Pliny and the artistic culture of the Italian Renaissance: the legacy of the Natural History

Contents

The art history of a book on science -- Pliny's career and the scope of the Natural History: its reception in antiquity and the middle ages -- Pliny on ancient art: the contents of the Natural history, books 33-37 -- Petrarch's Pliny -- Following Petrarch: the widening influence of Pliny on fourteenth-century readers and artists -- Collecting, illuminating, and critiquing the Natural History in fifteenth-century Italy -- Alberti, Ghiberti and the early Florentine response to Pliny -- Pliny as an inspiration for fifteenth-century humanists, educators, patrons, and artists in North Italy -- Pliny in print and in stone -- Mantegna and Leonardo strive to be a new Apelles -- Pliny helps spur the development of new subject matters -- The Plinian signature as a badge of prestige -- Pliny and the formation of art collections in Florence -- Laocoön, or Pliny vindicated -- Beyond Laocoön: Plinian anecdotes as inspiration for subjects and commissions -- Pliny's influence on early sixteenth-century theoretical writers -- Vasari and Pliny as historians of art -- Pliny's influence on theoretical treatises after Vasari -- Pliny's legacy -- Appendix 1: Plinian anecdotes -- Appendix 2: Plinian anecdotes and their citations in the Italian Renaissance -- Appendix 3: signatures derived from Pliny