A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1600. The Renaissance was a cultural movement, a time of re-awakening when classical knowledge was rediscovered, leading to an efflorescence in philosophy, art, and literature. The period fostered an emerging sense of individualism across European cultures. This sense was expressed through a fascination with materiality and the natural world, and a growing attachment to things. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. James Symonds is Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte

A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1600. The Renaissance was a cultural movement, a time of re-awakening when classical knowledge was rediscovered, leading to an efflorescence in philosophy, art, and literature. The period fostered an emerging sense of individualism across European cultures. This sense was expressed through a fascination with materiality and the natural world, and a growing attachment to things. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. James Symonds is Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte

We know the Renaissance as a key period in the history of Europe. It saw the development of court and urban cultures, witnessed the first global voyages of discovery and gave rise to the Reformation and Counter Reformation. It also started with the 'invention' of oil painting, linear perspective and moveable type, all visual technologies. Does that mean, as has been suggested, that the Renaissance stands for the 'ascendancy of the eye'? If so, then what happened to the sensory extremes which the famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga still perceived in the 15th century? Did they simply disappear? Or is there another history to be told, a history of a surprising continuity, not only of the sense of hearing but also of the 'lower' senses – those of taste, smell and touch? And was the Renaissance not first and foremost a time of deep sensory anxiety? This volume, assembling nine outstanding specialists, seeks to answer these questions while offering a lively and 'sensational' portrait of the period. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Renaissance presents essays on the following topics: the social life of the senses; urban sensations; the senses in the marketplace; the senses in religion; the senses in philosophy and science; medicine and the senses; the senses in literature; art and the senses; and sensory media.

A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1650, a time of change, conflict, and transformation. Innovations in color production transformed the material world of the Renaissance, especially in ceramics, cloth, and paint. Collectors across Europe prized colorful objects such as feathers and gemstones as material illustrations of foreign lands. The advances in technology and the increasing global circulation of colors led to new color terms enriching language. Color shapes an individual's experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Amy Buono is Assistant Professor at the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University , USA. Sven Dupré is Professor of History of Art, Science and Technology at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf

A Cultural History of Peace presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. The set of six volumes covers over 2500 years of history, charting the evolving nature and role of peace throughout history. This volume, A Cultural History of Peace in the Renaissance, explores peace in the period from 1450 to 1648. As with all the volumes in the illustrated Cultural History of Peace set, this volume presents essays on the meaning of peace, peace movements, maintaining peace, peace in relation to gender, religion and war and representations of peace. A Cultural History of Peace in the Renaissance is the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on peace in the early modern era.

The Middle Ages were marked by dramatic social, economic, political, and religious changes. Diverse regional and local conditions, and varied social classes - including peasant, artisan, merchant, clergy, nobility, and rulers - resulted in differing needs for furniture. The social settings for furniture included official and private residences both grand and humble, churches and monasteries, and civic institutions, including places of governance and learning, such as municipal halls, guild halls, and colleges. This volume explores how furniture contributed to the social fabric within these varied spaces. The chronological range of this volume extends from the fall of the Roman Empire through to the early Renaissance, a period which exhibited a wide array of types, styles, and motifs, including Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance. Rural and regional styles of furniture are also considered, as well as techniques of furniture manufacture. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, this volume presents essays that examine key characteristics of the furniture of the period on the themes of Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations.

In the period 1450 to 1650 in Europe, hair was braided, curled, shaped, cut, colored, covered, decorated, supplemented, removed, and reused in magic, courtship, and art, amongst other things. On the body, Renaissance men and women often considered hair a signifier of order and civility. Hair style and the head coverings worn by many throughout the period marked not only the wearer's engagement with fashion, but also moral, religious, social, and political beliefs. Hair established individuals' positions in the period's social hierarchy and signified class, gender, and racial identities, as well as distinctions of age and marital and professional status. Such a meaningful part of the body, however, could also be disorderly, when it grew where it wasn't supposed to or transgressed the body's boundaries by being wild, uncovered, unpinned, or uncut. A natural material with cultural import, hair weaves together the Renaissance histories of fashion, politics, religion, gender, science, medicine, art, literature, and material culture. A necessarily interdisciplinary study, A Cultural History of Hair in the Renaissance explores the multiple meanings of hair, as well as the ideas and practices it inspired. Separate chapters contemplate Religion and Ritualized Belief, Self and Society, Fashion and Adornment, Production and Practice, Health and Hygiene, Sexuality and Gender, Race and Ethnicity, Class and Social Status, and Cultural Representations.

In a time before large banking systems, and with paper money just in its infancy, money during the Renaissance meant coinage (mainly gold and silver) and local credit systems. These monetary forms had a significant influence on the ways in which money was understood throughout the period, and shaped discussions on such topics as the meaning of monetary value, the economic, political, religious, and aesthetic uses of coinage, the moral implications of usury and credit systems, and the importance of reputation, both at the state and individual levels. Crucial to the transformation of ideas about money in the period was the growing awareness that the individuals, up to and including the monarch, were powerless to overcome the market forces that determined value and directed the movement of goods and money. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Money in the Renaissance presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of technologies, ideas, ritual and religion, the everyday, art and representation, interpretation, and the issues of the age.

This collection of original essays brings together some of the most prominent figures in new historicist and cultural materialist approaches to the early modern period, and offers a new focus on the literature and culture of the Renaissance. Traditionally, Renaissance studies have concentrated on the human subject. The essays collected here bring objects - purses, clothes, tapestries, houses, maps, feathers, communion wafers, tools, pages, skulls - back into view. As a result, the much-vaunted early modern subject ceases to look autonomous and sovereign, but is instead caught up in a vast and uneven world of objects which he and she makes, owns, values, imagines, and represents. This book puts things back into relation with people; in the process, it elicits new critical readings, and new cultural configurations.

Food and attitudes toward it were transformed in Renaissance Europe. The period between 1300 and 1600 saw the discovery of the New World and the cultivation of new foodstuffs, as well as the efflorescence of culinary literature in European courts and eventually in the popular press, and most importantly the transformation of the economy on a global scale. Food became the object of rigorous investigation among physicians, theologians, agronomists and even poets and artists. Concern with eating was, in fact, central to the cultural dynamism we now recognize as the Renaissance. A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance presents an overview of the period with essays on food production, food systems, food security, safety and crises, food and politics, eating out, professional cooking, kitchens and service work, family and domesticity, body and soul, representations of food, and developments in food production and consumption globally.