Philosophers working on aesthetics have paid considerable attention to art and artists of the early modern period. Yet early modern artistic practices scarcely figure in recent work on the emergence of aesthetics as a branch of philosophy over the course the eighteenth century. This book addresses that gap, elaborating the extent to which artworks and practices of the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were accompanied by an immense range of discussions about the arts and their relation to one another. Rather than take art as a stand-in for or reflection of some other historical event or social phenomenon, this book treats art as a phenomenon in itself. The contributors suggest ways in which artworks and practices of the early modern period make aesthetic experience central to philosophical reflection, while also showing art’s need for philosophy.

Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture argues that theatre, and the new genre of opera in particular, played a key role in creating a new vision of landscape during the long seventeenth century in Italy. It explores how the idea of gardens as theatres emerged at the same time as opera was developed in Italian courts around the turn of the seventeenth century. During this period landscape painting emerged as a genre and the aesthetic of designed landscapes and gardens was wholly transformed, which resulted in a reconceptualization of the relationship between humans and landscape. The importance of theatre as a key cultural expression in Italy is widely recognised, but the visual culture of theatre and its relationship to the broader artistic culture is still being untangled. This book argues that the combination of narratives playing out in natural settings (Arcadia, Parnassus, Alcina), the emotional responses elicited by sets and special effects (the apparent magical manipulation of the laws of nature), and, the way that garden theatres were used for displays of power and to enact princely virtue and social order, all contributed to this shifting idea of landscape in the seventeenth century.

The study of the creation of canine breeds in early modern Europe, especially Spain, illustrates the different constructs against which notions of human identity were forged. This book is the first comprehensive history of early modern Spanish dogs and it evaluates how two of Spain's most celebrated and canonical cultural figures of this period, the artist Diego VelA!zquez and the author Miguel de Cervantes, radically question humankind's sixteenth-century anthropocentric self-fashioning. In general, this study illuminates how Animal Studies can offer new perspectives to understanding Hispanism, giving readers a fresh approach to the historical, literary and artistic complexity of early modern Spain.

The early modern period inherited a deeply-ingrained culture of Christian remembrance that proved a platform for creativity in a remarkable variety of forms. From the literature of church ritual to the construction of monuments; from portraiture to the arrangement of domestic interiors; from the development of textual rites to drama of the contemporary stage, the early modern world practiced 'arts of remembrance' at every turn. The turmoils of the Reformation and its aftermath transformed the habits of creating through remembrance. Ritually observed and radically reinvented, remembrance was a focal point of the early modern cultural imagination for an age when beliefs both crossed and divided communities of the faithful. The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England maps the new terrain of remembrance in the post-Reformation period, charting its negotiations with the material, the textual and the performative.

Museum science, museum analysis, museum history, and museum theory all of these composite designations have come into our parlance in recent years. Above all, this expanding terminology underscores the growing scholarly interest in museums. In this new scholarship, a recurring assertion is that as an institution, the museum has largely functioned as a venue for the formation of specifically national identities. This volume, by contrast, highlights the museum as a product of transnational processes of exchange, focusing on the period from ca. 1750 to 1940."

The Persistence of Presence analyzes the relationship between emblem books, containing combinations of pictures and texts, and Spanish literature in the early modern period. As representations of ideas and ideals, emblems are allegories produced in a particular place and time, and their study can shed light on the central cultural and political activities of an era. Bradley J. Nelson argues that the emblem was a primary indicator of the social and political functions of diverse literary practices in early modern Spain, from theatre to epic prose. Furthermore, the disintegration of a unified medieval world view left many seeking the kinds of deep knowledge that could be accessed through symbolic pictures, increasing their cultural significance. In this detailed examination of emblem books, sacred and secular theatre, and Cervantes' critique of baroque allegory in Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, Nelson connects the early history of emblematics with the drive towards cultural and political hegemony in Counter-Reformation Spain.

Darwin and Theories of Aesthetics and Cultural History is a significant contribution to the fields of theory, Darwin studies, and cultural history. This collection of eight essays is the first volume to address, from the point of view of art and literary historians, Darwin's intersections with aesthetic theories and cultural histories from the eighteenth century to the present day. Among the philosophers of art influenced by Darwinian evolution and considered in this collection are Alois Riegl, Ruskin, and Aby Warburg. This stimulating collection ranges in content from essays on the influence of eighteenth-century aesthetic theory on Darwin and nineteenth-century debates circulating around beauty to the study of evolutionary models in contemporary art.

Even before the upheaval of the Revolution, France sought a new formal language for a regenerated nation. Nowhere is this clearer than in its tombs, some among its most famous modern sculpture-rarely discussed as funerary projects. Unlike other art-historical studies of tombs, this one frames sculptural examples within the full spectrum of the material funerary arts of the period, along with architecture and landscape. This book further widens the standard scope to shed new and needed light on the interplay of the funerary arts, tomb cult, and the mentalities that shaped them in France, over a period famous for profound and often violent change. Suzanne Glover Lindsay also brings the abundant recent work on the body to the funerary arts and tomb cult for the first time, confronting cultural and aesthetic issues through her examination of a celebrated sculptural type, the recumbent effigy of the deceased in death. Using many unfamiliar period sources, this study reinterprets several famous tombs and funerals and introduces significant enterprises that are little known today to suggest the prominent place held by tomb cult in nineteenth-century France. Images of the tombs complement the text to underline sculpture's unique formal power in funerary mode.

A cultural history of the first truly modern art market, Marketing Art in the British Isles, 1700 to the Present furthers the burgeoning exploration of Britain's struggle to carve a niche for itself on the international art scene. Bringing together scholars from the UK, US, Europe, and Asia, this collection sheds new light on such crucial notions as the internationalization of the art market; the emergence of an increasingly complex exhibition culture; issues of national rivalry and emulation; artists' individual and collective strategies for their own promotion and survival; the persistent anti-commercialism of an elite group of art lovers and critics and accusations of philistinism levelled at the middle classes; as well as an unquestionable native British genius at reconciling jarring discourses. Essays explore the unresolved tension between artistic aspirations and commercial interest - a tension that has come to shape Britain's national artistic tradition - from the perspectives of artists, dealers and (super-) collectors, and the upwardly mobile middle classes whose consumerism gave rise to the British art market as it is known today. Specific case studies include Whistler, Roger Fry, Damien Hirst, and Charles Saatchi; essays consider art markets from London and Manchester to Paris and Flanders.

Examining colonial art through the lens of transculturation, the essays in this collection assess painting, sculpture, photography, illustration and architecture from 1770 to 1930 to map these art works' complex and unresolved meanings illuminated by the concept of transculturation. Authors explore works in which transculturation itself was being defined, formed, negotiated, and represented in the British Empire and in countries subject to British influence (the Congo Free State, Japan, Turkey) through cross-cultural encounters of two kinds: works created in the colonies subject over time to colonial and to postcolonial spectators' receptions, and copies or multiples of works that traveled across space located in several colonies or between a colony and the metropole, thus subject to multiple cultural interpretations.

An introduction to the raucous yet educational 'gap year' tours of Europe taken by wealthy British aristocrats in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For many young eighteenth-century aristocrats, the Grand Tour was an essential rite of passage. Spending many months travelling established routes through France and Italy, they would visit the great cultural sites of western Europe - from Paris, through to Venice, Florence and Rome - ostensibly absorbing art, architecture and culture. Yet all too often, it was a gateway to gambling and debauchery. In this beautifully illustrated guide, Mike Rendell shows how the tour reached its zenith, examining the young tourists' activities and how they acquired 'polish' and an appreciation for fashion, opera and classical antiquity. He also explores their passion for souvenirs and art collecting, and how these items made their way back to grand country houses, which were themselves often modelled to the rules of classical European architecture.

In the early 1650s Ferdinand Bol produced a series of wall-covering paintings. This 'painted chamber' is a unique example of a branch of the art of painting which was extremely popular in the seventeenth century, although hardly any of it now remains. Bol's ensemble has always been surrounded by mysteries. Who was the initial owner, what was the reason for its commission and how were the ceiling-high canvases originally placed? Through a combination of material-technical research and archival, stylistic, iconographic and cultural-historical investigation these questions have for the first time been given convincing answers. This book, with Bol's unique ensemble in the lead role, is the account of an exciting (art) historical quest. The journey begins with apparently insignificant damage to the canvases and small remnants of old paint and varnish, passing via Biblical, classical and contemporary history to its eventual destination in the remarkable life of a particularly ambitious Utrecht widow. The reader becomes familiar with the religious beliefs, ideals and social ambitions of a remarkable woman, and sees close-up how, through Bol's paintings, she was able to give literal expression to her endeavours in the turbulent Utrecht in the middle of the Golden Age.

The significance of the media and communications revolution occasioned by printmaking was profound. Less a part of the standard narrative of printmaking's significance is recognition of the frequency with which the widespread dissemination of printed works also occurred beyond the borders of Europe and consideration of the impact of this broader movement of printed objects. Within a decade of the invention of the Gutenberg press, European prints began to move globally. Over the course of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, numerous prints produced in Europe traveled to areas as varied as Turkey, India, Iran, Ethiopia, China, Japan and the Americas, where they were taken by missionaries, artists, travelers, merchants and diplomats. This collection of essays explores the global circulation of knowledge, both written and visual, that occurred by means of prints in the Early Modern period.

During the second half of the eighteenth century British architecture moved away from the dominant school of classicism in favour of a more creative freedom of expression. At the forefront of this change were architect brothers Robert and James Adam. Kondo's work places them within the context of eighteenth-century intellectual thought.

