Painting, Power, and Patronage Book by Bram Kempers: ISBN 0-713-99020-1

$59.96 new on Amazon (only one in stock). This is a new book. Subtitled: "The Rise of the Professional Artist in Renaissance Italy". >70 illustrations
Renaissance Italy art is arguably the touchstone of Western art. It has produced many of the icons defining European culture, & our view of the role of art & of the artist in society has been greatly influenced & shaped by the ideas of the period. In this stimulating & controversial book, a bestseller in the author's native Holland, Bram Kempers shows the period as a process of the developing 'professionalization' of the artist.
Tracing the history of patronage-successively of the mendicant orders and city-states, the merchant families, the princely and ducal rulers & the great papal patrons, Julius II, Pius II & Sixtus IV-Kempers follows the story from Sienna to Florence, then to the court of Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino & ultimately, to the heyday of the papal courts in Rome & the ducal court of Cosimo de Medici
English-416 pages