Bravura: Virtuosity and Ambition in Early Modern European Painting

Description

The first major history of the bravura movement in European painting The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter's di

Nicola Suthor is professor of art history at Yale University. She is the author of Rembrandt's Roughness (Princeton).

"Suthor invigorates this subject in myriad ways, not least by the sheer verve of her writing and the ambition of her project. The book is itself a bravura performance, galloping through several centuries of European art history with considerable wit and erudition."---Alexander Marr, Apollo Magazine "[A] pioneering book. . . . this brilliant and well-illustrated book confirms that bravura was one of the most cognitively demanding techniques of Renaissance painting. The brilliance of Suthor's analysis lies in her fresh terminology and perceptive language of description of even the smallest and most easily overlooked details of composition, and in her critical ability to relate such intricacies to larger issues taken up in paintings and in criticism. She writes in engaging, precise language, and makes persuasive connections with contemporary art criticism and modern aesthetics and cultural theory. "---Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation