Book contents
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction Making and Unmaking Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Part I Surface Effects: Color, Luster, and Animation
- Part II Sculptural Bodies: Created, Destroyed, and Re-Enchanted
- Part III Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
- Part IV Sculpture as Performance
- Part V Sculpture in the Expanded Field
- Part VI Sculpture and History
- Chapter 17 Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia
- Chapter 18 Virgil’s Forge
- Chapter 19 Quattrocento Perspectives on the Historical Value of Sculpture
- Index
- References
Chapter 19 - Quattrocento Perspectives on the Historical Value of Sculpture
from Part VI - Sculpture and History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2020
By
Book contents
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction Making and Unmaking Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Part I Surface Effects: Color, Luster, and Animation
- Part II Sculptural Bodies: Created, Destroyed, and Re-Enchanted
- Part III Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
- Part IV Sculpture as Performance
- Part V Sculpture in the Expanded Field
- Part VI Sculpture and History
- Chapter 17 Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia
- Chapter 18 Virgil’s Forge
- Chapter 19 Quattrocento Perspectives on the Historical Value of Sculpture
- Index
- References
Summary
Perhaps no art is more tightly tethered to history than sculpture. Sculpture is memorable, able to stand outside without being destroyed immediately by the sun, the rain, the wind. More durable than paintings and works on paper, sculptures are messengers of historical information in the present. The author and courtier Baldassare Castiglione summarized fifteenth-century theories of sculpture when he wrote early in the sixteenth century that, “being made to preserve memory, sculptures fulfill this function better than painting.”1 The faces of Roman emperors, their gestures, and costumes all came down to the fifteenth century in hard stone busts and cold bronze coins.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy , pp. 416 - 432Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
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