Dürer to Veronese

Book excerpt: Focusing on the outstanding sixteenth-century European paintings in the National Gallery, London, this new book is an eagerly awaited companion to Giotto to Durer, the highly regarded guide to the National Gallery's early Renaissance holdings. As beautiful and authoritative as the preceding volume, Durer to Veronese examines the finest works of such artists as Holbein, Raphael, Cranach, Titian, Gossaert, and Bronzino -- creators of some of the most important masterpieces of the sixteenth century. The authors look closely at a variety of types of painting -- including large altarpieces, small domestic, devotional images, diplomatic gifts, furniture decorations, and both intimate and full-length portraits -- as well as frescoes, drawings, and prints. They provide fascinating insights into the meanings of individual pictures and into the purposes they were originally intended to serve, and they explore the social position of the artist in the 1500s. In addition, the book provides the fullest and most up-to-date account yet made of the procedures, practices, and materials these artists employed.