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A. Specifications of the genre A.1. Techniques and materials With architecture and painting, S. stands as the third great artistic genre. Its defining quality is three-dimensionality. Technical distinctions are made between subtractive S. that is hewn, cut or carved out of a raw material (e.g. stone, wood, ivory) and additive S. that is cast in metal (e.g. bronze) or formed from clay, wax, plaster, gold or other materials. Colour can be added to all these types, and in some periods it was usua…

A. Definition and issuesThe P. (borrowed from French portrait, ‘image’) as a portrayal of a person was known from Classical Antiquity, a…

A. IntroductionMantova, (English M.), a city of Northern Italy on the River Mincio, was from the Middle Ages surrounded by dammed-up lakes, some of which have since silted up. The first settlement was Etruscan or Roman. The city was an episcopal see from AD 804, and from the late 10th cent. it belonged to the territory of the Attoni of Canossa. It became a signoria with the assumption of power by Pinamonte de Bonacolsi in 1272, but in 1328 the Bonacolsi were expelled by the Gonzaga and in 1329, Ludovico I Gonzaga was made Imperial vicar of M. by the Emperor. Guido Gonzaga was raised to the rank of count in 1362, Gianfrancesco I to that of Margrave in 1433, and finally in 1530, Federico II was made Duke of M. Following the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–1631), the younger Gonzaga-Nevers line ruled. The duchy was absorbed by the ruling House of Habsburg in 1708.During the 15th and 16th cents. in particular, the cultural flowering …

A. Life Philibert D., also De l'Orme/de Lorme, was a French architect, architectural theorist and military engineer, and an important proponent of a genuinely French Renaissance architecture. Born between June 3 and June 9, 1514, at Lyon, the son of the Lyon master mason ( …

A. Introduction The genre of H. includes portrayals of historical events and religious, literary, mythological and allegorical narratives, and it has been known in Europe since Classical Antiquity. Thematic range varied over the centuries. During the Middle Ages, religious themes dominated, alongside the profane narratives (e.g. from ancient mythology) that proliferated during the Renaissance. In part because of the fragility of the medium, no paintings had survived from Greek or Roman …

A. Greek literature A.1. Access to Greek The rediscovery of Greek literature in Italy necessarily began  ab ovo. The division of the two halves of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity had led not only to the gradual disappearance of Greek texts (partly because they were not copied to minuscule manuscripts to replace papyrus and parchment majuscule texts in scriptura continua), but also to a declining knowledge of Greek as a literary language, although sporadic interest in Greek did persist in the West under certain conditions and at certain centres [3]. It remained a firm linguistic …