Marilyn Aronberg Lavin

Three essays explore three great masterworks of European art that visualize the relationship between spiritual and physical love expressed passionately and graphically in the biblical Song of Songs. Marilyn Aronberg Lavin writes on Cimabue's vast fresco cycle of the Virgin in the apse of San Francesco in Assisi, at the threshold of the Renaissance, where the Franciscan belief in the bodily Assumption is couched in terms of the Old Testament love poem. Irving Lavin demonstrates how the invocation of love in the Song of Songs molded the form of Michelangelo's Medici Madonna as well as his concept for the entire design and meaning of the Medici mortuary chapel in San Lorenzo, Florence. Writing together, the Lavins reveal the generative power of biblical fulfillment in Rembrandt's famous portrayal of a loving couple, called The Jewish Bride. Marilyn Aronberg Lavin is known for her fundamental work on the history of mural decoration in the churches of Italy, and is the recipient of the coveted Morey Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the College Art Association. Irving Lavin, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, is best known for his work on the Italian Baroque sculpture Gianlorenzo Bernini, but his publications range over a wide span of Western art, from Late Antiquity to Jackson Pollock.

This beautiful series lavishly illustrates the world's major fresco cycles from the early fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Each book also contains a comprehensive text, a biography of the artist, a bibliography, and a glossary.

"Lavin's study of the Pierro della Francesca "Flagellation" at Urbino, as befits this exquisite masterpiece, is a model of lucid and precise exposition as well as being an exciting exercise of scholarship. Informed with the intellectual rigour of Scholastic exegesis, it deserves to be placed with the classic readings of fifteenth and sixteenth century works by Erwin Panofsky and Edgar Wind."—Spectator "[Lavin] leaves the picture more wondrous than before, a simultaneous triumph of the theological and biographical, as well as pictorial, imagination."—Rackstraw Downes, New York Times Book Review

"What do you do when your husband gets the best job in the country in a field that he stole from you? Well, that’s what happened to me, and that’s what this book is about." So begins Marilyn Aronberg Lavin’s spirited memoir of her seventy-year relationship with Irving Lavin, one of America's most eminent art historians. Her narrative traces their parallel careers as they both achieve remarkable success—he as a distinguished professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; she as an award-winning authority on Italian Renaissance painting, iconography, and collectionism. Reflecting on their shared passion for the history of art, Marilyn has crafted a portrait of a partnership, while showing readers how the world of art history can be both intellectually rigorous and emotionally rewarding. intellectual history memoirs renaissance art and architecture

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin has taught the history of art at Washington University, the University of Maryland, Yale, Princeton, and Università di Roma, La Sapienza. Specializing in Italian 13th-16th century painting, she is internationally known for her books and articles on Piero della Francesca. Her other books include The Place of Narrative: Mural Painting in Italian Churches, 431-1600 AD., and Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art , both of which were recipients of international prizes for distinguished scholarship. She is one of the leaders in the use of computers and digitized imagery for research, teaching, and publication in the history of art. This book offers a series of case studies intended to introduce and define an important class of fifteenth-century Italian art not previously recognized. It is argued that the paintings and sculptures discussed were created privately by artists for personal satisfaction and internal needs, outside the traditional framework of patronage and commercial gain. Since there is no direct documentation from this period of a work being privately made, the selection presented here is necessarily speculative. Instead, the essays focus on works by Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Bellini, and Titian that appear in the artists' testaments, letters of refusals to sell, and inventories showing ownership at the time of death. The task at hand is to uncover the motivation and meaning of works of art in which the medieval craftsman began to rise to the status of independent artist, and the maker and the viewer confront each other face to face for the first time.

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin has taught the history of art at Washington University, the University of Maryland, Yale, Princeton, and Università di Roma, La Sapienza. Specializing in Italian 13th-16th century painting, she is internationally known for her books and articles on Piero della Francesca. Her other books include The Place of Narrative: Mural Painting in Italian Churches, 431-1600 AD., and Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art , both of which were recipients of international prizes for distinguished scholarship. She is one of the leaders in the use of computers and digitized imagery for research, teaching, and publication in the history of art. This book offers a series of case studies intended to introduce and define an important class of fifteenth-century Italian art not previously recognized. It is argued that the paintings and sculptures discussed were created privately by artists for personal satisfaction and internal needs, outside the traditional framework of patronage and commercial gain. Since there is no direct documentation from this period of a work being privately made, the selection presented here is necessarily speculative. Instead, the essays focus on works by Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Bellini, and Titian that appear in the artists' testaments, letters of refusals to sell, and inventories showing ownership at the time of death. The task at hand is to uncover the motivation and meaning of works of art in which the medieval craftsman began to rise to the status of independent artist, and the maker and the viewer confront each other face to face for the first time.