The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts

This impressive group of articles expands our understanding of the early modern era's adoption of vernacular (as opposed to classical Latin) speech in literature to show how the same nationalistic impetus was simultaneously occurring in the visual arts. In essays on Simone Martini in the writing of Petrarch, Frans Hals, Jan Van Eyck, and Donatello's St. George, the authors describe the societal changes and ideals behind the artists' work and reception. Other topics include analysis of the vernacular in the anti-Catholic satire Beware the cat and the vernacular landscape in 16th-century Antwerp. Art historians Keizer and Richardson are at Yale and the U. of Memphis, respectively. The volume is illustrated in b&w. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Joost Keizer, Ph.D. (2008) in Art History, Universiteit Leiden, is Assistant Professor of Art History at Yale University. Before going to Yale, he was Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Columbia University, 2008-2010. His research focuses on Italian Renaissance Art, from 1300 to 1550. He recently completed his first book, Michelangelo and the Politics of History (forthcoming).Todd M. Richardson, Ph.D. (2007) in Art History, Universiteit Leiden, is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Memphis. He is the author of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Art Discourse in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands (2011) and co-editor of Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medievel and Early Modern Europe (2008).