Focusing on four Rubens paintings created between 1610 and 1620 - Prometheus Bound, The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, Juno and Argus, and The Finding of Erichthonius - this book re-examines the artist's approach to classical mythology. These theoretically-informed readings provide a fuller understanding of the dynamics of Rubens's copious visual language, and can serve as methodological templates for looking at, and reading of, many other of his complex inventions. Even by the standards of erudition commonly applied to Rubens's oeuvre as a whole, these four paintings were created during a period characterized by a particularly intense engagement on his part with questions of artistic originality and ideal style. Furthermore, the learned themes of these images clearly point to a rarefied audience that could appreciate the intertextual qualities of ancient myths. Like the artist himself, these ideal beholders cultivated a mode of viewing steeped in classical and renaissance theories of literary and rhetorical composition. Thus through these close readings, the author illuminates the manner in which the rhetorical and poetic conventions of the period, as well as the growing appreciation for the various allegorical layers of fables, lead to a better understanding of Rubens's pictorial archaeology of classical myths.

With the walls of their churches bereft of imagery and colour and their worship centered around sermons with carefully constructed outlines (as opposed to movement and drama), Reformed Protestants have often been accused of being dour and unimaginative. Here, William Dyrness explores the roots of Reformed theology in an attempt to counteract these prevailing notions. Studying sixteenth-century Geneva and England, seventeenth-century England and Holland and seventeenth and eighteenth-century Puritan New England, Dyrness argues that, though this tradition impeded development of particular visual forms, it encouraged others, especially in areas of popular culture and the ordering of family and community. Exploring the theology of John Calvin, William Ames, John Cotton and Jonathan Edwards, Dyrness shows how this tradition created a new aesthetic of simplicity, inwardness and order to express underlying theological commitments. With over forty illustrations, this book will prove invaluable to those interested in the Reformed tradition.

The startling conclusion of The Late Paintings of Velazquez is that Diego Velazquez painted two of his most famous works, The Spinners and Las Meninas, as theoretically informed manifestos of painterly brushwork. As a pair, Giles Knox argues, the two paintings form a learned retort to the prevailing critical disdain for the painterly. Knox presents a Velazquez who was much more aware of the art theory of his era than previously acknowledged, leading him to reinterpret Las Meninas and The Spinners as representing together a polemically charged celebration of the "handedness" of painting. Knox removes Velazquez from his Iberian isolation and seeks to recover his highly self-conscious attempt to carve out a place for himself within the history of European painting as a whole. The Late Paintings of Velazquez presents an artist who, like Annibale Carracci, Poussin, Rembrandt, and Vermeer was not only aware of contemporary theoretical writings on art, but also able to translate that knowledge and understanding into a distinctive and personal theory of painting. In Las Meninas and The Spinners, Velazquez propounded this theory with paint, not words. Knox's rethinking of the dynamic relationship between text and image presents a case, not of writing influencing painting, or vice versa, but of the two realms being inextricably bound together. Painterly brushwork presented a challenge to writers on art not just because it was connected too intimately with the base actions of the hand; it was also devilishly hard to describe. By reading Velazquez's painterly performance as text, Knox deciphers how Velazquez was able to craft theoretical arguments more compelling and more vivid than any written counterparts.

Hans Holbein the Younger's life is discovered through his artworks, his family, his patrons and the people who met him. Born into a family of talented artists, Holbein learnt to be a draughtsman, a painter, a portraitist, and a designer for woodcuts. What could not be taught was his remarkable skill as a portrait painter. From an Augsburg workshop as a youth, he would achieve high status as Painter to the King at the English court of Henry VIII. Holbein had a talent to engage with his clients, proven by repeated commissions. He could capture a moment in time, from Erasmus sitting in his study in Basel, to rich Hanseatic merchants seated in their London offices. His gift as a painter was grounded in a sound knowledge of pigments, practical costings and time required to complete a work. In his lifetime he created a unique portfolio of ground-breaking art, predominantly in portraiture. This glorious and comprehensive volume is both a biography and gallery of his work

In 1772, upon the death of her second husband, Mary Delany arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors, and, at the age of seventy-two, created a new art form: mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany produced an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the "Flora Delanica." As she tracks the extraordinary life of Delany--friend of George Frideric Handel and Jonathan Swift--internationally acclaimed poet Molly Peacock weaves in delicate parallels in her own life and, in doing so, creates a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art. This gorgeously designed book, featuring thirty-five full-color illustrations, is to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.

Artemisia Gentileschi was the greatest female artists of the Baroque age. In Artemisia Gentileschi, critic and historian Jonathan Jones discovers how Artemisia overcame a turbulent past to become one of the foremost painters of her day. As a young woman Artemisia was raped by her tutor, and then had to endure a seven-month-long trial during which she was brutally examined by the authorities. Gentileschi was shamed in a culture where honour was everything. Yet she went on to become one of the most sought-after artists of the seventeenth century. Yet she went on to become one of the most sought-after artists of the seventeenth century. Gentileschi's art communicated a powerful personal vision. Like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois or Tracey Emin, she put her life into her art. 'Lives of the Artists'is a new series of brief artists biographies from Laurence King Publishing. The series takes as its inspiration Giorgio Vasari's five-hundred-year-old masterwork, updating it with modern takes on the lives of key artists past and present. Focusing on the life of the artist rather than examining their work, each book also includes key images illustrating the artist's life.

