Bellezza e Bruttezza

Beauty and ugliness have been subjects of fascination and inquiry since antiquity, universal themes whose variations are determined by cultures and eras. How was the dialectic between beauty and ugliness formally expressed between the late 15th and 16th centuries, a pivotal period? Renaissance artists were the first to grant them equal importance, and this interest grew throughout the 16th century. This book explores this trajectory, presenting the themes of beauty and ugliness in their most salient and representative aspects. A comparative approach between the works of the Italian Renaissance and those of Northern Europe, in particular the former Low Countries, makes it possible to grasp the constants and variations in the history of forms and taste, supported by works accompanied by notices, among others by Sandro Botticelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Leonardo da Vinci, Frans Floris de Vriendt, Albrecht Dürer, Lorenzo Lotto, Quentin Metsys, Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

Under the scientific direction of Chiara Rabbi Bernard and with essays by Cristina Acidini, Christophe Brouard, Elena Capretti, Maria Clelia Galassi, Yves Hersant, Koenraad Jonckheere, Catherine Lanoë, Pietro C. Marani and Giandomenico Spinola.