Classical Myths in Italian Renaissance Painting

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This book retraces the development of classical imagery in the visual arts of the Italian Renaissance. Luba Freedman examines poems, letters, and treatises on art, which testify to the contemporary desire to depict classical myths in the style and spirit of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and to re-create the artistic patronage of the ancient Romans. This new development in art was driven by collaboration between humanists, artists, and their patrons. The extant artifacts of Roman antiquity, in addition to the study of Greek and Latin texts which brought to light descriptions of ancient paintings, were used as models for re-creating the visual culture of antiquity. Paintings of classical myths that were shaped all'antica, or in the manner of the ancients, reflected the desire of humanists to link the modern Rome with its ancient ancestry.