The Gonzaga of Mantua and Pisanello's Arthurian Frescoes

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Hardcover. VG/VG (light shelfwear to boards, scuffing to block and dust jacket. Pages are otherwise clean and clear.). Gray cloth boards, black title block and gilt lettering on spine; color illustrated dust jacket, green spine with white lettering, xxv, 274 pp, [129] pages of bw plates. "The author shows that French chivalric romance, with which the Gonzaga library was well supplied, was enormously popular at early Renaissance courts. The frescoes depicted the adventures that Bohort, an Arthurian hero who glimpsed the Holy Grail, experienced at King Brangoire's castle, including a tournament, a banquet, and his sedution by the king's beautiful daughter. The iconography is considered as it related to the patron's political and social circumstances, and it is argued that the use of Bohort's story reveals Lodovico's desire to expliot his kinship with his wife's family. the Hohenzollern of Brandenburg; alludes indirectly to a relic of Christ's Holy Blood preseved in Mantua; and indicates Gonzaga fantasy identification with the valor of the Arthurian heroes in combat.... This book, however, combines an interest in reintegrating the frescoes into 15th century court life with a traditional art historical concern for pictorial structure, facture, and language. It will be of great interest to art historians as a study of Pisanello's artistic career, of the links between the cycle's pictorial design and the Lancelot's narrative structure, and of Pisanello's physical execution of the frescoes and sinopie."- dust jacket.