The Lies of the Artists: Essays on Italian Art, 1450-1750

by Ingrid D. Rowland

Luminous essays on artists of the Italian Renaissance by one of our most inspired writers on the history and making of art.In the three centuries from 1450 to 1750 painters, sculptors, and architects emerged from the medieval craft guilds of Italy to claim a new social status as creators, whose gorgeous handiwork, now called “art,” expressed lofty inspiration as much as manual skill. In The Lies of the Artists, Ingrid Rowland takes us into the world of these artists, and into their seemingly miraculous ways of transforming transcendent ideas into tangible works of art that challenged and redefined reality, “lies” with the power to reveal a deeper truth. As the great art patron Daniele Barbaro “bisogna aprire gli occhi,” or “you have to open your eyes.” And this is precisely what Rowland does in these essays, bringing her knowledge, keen perception, and singular wit to bear on the art and lives of Renaissance masters, including Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, Raphael, Titian, and El Greco, as well as some overlooked artists of phenomenal talent, such as Antonello da Messina, Andrea del Sarto, and Bertoldo di Giovanni. In dazzling prose, as luminous and versatile as the painterly effects she describes, she shows us the work of these artists in eye-opening, thought-provoking ways, recreating the delight and insight that the discovery of great art evokes.

Genres: Art, Essays, Nonfiction

184 pages, Paperback

Published December 17, 2024

About the author

Ingrid Drake Rowland is a professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Based in Rome, Rowland writes about Italian art, architecture, history and many other topics for The New York Review of Books. She is the author of the books Giordano Bruno: Philospher/Heretic (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008); The Place of the Antique in Early Modern Europe; The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth Century Rome; The Roman Garden of Agostino Chigi Horst Gerson Memorial Lecture, Groningen: University of Groningen, 2005; The Scarith of Scornello: a Tale of Renaissance Forgery (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Her essays in The New York Review of Books were collected in From Heaven to Arcadia: The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance (New York Review Books, 2005).

Reviews

[Edie Lee]

I learned a lot in these brief essays on Renaissance (and a bit beyond) artist.d This says a lot as I have studied most of them for years. The author reveals little known details about such artists Antonello Da Messina, Titian, Michaelangelo, Tintoretto, El Greco, Tiepolo, Caravaggio and others. It gave me a new perspective on their work.

My only gripe is there are only a few pictures. Lots of paintings and sculptures are discussed, but I had to rely on my memory and google in order to see them. I realize to include more illustration would be cost prohibitive. Perhaps QR codes could be included?

[michal k-c]

Solid as an introduction to several of the key figures of the renaissance but I wish this went a bit further / did a bit more with its purported thesis laid out in the introduction (the distortion of "truth" in any act of representation). On that note I do think we need to remember Adorno's crucial distinction between what is "true" and what is "factual"

[Coco Allen]

Rowland brings the artists to life. Illuminating. A welcome change of pace for those who have grown tired of the pretentious and overly academic standard of art history.