The earliest violins incorporated features of existing bowed instruments: the rebec, the Renaissance fiddle, and the lira da braccio.

Keyboard instruments were ideal for playing the polyphonic, or “many-voiced,” music of the Renaissance, because more than one key or melody could be played at the same time.

The precise meaning of some of the motifs that held special significance during the Renaissance has been lost over time.

Italian Renaissance artists became anatomists by necessity, as they attempted to refine a more lifelike, sculptural portrayal of the human figure.

Written by a team of international scholars, The Renaissance Portrait provides new insight into the early history of portraiture in Italy, examining in detail how its major art centers—Florence, the princely courts, and Venice—saw the rapid development of portraiture as closely linked to Renaissance society and politics, ideals of the individual, and concepts of beauty.

Did you know that during the Renaissance as soon as a man saw his prospective wife she became almost like his property?

The manufacture of secular art objects, usually for the purpose of commemoration, personalized these lavish Italian Renaissance interiors.

Maiolica, the refined, white-glazed pottery of the Italian Renaissance, was adapted to all objects that were traditionally ceramic, such as dishes, bowls, serving vessels, and jugs of all shapes and sizes. It was also used as a medium for sculpture and sculptural reliefs, as well as floor and ceiling tiles.

The frames created in Italy during the Renaissance are unequaled in their range of design, richness of decoration, and craftsmanship. Often works of art in themselves, they have suffered nonetheless from their subordinate role. The objects framed might be treasured but the frames were expendable, and frequently they were altered or discarded to keep pace with changes in taste over succeeding generations. The result of such neglect is that comparatively few Renaissance frames survive and little is known today about the artists and artisans who designed and made them. The study of Italian Renaissance frames, as of frames in general, is a study in its infancy. Drawing on the outstanding collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this book presents a unique, fully illustrated survey that traces the Italian frame from its origins in the great Gothic altarpieces through its various, often elaborate manifestations as an independent unit up to the seventeenth century. Within this chronological context, selected examples are grouped by type, and centers of production are identified wherever possible. Profile drawings provide specialist information. The discussion includes frames for mirrors as well as pictures and reliefs, and bronze and terracotta frames as well as wood.

Join Dr. Denise M. Murrell, Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large in The Met’s Director's Office, for a virtual tour of the groundbreaking exhibition _The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism_.