Image provided by Yale Univeristy Press. All rights reserved.
The Anglo-Florentine Renaissance
Art for the Early Tudors
Review by the Editors of Manner of Man Magazine
The Anglo-Florentine Renaissance is a unique period that has been examined scholarly but
yet rarely exhaustively covered in both word and image as in this publication The Anglo-Florentine Renaissance,
Art for the Early Tudors.
As part of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
series, the editors Cinzia Maria Sicca and Louis A. Waldman have accomplished a
major feat by bringing together an internationally stellar group of scholars to explore this
particular history and subject matter.
There are few in-depth volumes such as this covering the Tudor court,
while at the same time tracing what the court sought in terms of fine artworks. This publication is important and unique in that it fully explores from various
highly respected points of view how cultured interests and curiosity, as well
political power, influenced and subsequently resulted in the engaged employment
of Florentine sculptors and painters to lend a deeply sophisticated Florentine
air to their native private and official environments.
Well-written in a scholarly manner the book is also well
illustrative with 110 colour and 20 black and white illustrations. The
Anglo-Florentine Renaissance, Art for the Early Tudors is a library addition that we believe will prove to be a volume
of great interest to any gentleman collector researching the period of
both art and politics.
Highly recommended
Edited by Cinzia Maria Sicca and Louis A. Waldman; With a
foreword by Brian Allen and Joseph Connors
Under the rule of Henry VII (r. 1485-1509) England became a
powerful nation. The Tudor court sought to express its worldliness and
political clout through major artistic commissions, employing Florentine
sculptors and painters to create lavish new interiors, suitable for
entertaining foreign dignitaries, for its royal palaces. These were exemplified
by Henry VIII's palace of Nonsuch, so named because no other palace could match
its magnificence. Italian sculpture, painting, and tapestries of the day
reflected an interest in portraiture and dynastic monuments, epitomized in
England by the royal tomb projects created by Baccio Bandinelli, Benedetto da
Rovezzano, and Pietro Torrigiani.
Generously illustrated throughout, The Anglo-Florentine
Renaissance traces the artistic links between Medicean Florence and Tudor
England through essays by an international team of scholars and explores how
the language of Florentine art effectively expressed England's political
aspirations and rose to prominence as a new international courtly style.
Cinzia Maria Sicca is professor and director of the art
history doctoral program in the Department of Art History at the Università di
Pisa, Italy. Louis Waldman is an associate professor of art history at The
University of Texas at Austin.
Essays by Steven Gunn, Cinzia Sicca, Alan P. Darr, Louis
Waldman, Benedetta Matucci, Francesco Caglioti, Giancarlo Gentilini and Tommaso
Mozzati, Sheryl E. Reiss, Maurice Howard, Susan Foister, Martin Biddle
