ending. Bouwsma examines closely the waning of the Renaissance culture of freedom and creativity, and he offers an original interpretation of the place of the Renaiss...

This wide-ranging book examines the development of intellectual culture across the breadth of Europe between about 1350 and 1550, providing fresh perspectives on the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the nature of each. Anthony Levi analyzes intellectual developments in the works of Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Marsilio Ficino, Thomas More, and many others, and he considers the full sweep of religious...

This absorbing survey of medieval clothing makes an important and unique contribution to our understanding of the cultural and social conditions of western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Drawing on paintings and sculpture, documents and literature, surviving clothing, textiles, jewelry, and armor, Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane show that garments and accessories of th...

Drawing on evidence ranging from pictorial mosaics to women’s poetry and histories, this lavish book examines for the first time the lives, occupations, beliefs, and social roles of Byzantine women. Focusing on a different woman—from the elite to the ordinary—in each chapter, it offers a fresh perspective on Byzantine culture and women’s history.

This book—the first comprehensive and wide-ranging account of the historical atlas—explores the role, development, and nature of this important reference and discusses its impact on the presentation of the past.

No mere travel account, the book that Marco Polo wrote after many years in Asia became one of the most influential writings of the millennium. Historian John Larner here explores for the first time the full range of influence of Polo’s Book on the history of geography and exploration, showing why the Book came into being and how it played a key role in the development of Europe...

This biography is a splendid introduction to the life and legends of Charlemagne, king of the Franks from 768 to his death in 814 and Holy Roman emperor from the year 800. Matthias Becher offers a concise and insightful assessment of Charlemagne’s reign and achievements, his political and military maneuverings and posthumous fame.

This compelling biography is the first to encompass the entire life of Ivan the Terrible and to view him in the context of his own time. Notorious for a policy of unrestrained terror—and for killing his own son—Ivan is credited with establishing autocracy in Russia. The book illuminates his tragic reign and foreign policies, as well as his marriages and disordered personality.

...

In this fascinating guide to European homes, families, and possessions of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, Raffaella Sarti invites us to return to earlier times and observe the daily lives of people at all economic levels. Vivid stories bring to life masters and servants, parents and children, husbands and wives as they ate, slept, dressed, worked, and went about their everyday activiti...

This delightful book tells the story of ancient libraries from their very beginnings, when “books” were clay tablets and writing was a new phenomenon. Renowned classicist Lionel Casson takes us on a lively tour from the royal libraries of the ancient Near East, through the private and public libraries of Greece and Rome, down to the first Christian monastic libraries. Casson explains w...

The British came to view the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 as victory over an alien and ambitious empire, yet they themselves had fueled the conflict. This book examines the process by which the Spaniard, a long-term ally and friend, became in English eyes the epitome of human depravity and how this helped shape an emerging sense of nationhood.

In this radical reinterpretation of the English Civil War, Mark Stoyle reveals an ethnic dimension to the struggle that contributed powerfully to the forging of English national identity. His book explores English xenophobia and fear of foreign invasion as the context for the creation of the New Model Army, opening up the Civil War to fresh historical and social insights.

 

This book provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society in Britain in the seventeenth century. Britain’s virtuosi—gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences who were curious about things exotic and strange—spurred initial interest in coffee and invented the social template for coffeehouses, soon a central part of urban life.

&n...

Delving into a nether world of treachery and intrigue in Elizabethan London, John Bossy solves a centuries-old mystery:  who was "Fagot," the spy working within the French embassy in London to subvert Catholic attempts to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and her government?  The ambassador?  His wife?  His daughter, his clerk, his priest?  Or the runaway friar, who was actually t...

This absorbing account of Catholic and anti-Catholic plots and machinations at the English, French, and exiled Scottish courts in the latter part of the sixteenth century is a sequel to John Bossy’s highly acclaimed Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair.

This generously illustrated book offers an engaging look at the private lives and material culture of aristocratic families in sixteenth-century Venice.

This engrossing biography offers an intriguing reassessment of the third duke of Alba, an infamous sixteenth-century Spanish general known to history as “the butcher of Flanders.” Henry Kamen tells the duke’s personal history, explores his beliefs, and considers his infamous actions within the context of his time and of the monarchs whom he served.

This intriguing book argues that the sixteenth-century treaties King Philip III forged with Spain’s most powerful enemies were not intended to ensure a permanent peace. Instead, the author shows, Philip’s plan was to lull his foes, thereby enabling Spain to regain its strength after fifty years of incessant and expensive warfare. Ending the truce and resuming war with the Dutch, the En...

Hernan Cortés’s Cartas de Relacion, written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain, provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortés’s journey to Honduras in 1525. Pagden’s new English translation, prepared from a fresh examination of the earliest surviving manuscript and of the f...

This magisterial book is the definitive history of the Spanish colonial period in North America. Authoritative and colorful, the book describes not only the Spaniards' impact on the lives, institutions, and environments of the native peoples, but also the effect of native North Americans on the societies and cultures of the Spanish settlers [from Florida to California].

In the first English translation of this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. First published twenty years ago and now translated into English for the first time, the book juxtaposes theology and science, poetry and mysticism, in order to explore the relationship that existed between the aest...

This book traces the history of the Bible from the eleventh century, when it was available only to the clerical elite, to our own time, when it is a source of guidance and inspiration to people in all walks of life. Endlessly retailored to meet changing needs, the Bible—now in countless versions and translations—has become more influential as it has become m...

