Renaissance Art

Renaissance Art: Details of Dreses

Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger  c. 1600-1602 Queen Elizabeth I (Rainbow Portrait)

In order:Geometry, Knight, Cook, Music, Astronomy, Headdress design

Nuremberg Chronicle, Genesis c. 1493

Botticelli 

The Ambassadors (detail of the Celestial Globe)

On January 15, 1559 Elizabeth I was crowned Queen at Westminster Abbey during a grand coronation.  Although only 25, Elizabeth’s early years and surprising ascension to the throne were fraught with political perils. The youngest daughter of Henry VIII was third in line for the crown after being restored to the line of succession near the end father’s life. Like Mary before her, Parliament declared Elizabeth illegitimate to clear Jane Seymour’s path to the throne. In 1554, the outbreak of Wyatt’s Rebellion nearly led to Elizabeth’s execution at the Tower, the same death her mother, Anne Boleyn, faced as Mary suspected Elizabeth’s involvement in the plot. Edward and Mary’s tumultuous reigns had led England to the edges of radical Protestantism only for the nation to be violently reunited with Rome. A court in conflict, economic instability, and the painful upheaval of the Reformation was the new Queen’s inheritance. What followed Elizabeth’s coronation was an unprecedented time in British history some refer to as England’s ‘Golden Age’.

Jewel Book of the Duchess Anna of Bavaria (1550s)

This illustration in a margin of the 14th century French manuscript The Hours of Yolande of Flanders depicts a mermaid with a mirror in her hand, combing her hair.

In order:Geometry, Knight, Cook, Music, Astronomy, Headdress design

Polybius.  Polybii Megalopolitani Historiarum libri priores quinq[ue],  Nicolao Perotto Sipontino interprete. Item, Epitome sequentium librorum, usq[ue] ad decimumseptimum, Vuolfgango Musculo interprete. Basileae : Apud Episcopium Iuniorem, M.D. LVII. [1557]

Pieter Bruegel the elder - “I am touchy and out of my senses bull-headed, so I bang my head against a brick wall”, from “Twelve proverbs”, 1558.

( Sculpture: Andrea di Pietro di Marco Ferrucci c. 1512-1514, Julius Caesar) 

Medieval Skull Clasp, made in 1500, it was designed for the road: it concerns a portable Book of Hours (or prayer book) that was carried around by a pilgrim on his religious pilgrimage. The clasp holds the book closed, which is decorated with a skull carved out of bone – Source

Caravaggio, detalle de “Judith y Holofernes”

Diana and the Stag