Write five difference each of a renaissance book and a book of modern times
Answers
Yes. Baxandall’s work was incredibly important in the 1970s, because he developed our understanding of Renaissance art from simply connoisseurship. You would look at Leonardo and, through your innate connoisseurship, you would somehow have a connection to the painting. What Baxandall argues, in his book, is that a work of art is like an archaeological object. You need to excavate everything that surrounds it. You need to look at the worldview: the intellectual, commercial, even the political and imperial issues that surround it. You need to understand the rhetoric of humanist thought and humanist writing in this period. You need to go back to look at questions like patronage. And also, where the painting was originally located. For instance, you could go to the Royal Academy and you see a painting by Giorgione. But if we understand how that painting was commissioned and where it actually was—where people saw it and how they interacted with it—that that would inform our understanding of what that painting meant. If you lose that, then you lose a crucial dimension of how to understand that picture. So I think Baxandall’s work was fantastic for really taking on that High Renaissance moment— particularly the 15th to early 16th century, predominantly Italian, art—and asking readers to start by thinking about the significance of paintings in that culture.