This visually and intellectually exciting book chronicles the history of a series of devotional paintings in the Cave Church. It explores how the monastic community commissioned painting twice in the church in the 13th century, during one of the greatest eras of Coptic art, and how one of the monks painted it again in the 18th century, helping to inaugurate a Coptic ...

Efraim Karsh, a widely respected expert in Middle Eastern affairs, challenges the way we understand Middle Eastern history and politics in this provocative book. September 11 and other Islamic acts of aggression have little to do with U.S. behavior or policy, Karsh argues. Rather, such attacks express Islam's ancient, powerful, and continuing imperial tradition.

Written by one of the world's greatest authorities on Martin Luther, this is the definitive biography of the central figure of the Protestant Reformation.

In this remarkable book, one of the world’s leading theologians offers insights into the history and significance of Christian creeds. Jaroslav Pelikan addresses essential questions about the Christian tradition: the origins of creeds; their function; their political role; how they relate to Christian institutions, worship, and service; and how they help to explain the major divisions of the...

This important book offers the first comprehensive history of religious dualism, the doctrine that cosmos and man are constant battlegrounds for the forces of good and evil and their supernatural protagonists. Yuri Stoyanov traces crucial stages in the evolution of dualism from its early expression in late Egyptian religion and the revelations of Zoroaster to the revival of the “Great Heresy...

In this original book, an eminent historian explores how early Christian doctrine was determined by majority vote in church councils during the third to sixth centuries. Ramsey MacMullen brings the reader directly into council chambers, where rank and file bishops engage in debate, then vote to establish a single Christian orthodoxy.

In this book, MacMullen investigates the transition from paganism to Christianity between the fourth and eighth centuries. He reassesses the triumph of Christianity, contending that it was neither tidy nor quick, and he shows that the two religious systems were both vital during an interactive period that lasted far longer than historians have previously believed.

This wide-ranging book is an intellectual history of how informed readers read their Bibles over the past four hundred years, from the first translations in the sixteenth century to the emergence of fundamentalism in the twentieth century.

This groundbreaking book examines the vibrant North African Christian Church of the 4th and 5th centuries and its relationship to Rome. Merdinger provides a lively account of cases of canon law that arose in Africa but were adjudicated in Rome—including the notorious Apiarius affair—and shows how African Christians gradually became dependent on the papacy for enforcement of church disc...

In this posthumous collection of his writings, eminent scholar Heiko A. Oberman seeks to liberate and broaden our understanding of the European Reformation, from its origins in medieval philosophy and theology through the Puritan settlers who brought Calvin’s vision to the New World. Ranging over many topics, Oberman finds fascinating connections between aspects of the Reformation and twenti...

Nearly five centuries after Thomas More wrote Utopia, his book continues to address issues of powerful contemporary concern—religious pluralism, women’s rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare. Clarence Miller’s new translation of this foundational text in philosophy and political theory reflects with unprecedented accuracy the sense and tone ...

Recent writings about Thomas More have questioned his integrity and motivation and have challenged the long-held view of him as a humane, wise, and heroic "man for all seasons." This new book responds to these revisionist studies by closely and persuasively analyzing More's writings as well as Holbein's portraits of More and his family.

This remarkable four-volume set assembles the principal creeds and confessions of the Christian church, from biblical times to the present, and places them in their historical and theological context. The set includes over 225 texts with translations from many languages, introductions, commentary, and notes for each creed and confession, an introductory volume by Jaroslav Pelikan, and a CD-ROM.

This beautiful volume is adapted from Jaroslav Pelikan's classic work Jesus Through the Centuries. In this wise, informative, and sumptuously illustrated book, Pelikan discusses how each age created Jesus in its own image, discovering in his life and teachings the answers to fundamental questions of human existence and destiny.

Jaroslav Pelikan, world-renowned historian and author of the best-selling Jesus Through the Centuries and many other books, examines all of Christian history and culture to create the most complete portrait of the Virgin Mary ever written. Pelikan assesses the ways Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, artists, musicians, and writers, and men and women everywhere have depicted, venerat...

This engrossing book explores the first millennium of Islamic culture, shattering stereotypes and enlightening readers about the events and achievements that have shaped contemporary Islamic civilization. A wonderful introduction to the rich history of the Muslim people, the volume proceeds from Muhammad’s seventh-century revelations to the great Ottoman, Satavid, and Mughal empires and conc...

In this comprehensive history of the synagogue from the Hellenistic period through late antiquity, Lee Levine traces the development of a dynamic and revolutionary institution. Examining synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora, he describes their physical features, role in the community, leadership, liturgy, and art as well as their success in integrating social and religious behavior from surroundi...

Mount Athos, a spectacularly beautiful rocky peninsula on the coast of Greece, has been a monastic preserve since the ninth century. This richly illustrated book tells the entire story of Athos, the Holy Mountain, from the first anchorite monks who lived in caves and huts through centuries of political and religious controversy to the thriving monastic communities of today. 

This sweeping book charts the history of Calvinism across Europe, from the birth of the Reformed tradition in Switzerland in the sixteenth century to the unraveling of orthodoxy in the seventeenth. Philip Benedict addresses the causes of Calvinism’s remarkable expansion, the theological debates around Reformed doctrine, the inner workings of diverse national churches, the contributions of gr...