In recent years, art historians have begun to delve into the patronage, production and reception of sculptures-sculptors' workshop practices; practical, aesthetic, and esoteric considerations of material and materiality; and the meanings associated with materials and the makers of sculptures. This volume brings together some of the top scholars in the field, to investigate how sculptors in early modern Italy confronted such challenges as procurement of materials, their costs, shipping and transportation issues, and technical problems of materials, along with the meanings of the usage, hierarchies of materials, and processes of material acquisition and production. Contributors also explore the implications of these facets in terms of the intended and perceived meaning(s) for the viewer, patron, and/or artist. A highlight of the collection is the epilogue, an interview with a contemporary artist of large-scale stone sculpture, which reveals the similar challenges sculptors still encounter today as they procure, manufacture and transport their works.

Velázquez's 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas has inspired an avalanche of published attention since it was first placed on public view in the Museo del Prado in 1819. The essays in this volume survey the responses to the painting in the nineteenth century, when Velázquez's fame outside Spain peaked. They include introductions to interpretations of Las Meninas by twentieth-century art historians, critics, philosophers, and art theorists, as well as the modern appropriation of the work by Picasso.

This book focuses on key monuments of the Baroque style, which varies in different European contexts. It is intended to affirm the existence of individual genius, identifiable styles of art, and historical periods that produced them.

The struggles and achievements of forty-six notable women artists of the early modern period, as documented by their contemporaries, are uniquely brought together in this anthology. The life stories presented here are foundational texts for the history of art, but since most are found only in rare volumes and few have been translated into English, until now they have been generally inaccessible to many scholars. Originally published in biographical compendia such as Vasari's Lives of the Artists, the writings included here document not only the lives of relatively well known women artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Sofonisba Anguissola, but also those who have languished in obscurity, like Anna Waser and Li Yin. Each life story is preceded by a brief introduction to the artist as well as to her biographer, and the texts themselves are annotated to provide necessary clarification. Beyond their documentary value, these stories provide fascinating insight as to how men commonly characterized women artists as exceptions to their sex, and attempted to explain their presence in the male-dominated realm of art. The introductory chapter to the book explores this intriguing gender dynamic and elucidates some of the strategies and historical context that factored into the composition of these lives. The volume includes an appended index to women artists' life stories in biographical compendia of the period

The baroque period deals with the art created roughly between the end of the 16th and the early years of the 18th centuries. The masters of the era include Caravaggio, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Diego Velazquez, and Nicolas Poussin. The Historical Dictionary of Baroque Art and Architecture, Second Edition covers the most salient works of baroque artists, the most common themes depicted, historical events and key figures responsible for shaping the artistic vocabulary of the era, and definitions of terms pertaining to the topic at hand. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Baroque Art and Architecture contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on famous artists, sculptors, architects, patrons, and other historical figures, and events. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Baroque art.

This is the second volume of Friedell's monumental "A Cultural History of the Modern Age." A key figure in the flowering of Viennese culture between the two world wars, this three volume work is considered his masterpiece. The centuries covered in this second volume mark the victory of the scientifi c mind: in nature-research, language-research, politics, economics, war, even morality, poetry, and religion. All systems of thought produced in this century, either begin with the scientifi c outlook as their foundation or regard it as their highest and fi nal goal.

Friedell claims three main streams pervade the eighteenth century: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Classicism. In ordinary use, by "Enlightenment" we mean an extreme rationalistic tendency of which preliminary stages were noted in the seventeenth century. Th e term "Classicism," is well understood.

Under the term "Revolution" Friedell includes all movements directed against what has been dominant and traditional. Th e aims of such movements were remodeling the state and society, banning all esthetic canons, and dethronement of reason by sentiment, all in the name of the "Return to Nature." Th e Enlightenment tendency might be seen as laying the ground for an age of revolution. Th is second volume continues Friedell's dramatic history of the driving forces of the twentieth century.

