A revisionist interpretation of early Renaissance painting.
"The most deeply pondered account of Trecento painting to have
been published for many years." —Burlington Magazine
"Provoked by the chasm between what we now know and can see
and the baggage of inherited interpretation Maginnis outlines a
new history of the Tuscan Trecento. The result is a consistently
thought-provoking book, conservative in the best sense, aiming deliberately
and often successfully to provide new and more compelling reasons
for old convictions. . . . This is indubitably an important book
and a very valuable contribution to an overdue reassessment of one
of the seminal periods on Western art." —Italian
Studies
"This is the most significant treatment of the art of the
period since Millard Meiss’s groundbreaking Painting in
Florence and Siena after the Black Death. Not only is it a
methodologically timely and critically perceptive meditation on
the reception of Trecento Tuscan painting, but it is majestic in
its sweep and bold in its ideas." —Andrew Ladis, University
of Georgia
"Hayden Maginnis has produced a steady stream of articles
on fourteenth-century painting in Italy during the last twenty years
that have earned him a reputation as one of the leading scholars
of the Trecento in the world. This book is a synthesis that moves
far beyond his previous scholarship. It is also a beacon for Renaissance
scholars and will encourage them to take a fresh look at painting
in Tuscany during the great period of Dante, Giotto, Duccio, Boccaccio,
and Petrarch. All of this adds up to an exciting, fresh view of
the early Renaissance, which should create new interest in this
important field. Painting in the Age of Giotto is a pleasure
to read." —Paul Barolsky, University of Virginia
Painting in the Age of Giotto is a revisionist account
of central Italian painting in the period 1260 to 1370. The study
is the first to discuss Giorgio Vasari’s account of the "first
age" of the Renaissance in his "Lives" and the character
of the historiographical tradition that arose from that account.
In opening the tradition to closer scrutiny, Hayden Maginnis explains
the origins of many modern views regarding the period and the persistence
of critical strategies and conventions that do not correspond to
the historical realities.
Those realities are discussed in a return to the evidence of surviving
works of art and in an exploration of stylistic trends that define
regional currents in central Italian art. In an examination of the
"new art" of the fourteenth century, Maginnis discovers
not only that naturalism as an artistic ambition was remarkably
short-lived but also that its chief exponents were the painters
of Siena, rather than the painters of Florence. His detailed analysis
of Giotto’s work demonstrates that his art belonged to quite
another trend.
By the fourth decade of the Trecento, the character of central
Italian painting was growing ever more diverse. Painters quite consciously
began to explore artistic alternatives to naturalism, thereby introducing
"notable disturbances in the classification of Tuscan Trecento
painting" and providing a foundation for developments toward
the mid-century. Through a reexamination of the historical and art-historical
evidence related to painting immediately after the plague of 1348,
Maginnis demonstrates that the central thesis of Millard Meiss's
brilliant Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death,
until now the standard interpretation of this period, is untenable,
and offers a new interpretation of painting at mid-century. |
Web.jpg)