Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art
Hardcover
2014 · New Haven, CT
by Randolph, Adrian W.B.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Hardcover. New; still in shrink wrap.. Grey-green cloth/boards. Illus. dj with white lettering on dark green spine. 328 pp., full of beautiful illustrations. "This groundbreaking book spans the fields of art history, material culture, and gender studies in its examination of a range of objects from Italian Renaissance society. Addressing painted and sculpted portraits, marriage and betrothal gifts, and paxes, Adrian W. B. Randolph uses themes such as family and individual memory, windows, perspectival space, and touch to investigate how these items were experienced at the time, particularly by women. Rather than focusing on the social contexts of the objects, this original study deals with the objects themselves, asking how individuals lived with, looked at, and responded to complex things that at the time hovered between the nascent category of art and the everyday. Accompanied by beautiful and engaging accounts and illustrations of late-14th- and 15th-century Italian art, this compelling and thought-provoking argument makes the case for an alternate account of art and experience that challenges many conceptions about Renaissance art. (Inventory #: 147231)