Felsina Pittrice

Volume I: Early Bolognese Painting

By (author) Carlo Cesare Malvasia Edited by Elizabeth Cropper Edited by Lorenzo Pericolo

Book cover: Felsina Pittrice

Extent: 562 pages

Publisher: Harvey Miller

Subjects: Art & Art History, Early Modern & Renaissance Studies

Series: Felsina Pittrice: The Lives of the Bolognese Painters

Series volume number: 1

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(November 2012)

ISBN: 9781905375844

8.62 x 10.98 inches

Price: $225.00

In stock

Count Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina pittrice, or Lives of the Bolognese Painters, first published in two volumes in Bologna in 1678, is one of the most important sources for the history and criticism of painting in Italy. This richly illustrated volume provides a translation and critical edition of the opening part of the Felsina p


This richly illustrated volume provides a translation and critical edition of the opening part of the Felsina pittrice, which focuses on the art of late medieval Bologna. The text is unusual in the context of the Felsina pittrice as a whole in that it seeks to record what survives in the city, rather than focusing on individual artists. In response to Vasari’s account of the Renaissance of painting in Florence, Malvasia offers a colorful and valuable portrait of Trecento painting in Bologna, noting the location and condition of destroyed or whitewashed frescoes, dismantled polyptychs, and paintings for which no other record survives. Malvasia provides crucial information on works by important fourteenth-century painters such as Lippo di Dalmasio, Simone dei Crocefissi, and Vitale da Bologna. Included in the volume are historical notes to the text and to the transcriptions of the Scritti originali, published here in their entirety for the first time. The notes enrich our understanding of individual works and identify the sources Malvasia used. Elizabeth Cropper’s introductory essay serves to establish the significance of Malvasia as a historian of art, while Carlo Alberto Girotto’s bibliographical essay analyses the production and reception of the Felsina pittrice as a whole.

  • By (author) Carlo Cesare Malvasia
  • Edited by Elizabeth Cropper
  • Edited by Lorenzo Pericolo