This is the first English language anthology of key prefaces to ecclesiastical law collections in the Latin Middle Ages. These prefaces represent various periods of medieval canon law and document its evolution from a collection of locally applied norms into a system largely under papal control. The authors provide superb introductions to each historical period and each preface, along with useful ...

The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that turned great numbers of Europeans into Protestants in the early 1500s had been sown far back in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dispersal of dissenting ideologies through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the 1500s. He elucidates with great clarity the complex philosoph...

Generations of scholars have tried to account for the Reformation's striking success. Employing the methods of intellectual and social history, Steven Ozment demonstrates that Protestantism was seen at the beginning of the Reformation to be a far-reaching simplification of religion and enhancement of secular life. According to Mr. Ozment, the initial and compelling attraction of Protestantism to w...

This absorbing book takes us back to the busy, colorful world of a Netherlandish Catholic bishop and his flock from 1618–1620. Based upon the recently discovered daybook of Mathius Hovius, the book focuses not only on his life but also on key events and characters of the period. Episodes in the lives of monks, nuns, pilgrims, peasants, saints, and others bring to life the experience of relig...

Isolated islands in the northernmost reaches of Russia, Solovki has been the site of a beautiful medieval monastery, a religious rebellion and massacre, a prison, a major place of pilgrimage, and a Gulag camp. This riveting book tells the story of Solovki, in the process portraying the tragedies and triumphs of the Russian past.

Based on a treasure trove of letters, this fascinating book tells the history of a seventeenth-century nun in a convent in Leuven and how her complaints—of sexual harassment, fears of demonic possession, alliances among the other sisters against her—led to her banishment from the convent on two occasions. Highly acclaimed when it was first published as a revealing look at female religi...

Surviving copies of the Book of Hours, the most personal and widely used book of the later Middle Ages, offer precious clues to the lives of their owners and the times in which they lived. Religious historian Eamon Duffy examines these prayer books and the messages and jottings in their margins for insights into an era of great religious and social change.

This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion in fifteenth-century England. Eamon Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system. For this edition, D...

This engrossing book encompasses the extraordinary history of the papacy, from its beginnings nearly two thousand years ago to the present day. In this new edition, the final chapter has been expanded to cover the last years of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI.

 

This delightful book offers a rare glimpse of life in a remote sixteenth-century English village during the dramatic changes of the Reformation. Through vividly detailed parish records kept from 1520 to 1574 by the Sir Christopher Trychay, the garrulous priest of Morebath, we see how a tiny Catholic community rebelled, was punished, and reluctantly accepted Protestantism under the demands of the E...

A. D. Nuttall’s profound and elegantly written study of Shakespeare’s thought is a literary tour de force, a marvelous inquiry into the questions that engrossed the playwright throughout his life. Nuttall investigates the dynamic nature of Shakespeare’s evolving answers and provides for twenty-first-century readers an unparalleled guide to Shakespea...

This excellent verse translation brings to English-language readers the great German epic poem that inspired Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Written 800 years ago, the poem tells the sweeping story of the downfall of the Burgundians at the hands of the Huns and their King Attila. The translation underscores both the literary and historic value of the poem.

This anthology gathers texts and translations that cover major aspects of the Virgilian tradition from the Roman poet’s own lifetime to the year 1500. Unprecedented in scope, the book illuminates how Virgil exerted influence on writers over the centuries, how his work was understood and put to use, how his life was interpreted, and much more.

This new collection of essays on Chaucer’s poetry is a single-volume guide to the best and most inventive work in Chaucerian studies today. Written with American undergraduate and graduate students in mind, the book considers the history and textual contexts of Chaucer’s work, current critical interpretation, and the poet’s place in literary history.

In pursuit of a powerful, common-sense argument about realism, renowned scholar A. D. Nuttall discusses English eighteenth-century and French neo-classical conceptions of realism, and considers Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and both parts of King Henry IV as a prolonged feat of mimesis, with particular emphasis on Shakespeare’s...

The fundamental subject of A. D. Nuttall’s bold and daring first book, Two Concepts of Allegory, is a particular habit of thought—the practice of thinking about universals as though they were concrete things. His study takes the form of an inquiry into certain conceptual questions raised, in the first place, by the allegorical critics of The Tempest, and, in the second pl...

With numerous portraits, images of costumes, theater models, manuscripts, and maps, this compelling book explores the connections between theatrical performance and Shakespeare's references in the visual arts.

This prize-winning work provides a facsimile of the 1609 Quarto printed in parallel with a conservatively edited, modernized text, as well as commentary that ranges from brief glosses to substantial critical essays. Stephen Booth’s notes help a modern reader toward the kind of understanding that Renaissance readers brought to the works.

This book challenges prevailing assumptions, arguing that English literature emerged as a distinct category during the late sixteenth century in response to severely strained relations between England and Rome. Sean Keilen shows how English poets reworked familiar classical myths to invent a new point of departure for their own poetic history.

In this memoir Payne recalls the English theatre at the turn of the century with wit and affection. His accounts of the popular actor-managers, the fit-up companies, the Playboy riots, and of Yeats, Miss Horniman, and William Poel vividly depict an era. He captures the spirit of the American theatre of the teens, twenties, and thirties – the flamboyance of its producers, the foibles of its s...

