Italian Renaissance Painting: The Sixteenth Century

Professor David Rosand

On Julius II

Loren Partridge and Randolph Starn, A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in Raphael's Julius II (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1980): a contextual reading of Raphael's portrait of Julius II

Christine Shaw, Julius II: The Warrior Pope (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993): in particular, chapter 7 ("'Julius Caesar Pontifx II'?") questions the imperial vision generally ascribed to this pope's patronage


On Rome

George L. Hersey, High Renaissance Art in St. Peter's and the Vatican: An Interpretive Guide (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993): an informative guide through the buildings and their decorations

John F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)

Peter Partner, Renaissance Rome 1500-1559: A Portrait of a Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976)

John W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450-1521 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1979)



Further Background Reading

R. Wittkower, "The Arts in Italy," in The New Cambridge Modern History, I: The Renaissance 1493-1520, ed. G.R. Potter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), pp. 127-153: a masterful summary and overview

Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949), 3rd ed. (London: Alec Tiranti, 1962; New York: W.W. Norton, 1971): rich analysis of the content of form, demonstrating the deep values of Renaissance architecture




The Papal Sequence

Sixtus IV (Francesco Della Rovere), 1471-84
Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cybo), 1484-92
Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), 1492-1503
Pius III (Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini), 1503
Julius II (Giuliano Della Rovere), 1503-13
Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici), 1513-21
Adrian VI (Adrian Florenz, from Utrecht), 1522-23
Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici), 1523-34
Paul III (Alessandro Farnese), 1534-49
Julius III (Giovan Maria Ciocchi del Monte), 1550-55
Marcellus II (Marcello Cervini), 1555
Paul IV (Gian Pietro Carafa), 1555-59
Pius IV (Giovanni Angelo Medici), 1555-65
Pius V (Antonio Ghislieri), 1566-72
Gregory XIII (Ugo Boncompagni), 1572-85
Sixtus V (Felice Peretti), 1585-90