Earthly Delights: A History of the Renaissance (Hardback)

'Jonathan Jones has reimagined the Renaissance for our times in a beautifully written love letter to the art of Leonardo, Bosch, Dürer, Titian, Michelangelo and so many others ... it is a tale of artistic innovation and exchange in a world of sex, piety, revolution and discovery. From Van Eyck to Caravaggio, each page makes new connections and offers brilliant revelations about works we thought we knew, but which appear anew under Jones’ period gaze. His love of the art of the period is passionate and infectious: a superb achievement' - Jerry Brotton, author of 'The Renaissance Bazaar' 'One of the most compelling and widely read critics of our time … Jones deftly side-steps the great morass of scholarly verbiage that has built up around this pivotal era, and goes straight to the works of art themselves. We stand at his shoulder as some of the greatest paintings and sculptures of all time reveal their meanings to him - and to us. The result is a highly readable book that makes an extraordinary, but now distant period of human history feel fresh, immediate and very relevant to now. And not least through Jones's own unquenchable passion for his subject' - Mark Hudson, art critic and author of 'Titian, The Last Days' 'The author surveys a wide range of artists and key paintings, providing his own perspective on masterpieces such as Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes (1455-60) sculpture in Florence' - Art Newspaper 'A pearl of a book, a delight to read, full of language and ideas that form a tumbling elegy to the “eruption of curiosity” of the age' - Anna Keays, The Times 'Earthly Delights captures the extraordinary transformation in Europe of thinking from 1400 to 1600 ... Packed with the stories of the geniuses who made the art of this period soar -- from Leonardo and his ideas for a flying machine to Michelangelo and his St Peter’s Basilica – this book is both beautifully illustrated and hugely readable' - Art Society Magazine