Although Andrew Marvell is best known as the author of exquisite lyrics and provocative political poems, in his own seventeenth century he was famous for his brilliant political polemics. This is the first modern edition of all Marvell’s prose pamphlets, complete with introductions and annotation explaining the historical context.

This book, a restructured and expanded version of Raffel's classic Poems from the Old English, organizes major old English poems and prose selections so as to facilitate both reading and studying. The book includes introductory material, new translations of poetry (including more than twenty poem-riddles), and many fascinating prose writings.

Although Andrew Marvell is best known as the author of exquisite lyrics and provocative political poems, in his own seventeenth century he was famous for his brilliant political polemics. This is the first modern edition of all Marvell’s prose pamphlets, complete with introductions and annotation explaining the historical context.

This groundbreaking anthology brings together for the first time the works of women poet-composers, or trouvères, in northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Refuting the long-held notion that there are no extant Old French lyrics by women from this period, the editors of the volume present songs attributed to eight named female trouvères along with many anonymous composi...

How did the Holy Grail come to form the centerpiece of a story about a knight in King Arthur’s court? In this fascinating book Joseph Goering explores the possible sources of this influential tale that originated with Chrétien de Troyes, and ultimately links the legend to medieval paintings in the Spanish Pyrenees which depict the Virgin Mary with a radiant bowl.

First published in Paris in 1511, The Praise of Folly has enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author’s lifetime down to our own day. The Folly has no rival, except perhaps Thomas More’s Utopia, as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social, and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. ...

The first writer ever to tell the story of King Arthur, twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes became one of the most influential figures in Western literature. In this comprehensive book, a preeminent critic of medieval French literature provides an overview of all of Chrétien’s Arthurian romances, setting them in their social and intellectual context, exploring their majo...

Norman R. Shapiro here presents a collection of superb new translations of more than 150 poems by the three most highly acclaimed French Renaissance poets—Clément Marot, Joachim Du Bellay, and Pierre de Ronsard. The original French lyric poems—some well-known, others less familiar—appear alongside Shapiro’s creative and spirited English translations.

Among the most influential novels of all time, Cervantes’ Don Quixote remains as appealing today as when it was written four hundred years ago. This book is an original and beautifully written literary excursion into Cervantes’ masterpiece, how he came to write it, and how it has influenced great writers and thinkers across centuries and continents.

Legal developments during Spain’s Golden Age not only transformed the country into a modern state, they also irrevocably changed Western literature. This fascinating book explores Cervantes’ work to show how the author drew on new legal records to explore human deviance and desire and as inspiration for modern representations of love.

Recognizing the dramatic changes in Old English studies over the past generation, this up-to-date anthology gathers twenty-one outstanding recent critical writings on the prose and poetry of Anglo-Saxon England. The contributors focus on Old English texts most commonly read in introductory courses and offer an array of fresh insights into Anglo-Saxon history, culture, and scholarship.

The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in ver...

In this outstanding new translation of Lancelot, Burton Raffel brings to English language readers the fourth of Chrétien’s five surviving romantic Arthurian poems. This poem was the first to introduce Lancelot as an important figure in the King Arthur legend.

Erec and Enide, the first of five surviving Arthurian romantic poems by twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, narrates a vivid chapter from the legend of King Arthur. Now an experienced translator of medieval works who is himself a poet has translated Erec and Enide in verse form that fully captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original.

Acclaimed for his sensitive and faithful translations of the work of Chrétien de Troyes, Burton Raffel here completes the fifth and last of the French poet’s influential Arthurian poems. Chrétien’s unfinished Perceval introduces the story of the Grail and follows Perceval’s progress from a boyhood in rural seclusion to knighthood and high respect at King A...

In this extraordinarily fine translation of Cligès, the second of five surviving Arthurian poems by twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, Burton Raffel captures the liveliness, innovative spirit, and subtle intentions of the original work. In this poem, Chrétien creates his most artful plot and paints the most starkly medieval portraits of any of his romances.

This long-awaited biography, written by one of the most distinguished medievalists of his generation, paints a new portrait of Henry I, son of William the Conqueror. Not the brutal, greedy, and repressive king that has been supposed, Henry was the ultimate pragmatist and a man of keen intelligence who desired peace, C. Warren Hollister shows. He vividly describes Henry’s life and reign in a ...

In this new account of Richard the Lionheart’s reign, its leading authority John Gillingham scrutinizes the king’s fluctuating reputation over the centuries and provides a convincing revised interpretation. Neither a feckless knight-errant nor a neglectful king, Richard I was in reality a masterful and businesslike ruler, the author argues.

This book—the first full-length biography of Richard II in more than fifty years—offers a radical reinterpretation of a complex king whose reign was characterized by a mixture of high principle and despotic legislation. Nigel Saul demonstrates that Richards' aim was to exalt and dignify the crown, but in a period of faction and feud his tactical errors and contradictory policies result...

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s funniest plays and also one of his most romantic. A young noblewoman, Viola,  shipwrecked in a foreign land and separated from her twin brother, dresses as a man in order to enter the service of Orsino, duke of Illyria. Complications ensue—deceptions, infatuations, misdirected overtures, malevolent pranks—as everyone is drawn into...

King Lear, one of Shakespeare's darkest and most savage plays, tells the story of the foolish and Job-like Lear, who divides his kingdom, as he does his affections, according to vanity and whim. Lear’s failure as a father engulfs himself and his world in turmoil and tragedy.

