Italian Frescoes

The frescoes known today are so varied in their imaginative power, function, and themes, and so masterfully executed, that this body of work has long been recognized as a culminating moment in the history of Western art.
Italian Frescoes: High Renaissance and Mannerism, 1510-1600 - illustrated with 460 reproduced full-color images and 60 black-and-white illustrations and plans - presents the full spectrum of this epochal achievement. Authors Julian Kliemann and Michael Rohlmann pay equal attention to religious frescoes, which in this period extended and enriched a venerable tradition, and secular imagery. During the cinquecento in Italy hardly a single opulent residence, villa, or palace belonging to a cardinal or aristocrat was not decorated in some fashion with mural painting, which developed in an unprecedented variety of forms.

Michael Rohlmann was research associate at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, from 1997 to 2001, and lectures at the University of Cologne.