Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Today we associate the Renaissance with the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture. Yet gem-studded gold-work and richly embellished armour, splendid tapestries, embroideries and textiles, ephemeral multi-media spectacles and other opulent creations were consistently more distinguished and celebrated by contemporaries. The author traces the decline of luxury arts from lofty markers of discernment in the Renaissance to their subsequent marginalization as trinkets unworthy of the status of art. By closely re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she elucidates how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance cities. Without these art forms, the study of Renaissance arts is impoverished and history misrepresented.