In no other play has Shakespeare created two such equally titanic personages as Rome’s great soldier and statesman Mark Antony and the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. The story of their irresistible attraction, their jealous quarrels and betrayals, and the effects on friends and subjects of their ruinous choices is a tale leading irretrievably to despair and defeat. ...

The first tragedy to be performed in the new Globe Theatre, Julius Caesar is set at a crucial historical moment--when Republican government is giving way to imperial. Removed in time and place from Shakespeare’s Elizabethan England, Rome makes a safe laboratory for the playwright to engage in his political musings.

Shakespeare’s valedictory play is one of his most poetical and magical, involving spirits, savages, banishment, a duke-turned-wizard, a shipwreck, and more. This volume, like all volumes in The Annotated Shakespeare series, features helpful information and comprehensive annotations to assist with vocabulary, pronunciation, alternate meanings, and more.

With an informative introduction, a critical essay by Harold Bloom, and on-page annotations, this new edition of Henry IV, Part One assists twenty-first century readers to appreciate fully the tale of Young Prince Hal, cavorting in London with Falstaff and his band of rogues even as England is threatened by the Earl of Northumberland.

In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio needs funds if he is to impress the wealthy heiress Portia. Soon hopelessly entangled with the Jewish moneylender Shylock, Bassanio and his merchant friend Antonio escape their predicament only through Portia’s clever intervention.

One of the most powerful dramas ever written for the stage, Othello throbs with passion, jealousy, the desire for revenge, illusion, mistrust, and murder. This new and fully annotated edition invites modern readers to appreciate and understand every nuance of Shakespeare’s unforgettable play.

This first fully annotated version of Hamlet makes the play totally accessible to today’s readers. In addition to generous on-page annotations, it provides an introduction by Burton Raffel that gives background on the origins and previous versions of the Hamlet story and a concluding essay by Harold Bloom that discusses the originality of Shakespeare’s achie...

Perhaps no other Shakespearean drama so engulfs us in the ruinous journey of surrender to evil as does Macbeth. The on-page annotations of this edition provide readers with all the tools they need to comprehend the play fully and to examine its profound grip on the Western imagination.

In this bawdy comedy, rapid-fire verbal battles between the shrewish Katarina and the canny Petruchio have delighted generations of audiences. Contemporary readers will especially enjoy this new edition of The Taming of the Shrew with comprehensive annotations that make the play completely accessible.

Romeo and Juliet, one of the most beloved stage works of all time, is the latest addition to The Annotated Shakespeare series. Burton Raffel offers readers generous help with Elizabethan English and annotates throughout, providing the tools we need to comprehend the play and explore its many possible interpretations.

From the hilarious mischief of the elf Puck to the rough humor of the self-centered Bottom and his fellow players, from the palace of Theseus in Athens to the magic wood where fairies play, Shakespeare’s marvelous A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play of enchantment and an insightful portrait of the predicaments of love.

This handsome book brings to light nearly 50 examples of rare mural-size prints––a Renaissance art form nearly lost from historical record––from Italy, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

This volume investigates the Italian silk fabrics depicted in paintings from Italy, England, and the Netherlands from 1300 to 1550––a period that witnessed the flowering of the Renaissance and the major expansion of the Italian silk industry.

A reevaluation based on new archival information and new technical studies of an important painting by Fra Angelico and of the painter’s true artistic significance.  

This important book reconstructs the distinctive achievement of a much admired but little understood Renaissance painter who worked during a time of profound transformations in Italian art and culture.

Focusing on the idea of drawing as a mode of thinking, this highly original book analyzes Michelangelo’s architectural designs––including those that were not built––in terms of his experience as a painter and sculptor.

A highly original look at Michelangelo’s architectural designs––including those th...

A lavishly illustrated presentation of previously unpublished medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque tapestries from the foremost European workshops.

This original account of Henry VIII’s unrivaled tapestry collection sheds new light on Tudor political and artistic culture and offers a fascinating new perspective on the monarch’s life. Sumptuously illustrated with newly-commissioned photographs, this book is essential for scholars of Renaissance history and the visual culture of the Reformation.

A rich account of Ghiberti’s early Renaissance masterpiece created to adorn Florence’s Baptistry, a set of ten monumental bronze panels so exquisite that Michelangelo proclaimed them “The Gates of Paradise.”

This beautifully illustrated book examines the emergence of Christian art in the third century A.D. Drawing on insights from recent discoveries, leading experts explore topics from Jewish art in the Greco-Roman period and the influence of Constantine, to the development of church decoration and illuminated Bibles. New color photographs of frescoes, marble sculpture, silver...

This beautiful book explores the place of images in Renaissance Florence and probes such questions as why works of art were made, who made and commissioned them, how they looked, and how they were looked at.

This extensively researched book fills the gaps in the biography of Florentine artist Piero di Cosimo for the first time and offers a full account of his highly imaginative works.

Presenting over 100 unparalleled ceramic works largely produced in Iran and Iraq, this handsome book documents the extraordinary achievements in Islamic pottery from the 9th to 14th century.

This volume presents a gorgeous selection of natural history drawings and watercolors by Leonardo da Vinci and other master artists in the Age of Discovery. Renowned naturalist and documentary-maker Sir David Attenborough and colleagues explore how illustrations of plants and animals inspired and were inspired by the new scientific spirit of the Renaissance.