The first genuinely interdisciplinary study of creativity in early modern England In the seventeenth century, the concept of creativity was far removed from most of the fundamental ideas about the creative act - notions of human imagination, inspiration, originality and genius - that developed in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries. Instead, in this period, students learned their crafts by copying and imitating past masters and did not consciously seek to break away from tradition. Most new material was made on the instructions of apatron and had to conform to external expectations; and basic tenets that we tend to take for granted-such as the primacy and individuality of the author-were apparently considered irrelevant in some contexts. The aim of this interdisciplinary collection of essays is to explore what it meant to create buildings and works of art, music and literature in seventeenth-century England and to investigate the processes by which such creations came into existence. Through a series of specific case studies, the book highlights a wide range of ideas, beliefs and approaches to creativity that existed in seventeenth-century England and places them in the context of the prevailing intellectual, social and cultural trends of the period. In so doing, it draws into focus the profound changes that were emerging in the understanding of human creativity in early modern society - transformations that would eventually lead to the development of a more recognisably modern conception of the notion of creativity. The contributors work in and across the fields of literary studies, history, musicology, history of art and history of architecture, and their work collectively explores many of the most fundamental questions about creativity posed by the early modern English 'creative arts'. REBECCA HERISSONE is Head of Music and Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Manchester. ALAN HOWARD is Lecturer in Music at the University of East Anglia and Reviews Editor for Eighteenth-Century Music. Contributors: Linda Phyllis Austern, Stephanie Carter, John Cunningham, Marina Daiman, Kirsten Gibson, Raphael Hallett, Rebecca Herissone, Anne Hultzsch, Freyja Cox Jensen, Stephen Rose, Andrew R. Walkling, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, James A. Winn.

This innovative study reappraises the Edwardian Baroque movement in British architecture, placing it in its wider cultural, political, and imperial contexts The Edwardian Baroque was the closest British architecture ever came to achieving an "imperial" style. With the aim of articulating British global power and prestige, it adorned civic and commercial structures both in Britain and in the wider British world, especially in the "white settler" Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Evoking the contemporary and emotive idea of "Greater Britain," this new book by distinguished historian G. A. Bremner represents a major, groundbreaking study of this intriguing architectural movement in Britain and its empire. It explores the Edwardian Baroque's significance as a response to the growing tide of anxiety over Britain's place in the world, its widely perceived geopolitical decline, and its need to bolster confidence in the face of the Great Power rivalries of the period. Cross-disciplinary in nature, it combines architectural, political, and imperial history and theory, providing a more nuanced and intellectually wide-ranging understanding of the Edwardian Baroque movement from a material culture perspective, including its foundation in notions of race and gender. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Jean-Baptiste Pierre LeBrun's life was marked by his intense interest in art, first as an artist, and then from 1770 until his death in 1813, as an art dealer/connoisseur and as a participant in the transformation of the Louvre into a national museum during the French Revolution. He managed to accommodate whichever regime assumed power, from monarchy to republic to empire. He married the artist Elisabeth Vigee in 1776 and together they figured prominently in the pre-revolutionary cultural world of Paris. LeBrun travelled widely, buying art for his gallery and contributing to a number of aristocratic collections. His expertise in attributions of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings was acknowledged internationally, while his reference work on the subject was considered the most comprehensive ever written. LeBrun, the grand-nephew of the illustrious artist Charles LeBrun, became one of the most successful art dealers in Paris. He played an active role in the politics of art between 1789 and 1802, serving as an expert-commissioner in restoration at the national museum. His inventories of artworks, confiscated from all over Europe by Napoleon's armies, have provided a valuable record of the development of the French national museum. In addition, his inventories have been useful in the identification and recovery of Nazi confiscations during World War II. LeBrun's accomplishments during a tumultuous period of political and artistic change present evidence of his contributions to the concept of the modern art museum, notably in the areas of conservation, restoration, and arrangement.

As one of the first books to treat portraits of early modern women as a discrete subject, this volume considers the possibilities and limits of agency and identity for women in history and, with particular attention to gender, as categories of analysis for women's images. Its nine original essays on Italy, the Low Countries, Germany, France, and England deepen the usefulness of these analytical tools for portraiture. Among the book's broad contributions: it dispels false assumptions about agency's possibilities and limits, showing how agency can be located outside of conventional understanding, and, conversely, how it can be stretched too far. It demonstrates that agency is compatible with relational gender analysis, especially when alternative agencies such as spectatorship are taken into account. It also makes evident the importance of aesthetics for the study of identity and agency. The individual essays reveal, among other things, how portraits broadened the traditional parameters of portraiture, explored transvestism and same-sex eroticism, appropriated aspects of male portraiture to claim those values for their sitters, and, as sites for gender negotiation, resistance, and debate, invoked considerable relational anxiety. Richly layered in method, the book offers an array of provocative insights into its subject.

This title was first published in 2002: Draw ing on extensive primary research, Greg Smith describes the shifting cultural identities of the English watercolour, and the English watercolourist, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. His convincing narrative of the conflicts and alliances that marked the history of the medium and its practitioners during this period includes careful detail about the broader artistic context within which watercolours were produced, acquired and discussed. Smith calls into question many of the received assumptions about the history of watercolour painting. His account exposes the unsatisfactory nature of the traditional narrative of watercolour painting's development into a 'high' art form, which has tended to offer a celebratory focus on the innovations and genius of individual practitioners such as Turner and Girtin, rather than detailing the anxieties and aspirations that characterized the ambivalent status of the watercolourist. The Emergence of the Professional Watercolourist is published with the assistance of the Paul Mellon Foundation.