The Light Of Early Italian Painting
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Few phenomena in the history of Western art are as captivating — or as technically complex — as the depiction of light in the paintings of medieval and early Renaissance Italy. Paul Hills' The Light of Early Italian Painting presents a rigorous and illuminating study of how Italian painters from the Byzantine era through to the Trecento and Quattrocento conceived, understood, and rendered light on panel and fresco — tracing a visual tradition in which luminosity carried not just aesthetic, but profound theological and symbolic weight. Hills argues that light in these works is never merely a naturalistic device but a carefully coded language, one that illustrates the divine hierarchy of a Christian cosmos. Drawing on a rich command of period sources, theological texts, and optical theory, the author chronicles the evolution from the golden, incorporeal glow of Byzantine icon painting to the more spatially complex illumination of Giotto and his successors. Written with scholarly precision yet remaining accessible to the engaged general reader, this study leaves one wondering how much of what we see in a Cimabue or a Duccio we have long taken for granted.
Author: Paul Hills
Format: Hardback
Published: 1987, Yale University Press
Genre: History of arts
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Few phenomena in the history of Western art are as captivating — or as technically complex — as the depiction of light in the paintings of medieval and early Renaissance Italy. Paul Hills' The Light of Early Italian Painting presents a rigorous and illuminating study of how Italian painters from the Byzantine era through to the Trecento and Quattrocento conceived, understood, and rendered light on panel and fresco — tracing a visual tradition in which luminosity carried not just aesthetic, but profound theological and symbolic weight. Hills argues that light in these works is never merely a naturalistic device but a carefully coded language, one that illustrates the divine hierarchy of a Christian cosmos. Drawing on a rich command of period sources, theological texts, and optical theory, the author chronicles the evolution from the golden, incorporeal glow of Byzantine icon painting to the more spatially complex illumination of Giotto and his successors. Written with scholarly precision yet remaining accessible to the engaged general reader, this study leaves one wondering how much of what we see in a Cimabue or a Duccio we have long taken for granted.