In this insightful study, Philip Sohm considers great artists of Renaissance and Baroque Italy and how aging affected their art, their psychological landscape, and their professional success.

With works by El Greco, Rogier van der Weyden, and many others, this important volume documents the Art Institute’s significant collection of English, French, German, Netherlandish, and Spanish paintings created before 1600.

A fascinating tour of Michelangelo’s greatest drawings—which range from unfinished sketches to refined studies for the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgement.

One of the best known and most influential artists in the history of art, Michelangelo was a prolific sculptor, painter, architect, and draftsman. This lovely book focuses on more than 250 of his drawings executed in chalk, charcoal, and pen and ink. Distinguished art historian Hugo Chapman examines this array of works and discusses how the act of drawing figured prominently in Michelangelo’...

A lavishly illustrated study of the evolution of genre painting throughout the Dutch Golden Age, this book features exquisite works by Vermeer, Steen, de Hooch, Dou, and others.

This beautifully illustrated book provides a complete overview of the art of the Southern Netherlands from 1585 to 1700. The author examines the development of Flemish and specifically Antwerp painting, the work of Rubens and such other leading masters as Van Dyck and Jordaens, and the Antwerp tradition of specialization among painters as well as the sculpture and architecture of this period.

Sir Anthony Van Dyck, one of the greatest portrait painters of the seventeenth century, created full-length portraits of aristocrats in many European cities and influenced the history of Western portraiture into the twentieth century. This handsomely illustrated catalogue raisonné contains all the paintings of Van Dyck, along with the provenance, significant facts, and literature on each.&nbs...

The decades from 1500 to 1550 in Florence encompassed one of the most original and outstanding periods in the entire history of art. This gloriously illustrated book gathers and describes many of the beloved paintings, drawings, and sculptures created by the greatest masters of the period along with less familiar but equally beautiful and intriguing works. The contributors to the volume explore th...

The beauty and range of the work of sixteenth-century artist Parmigianino make him one of the most remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance. In this close study of the artist’s work as a draftsman, David Franklin examines more than eighty of Parmigianino’s works on paper and illuminates the sources of his style and the creative struggles he endured.

This enthralling book views the lives and greatest works of the Renaissance masters through the prism of their ardent rivalry. Rona Goffen, one of the most highly respected scholars of the Italian Renaissance today, brings Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian to life in this lively account of their passionate strivings to outdo both living competitors and the masters of antiquity.

The paintings produced in Venice during the Renaissance include some of the most visually exciting works in the whole of Western art. This handsome book surveys painting in Renaissance Venice from Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto and sets the art against the political, social, and religious currents of the time.

In this richly illustrated book, Jules Lubbock focuses attention on famous works in which Italian Renaissance painters and sculptors told important Bible stories. He shows how prominent artists including Giovanni Pisano, Giotto, and Donatello depicted biblical events so as to captivate the viewer and encourage the search for deeper meanings.

This book explores the function of the mythological image within the studiolos of Italian Renaissance culture through a series of seven paintings that hung in the most famous studiolo of all. Works by such noteworthy artists as Andrea Mantegna, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, and Correggio are included.

 

For the first time, this book considers the entire oeuvre of this versatile and gifted painter of the Golden Age—from his celebrated still lifes to his portraits, allegories, landscapes, flower paintings, and large-scale works for churches and convents.

This striking publication features important works of medieval art ranging from the early Christian era to the later Middle Ages, from both Western Europe and Byzantium. An introductory essay by Christina Nielsen focuses on the Art Institute's history of notable medieval acquisitions, including items from the famous Guelph Treasure, which captivated American audiences in the 1930s.

At the height of the reign of the Medici family—from 1537 to 1631—Florence experienced an unparalleled flowering of the arts. This beautiful and authoritative book focuses on the glorious art produced during those years, when politically and culturally ambitious grand dukes commissioned such artists as Pontormo, Bronzino, Vasari, Giambologna, and, most influentially, Michelangelo.

This generously illustrated book surveys Sienese painting from 1260 to 1555, an era of extraordinary artistic creativity in the Tuscan city. Diana Norman addresses the style and technique of celebrated painters from Duccio to Sassetta and Beccafumi, exploring why paintings were made, where they were seen, and how audiences used and enjoyed them.

Regarded as artisans and craftsmen in the early fifteenth century, painters and sculptors acquired new status as “artists” within little more than a hundred years. Francis Ames-Lewis explores how Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Dürer, and others gained intellectual respect and artistic autonomy from enlightened patrons by promoting the idea of the artist as a creative genius...

In this beautiful book Jonathan Alexander surveys European manuscript illumination from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Illustrating his discussion with examples chosen from all over Europe, he discusses the social and historical context of the illuminators' lives, considers their methods of work, and shows the range and nature of the visual sources and the ways in which they were adapted, co...

Contracts are the most informative records we have about the nature of commissioning prestigious works of art in the Renaissance. This book provides a framework for interpreting these important documents by surveying a body of contracts and related records concerning altarpieces and frescoes painted in Italy from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries.

This beautiful volume, the definitive work on Parmigianino, focuses on both the public world of his paintings and the private realm of his drawings. It encompasses the latest research and takes full advantage of recent cleanings and restorations of the artist’s major works.

