Book Description

Established in 1950, the Columbia Museum of Art is the only public museum in South Carolina with an extensive collection of international art. This is thanks in no small part to significant donations from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation between 1954 and 1974, which have made the museum one of the nation's major depositories of Kress gifts of art. This catalogue serves as a striking visual reference to the museum's holdings in European art from the late Gothic period to the end of the Renaissance and includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, decorative bronzes, furniture, ceramics, stained glass, and textiles. In all, eighty-four pieces are presented in color illustrations and detailed in an art historical context to benefit scholars and researchers as well as interested museum visitors. Fifty-six works of Renaissance art--several by such prominent figures as Bernardo Daddi, Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Andrea Solario, Mariotto Albertinelli, Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Ambrosius Benson, Alessandro Allori, François Clouet, and Jacopo Tintoretto--are described by accomplished art historian Charles R. Mack and a team of researchers in catalogue essays that each provide an in-depth consideration of the artist's biography and contribution, the work, its provenance, and its history of attributions, ownership, and exhibition. The entries also describe such matters as condition, conservation history, and, in the case of paintings, the authenticity of frames. Arranged in chronological order by date of execution, the pieces in this section represent most of the museum's Kress materials. An additional twenty-six pieces are more briefly described in an illustrated checklist. The volume also includes an essay on the formation and distribution of the Kress Collection and an essay on the history of medieval and Renaissance art, with particular attention paid to the museum's holdings. The catalogue concludes with three appendixes treating changes in attribution, the correlation of museum inventory numbers with catalogue numbers, and the correlation of 1962 Kress Collection catalogue numbers with new catalogue numbers.