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LDR Category List
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Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy
by Francis Ames-Lewis. The present volume abounds with fine quality reproductions of drawings by Filippo Lippi (1406?-1469), Giovanni Bellini (1430?-1516), Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), and Pietro Perugino (1446-1523?) to name a few. Drawing surfaces (parchment, vellum, paper), techniques (silverpoint, pen and ink, chalk, brush), and devices (cross-hatching, tonal-modulation) are explained in some detail in the text and a three-page glossary is complementary. Chapters on the place of the sketch-book, the evolutions of figure and compositional drawings, and an epilogue on the legacy of The Quattrocentro round out the book. A four-page bibliography is broken into sub-divisions including "Works on Drawing," "Museum and Exhibition Catalogues," and "Individual Draftsmen." The index is useful although a notable absence is "perspective." Readers with an affinity for Leonardo Digital Reviews might be disappointed given the great advances in theory and application of three-dimensional rendering on a two-dimensional surface that were made during the fifteenth century. I was unable to find mention in appropriate chapters of the present book, not even under any of the three references to Albrecht DÄrer (1471-1528), who learnt from the Italian Masters but gave clarity and publicity to "perspective machines." A decade ago I described the influence of similar apparatus on Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Last year, David Hockney rediscovered the camera lucida and, according to commentator Lawrence Weschler (New Yorker, January 31, 2000), continues to ponder the importance of mechanical devices for the old masters. This book is a useful starting point for scholars and will be attractive in connection with focused graduate courses. Francis Ames-Lewis is professor of the history of renaissance art at Birbeck College, University of London.
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