Among the most beautiful and compelling works of Renaissance art, painted maps adorned the halls and galleries of princely palaces. This book is the first full account of these painted map cycles—especially the Guardaroba Nuova of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican—and their significance as powerful political and religious images.

Ten years after completing his work The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, Bolognese painter Domenichino was accused by his rival Giovanni Lanfranco of stealing the idea for the painting from an altarpiece crafted by Lanfranco’s teacher, Agostino Carracci. The resulting scandal reverberated through the centuries, drawing responses by artists and critics from Poussin and Malvasia to Fusel...

This gloriously illustrated book relates the tale of Raphael’s portrait of handsome young Bindo Altoviti and its adventurous passage through the centuries. At various times celebrated, dismissed, admired, and misunderstood, the painting was at last cleverly spirited out of Nazi Germany and donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where all may now enjoy it.

This book catalogues and discusses The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s entire collection of medieval aquamanilia—cast metal objects used to pour water for hand washing in religious and secular contexts. Selected examples from other collections are also included in this wide-ranging exploration of the vessels’ history and cultural significance.

This handsome book is the first to examine this exquisite object and its fascinating history. Distinguished scholar Jeffrey Chipps Smith looks at the creation of the statuette in Augsburg, its place in the context of other works of art in Eichstätt, and the compelling story of Bishop Reichenau and his intense devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Painters, draftsmen, goldsmiths, sculptors, and designers, the Pollaiuolo brothers of fifteenth-century Florence produced some of the most beautiful works of the Italian Renaissance. This is the first book in English to examine the careers of Antonio and Piero, the enormous output of their workshops, and the brothers’ place in the cultural life of Florence and Rome.

 Late in his life Titian created a series of paintings—the “Four Sinners,” the “poesie” for his patron Philip II of Spain, and the “Final Tragedies”—that were dark in tone and content, full of pathos and physical suffering. In this major reinterpretation of Titian’s art, Thomas Puttfarken shows that the often dramatic and violent su...

This book offers the first comprehensive history of late medieval printmaking in Europe, when mass-produced pictures initiated a revolution in the role of images that eventually led to changes in the definition of art itself. The authors investigate how prints were produced and disseminated and how they were put to use for both spiritual and secular purposes.

Illustrated with more than 100 color images, this book—now back in print—examines the extraordinary artistic culture of the prosperous and powerful seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Mariët Westermann analyzes the choices of artists including Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Vermeer, and others, and examines the stories their pictures tell about the nation, its people, and its past. 

This book, the first ever devoted to Rembrandt’s gifted pupil Willem Drost, unravels many of the mysteries of the artist’s life and career. Featuring a meticulously researched catalogue raisonné, the book not only reassesses Drost’s place in the Rembrandt workshop and in the Venetian art world but also offers new evidence on the artist’s death.

Piero della Francesca was not only a great fifteenth-century painter but was also an accomplished mathematician. This book is the first full study of how these two activities were interrelated.

In the first English translation of this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. First published twenty years ago and now translated into English for the first time, the book juxtaposes theology and science, poetry and mysticism, in order to explore the relationship that existed between the aest...

The magnificent still life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age reveal surprising things about Dutch society and capitalist culture of the seventeenth century, says the author of this provocative book. She explores the significance of the array of products rendered on canvas and discusses the full meaning of these fruits of global commerce.

This innovative book presents a fresh view of fifteenth-century Netherlandish art and its influence on Renaissance Italian art, particularly in Florence.

This major study brings sixteenth-century Netherlandish artist Joos van Cleve out of undeserved obscurity. Accomplished and influential, Joos created some of the most endearing images in Northern Renaissance painting. The book first examines Joos’s career, style, and the critical history of his works, then catalogues his complete paintings.

One of the greatest artists of sixteenth-century Europe, Hans Holbein the younger spent much of his career in England and painted everyone of note in Henry VIII’s realm. In this generously illustrated book, Susan Foister presents an original account of how the masterful Renaissance artist held up a mirror to the cultural life of Tudor England. 

This is the first major English-language publication on Gerard ter Borch—one of the finest Dutch painters of the seventeenth century—and features the elegant portraits and genre paintings that so influenced the work of Ter Borch’s younger contemporary Johannes Vermeer. 

Opened in 1844, the Wadsworth Atheneum, was the first public gallery of fine arts in America. This beautiful book is a catalogue of its collection of old master paintings and a history of the museum’s acquisition program and distinguished directors.

This intriguing book is the first to draw a complete picture of the artistic and political connections between the great Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens and the Stuart court in seventeenth-century England.

Tilman Riemenschneider’s sculptures are renowned for their rare balance between formal elegance and expressive strength. This generously illustrated book addresses a wide range of issues relating to Riemenschneider’s innovative work.

 

This insightful book examines the encounters between the engraver Raimondi and three artists—Dürer, Raphael, and Vasari—to consider how new printing techniques affected the authorship of images in early sixteenth-century Italy.

Interweaving stylistic and iconographical analysis with historical and cultural detail, this absorbing book offers a new interpretation of the paintings of fifteenth-century Venetian artist Carlo Crivelli. 

Rubens’s vibrant and quickly executed oil sketches are the subject of this ravishing book, which presents and discusses forty of these informal paintings, offering the most direct record of the great artist’s creative process.

In this book, the first to consider the development of Gothic architecture in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Normandy, Lindy Grant examines a period of profound social, cultural, and political change. She establishes the first reliable chronology of buildings while providing sharp insights into Normandy’s medieval architecture and its patrons and architects.

New in paper

This book traces the evolution in Raphael's artistic style from his earliest work in Urbino to his masterful paintings in Rome.

With works by Van Eyck, Dürer, Leonardo, Titian, and many more, this gorgeous book examines the relationship between Northern and Southern European Renaissance portrait painting.

A fascinating look at the emergence of natural science in the early modern period as told through natural history and botanical images.

Siena flourished as a major artistic center during the Italian Renaissance, fuelled by the patronage of powerful and wealthy families, and the results were remarkable for their virtuoso beauty and strong sense of civic identity. This is the first major book in English to showcase a breathtaking and diverse range of masterpieces and discuss in depth how art was shaped...

By the first half of the sixteenth century, German stained glass had reached astonishing heights of artistic and conceptual sophistication. Although often made for churches, not all stained glass of this period was religious; subject matter included landscapes, genre scenes, and heraldic imagery, as well as Biblical scenes. This book examines a group of German stained glass panels––...

A handsome survey of Velázquez's art, career, and widespread influence.

This book introduces Velázquez and his milieu, tracing his development from the earliest Sevilian bodegones [still lifes] to his late mythological pictures and the great series of royal portraits. With a chronology and an absorbing and accessible text, it features fifteen carefully chosen and beautifully reproduced masterpieces.

In this gorgeously illustrated book, renowned Titian scholars examine some of the celebrated artist’s masterpieces and discuss his life and times, portraits, replicas, and technique. The reproductions and text provide new evidence of Titian’s genius as a stylistic innovator and supreme manipulator of paint.

This beautifully produced and illustrated catalogue of the sixteenth-century Italian paintings from Brescia, Bergamo and Cremona, in the National Gallery, London provides full scholarly catalogue entries together with many fascinating contextual details and a valuable appendix on collectors and collections. 



Revised short copy from NG: In this beautifully produ...

This new catalogue from London’s National Gallery showcases the museum’s spectacular collection of Italian paintings from 1400 to 1460. Included are masterpieces by the greatest artists of the period, including Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Pisanello, and Uccello. Each painting is reproduced full-page, in color, and accompanied by new information gleaned from recent scientific and ar...

This gorgeously illustrated book focuses on the art of the supremely talented Bellini family—Jacopo and his sons Gentile and Giovanni—who transformed Venetian Renaissance painting. Positioned at the cultural crossroads of Christendom, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, the Bellinis created in their works a new synthesis of cultural ideas and aesthetics.

This lovely book discusses Albrecht Dürer’s nature studies in the context of the National Gallery’s Virgin with the Iris, placing the painting within Dürer’s workshop practice.

Presenting 150 luxury objects fashioned from semiprecious stones, this beautiful book provides a wide-ranging history of pietre dure, a virtuoso art of hardstone inlay that flourished in much of Europe during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

An in-depth look at one of the most lavishly illustrated codices of the Middle Ages and the only manuscript executed in its entirety by the Limbourg brothers.

Some 40 illuminations from choral manuscripts offer a look at life and religion in Italy at the dawn of the Renaissance.

The horse was an integral part of Renaissance culture, and in warfare horses played a pivotal role. Not uncommonly, a horse’s armor was as elaborate and expensive as that of its rider. This book presents splendid examples of European horse armor from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and closely examines their style, construction, and decoration.

Featuring new technical findings and preparatory drawings, this intriguing book examines Raphael’s last major altarpiece and explores its fascinating history and provenance.

This book explores Byzantium’s magnificent artistic legacy, focusing on the critical political, economic, religious, and cultural issues that helped shape the last centuries of the empire.

In this fascinating book, the Florentine-trained painter-architect Fra Carnevale—until now a mysterious, quasi-legendary figure—emerges as a well-defined and pivotal artist at the court of Urbino. With hundreds of exquisite illustrations, many of little-known works, the book transforms our knowledge of an important chapter in the history of Renaissance art.

This packet of resources for teachers covers more than 1200 years of medieval art from western Europe and Byzantium. Drawing on objects in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the box includes lesson plans, forty slides, two posters, a timeline, and a CD-ROM providing strategies for teaching the art of the Middle Age in the classroom.

Renowned for their superb quality and variety, Rubens’s drawings are the focus of this exquisite book. More than 100 drawings are featured and examined, accompanied by insightful essays that discuss the importance of draftsmanship in Rubens’s career.

This book presents one of the finest private collections of Italian manuscripts assembled after the First World War. Included are works by the major schools of illumination in southern Italy, Umbria, Tuscany, Emilia, Lombardy, and the Veneto. 

With a scope of more than two centuries (ca. 1500-1740), this groundbreaking work presents the major Lombard painters and draftsmen who effected the transition in northern Italy from a strongly classical style to a naturalism based on direct observation..

Famous for their beauty and technical virtuosity, Leonardo’s drawings were avidly sought by collectors even during his own lifetime. This handsome book offers a portrait of the artist as a draftsman, surveying the wide variety of his drawing types as well as examining selected works by other artists critical to Leonardo’s development.

A sequel to the landmark catalogue The Glory of Byzantium, this spectacular book—the first to focus exclusively on the last golden age of the Byzantine empire—presents magnificent secular and religious works in all media.