By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture. Mythology had become instead a central element in elite culture. If one did not know the stories one would not understand most of the allusions in the poets and orators, classics and contemporaries alike; nor would one be able to identify the scenes represented on the mosaic floors and wall paintings in your cultivated friends' houses, or on the silverware on their tables at dinner.
Mythology was no longer imbibed in the nursery; nor could it be simply picked up from the often oblique allusions in the classics. It had to be learned in school, as illustrated by the extraordinary amount of elementary mythological information in the many surviving ancient commentaries on the classics, notably Servius, who offers a mythical story for almost every person, place, and even plant Vergil mentions. Commentators used the classics as pegs on which to hang stories they thought their students should know.
A surprisingly large number of mythographic treatises survive from the early empire, and many papyrus fragments from lost works prove that they were in common use. In addition, author Alan Cameron identifies a hitherto unrecognized type of aid to the reading of Greek and Latin classical and classicizing texts--what might be called mythographic companions to learned poets such as Aratus, Callimachus, Vergil, and Ovid, complete with source references. Much of this book is devoted to an analysis of the importance evidently attached to citing classical sources for mythical stories, the clearest proof that they were now a part of learned culture. So central were these source references that the more unscrupulous faked them, sometimes on the grand scale.

Once described as 'England's Apollo' James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos (1674-1744) was an outstanding patron of the arts during the first half of the eighteenth century. Having acquired great wealth and influence as Paymaster-General of Queen Anne's forces abroad, Chandos commissioned work from leading artists, architects, poets and composers including Godfrey Kneller, William Talman, Sir John Vanbrugh, Sir James Thornhill, John Gay and George Frederick Handel. Despite his associations with such renowned figures, Chandos soon gained a reputation for tasteless extravagance. This reputation was not helped by the publication in 1731 of Alexander Pope's poem 'Of Taste' which was widely regarded as a satire upon Chandos and Cannons, the new house he was building near Edgware. The poem destroyed Chandos's reputation as a patron of the arts and ensured that he was remembered as a man lacking in taste. Yet, as this book shows, such a judgement is plainly unfair when the Duke's patronage is considered in more depth and understood within the artistic context of his age. By investigating the patronage and collections of the Duke, through an examination of documentary sources and contemporary accounts, it is possible to paint a very different picture of the man. Rather than the epitome of bad taste described by his enemies, it is clear that Chandos was an enlightened patron who embraced new ideas, and strove to establish a taste for the Palladian in England, which was to define the Georgian era.

Examined here is the historical figure and architectural patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan, the young mother of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV, who for most of the latter half of the seventeenth century shaped the political and cultural agenda of the Ottoman court. Captured in Russia at the age of twelve, she first served the reigning sultan's mother in Istanbul. She gradually rose through the ranks of the Ottoman harem, bore a male child to Sultan Ibrahim, and came to power as a valide sultan, or queen mother, in 1648. It was through her generous patronage of architectural works-including a large mosque, a tomb, a market complex in the city of Istanbul and two fortresses at the entrance to the Dardanelles-that she legitimated her new political authority as a valide and then attempted to support that of her son. Central to this narrative is the question of how architecture was used by an imperial woman of the Ottoman court who, because of customary and religious restrictions, was unable to present her physical self before her subjects' gaze. In lieu of displaying an iconic image of herself, as Queen Elizabeth and Catherine de Medici were able to do, Turhan Sultan expressed her political authority and religious piety through the works of architecture she commissioned. Traditionally historians have portrayed the role of seventeenth-century royal Ottoman women in the politics of the empire as negative and de-stabilizing. But Thys-Senocak, through her examination of these architectural works as concrete expressions of legitimate power and piety, shows the traditional framework to be both sexist and based on an outdated paradigm of decline. Thys-Senocak's research on Hadice Turhan Sultan's two Ottoman fortresses of SeddA1/4lbahir and Kumkale improves in a significant way our understanding of early modern fortifications in the eastern Mediterranean region and will spark further research on many of the Ottoman fortifications built in the area. Plans and elevations of the fortresses are published and analysed here for the first time. Based on archival research, including letters written by the queen mother, many of which are published here for the first time, and archaeological fieldwork, her work is also informed by recent theoretical debates in the fields of art history, cultural history and gender studies.

One of the most significant developments in the study of works of art over the past generation has been a shift in focus from the works themselves to the viewer's experience of them and the relation of that experience both to the works in question and to other aspects of cultural life. The ten essays written for this volume address the experience of art in early modern Europe and approach it from a variety of methodological perspectives: concerns range from the relation between its perceptual and significative dimensions to the ways in which its discursive formation anticipates but does not exactly correspond to later notions of 'aesthetic' experience. The modes of engagement vary from careful empirical studies that explore the complex complementary relationship between works of art and textual evidence of different kinds to ambitious efforts to mobilize the powerful interpretative tools of psychoanalysis and phenomenology. This diversity testifies to the vitality of current interest in the experience of beholding and the urgency of the challenge it poses to contemporary art-historical practice.

Based on a close study of Van Dyck's Self-portrait with a Sunflower, this book examines the picture's context in the symbolic discourses of the period and in the artist's oeuvre. The portrait is interpreted as a programmatic statement, made in the ambience of the Caroline court after Van Dyck's appointment as 'Principal Painter', of his view of the art of painting. This statement, formulated in appropriately visual terms, characterizes painting as a way of looking and seeing, a mode of vision. In making such a claim, the artist steps aside from the familiar debate about whether painting was a manual or an intellectual discipline, and moves beyond any idea of it as simply a means of representing the external world: the painter's definitive faculty of vision can reach further than those realities which present themselves to the eye. John Peacock analyses the motif of looking - the ways in which figures regard or disregard each other - throughout Van Dyck's work, and the images of the sunflower and the gold chain in this particular portrait, to reveal what is essentially an idealist conception of pictorial art. He contradicts previous opinions that the artist was pedestrian in his thinking, by showing him to be familiar with a range of ideas current in contemporary Europe about painting and the role of the painter.

The most famous 18th-century copper engraver, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) made his name with etchings of ancient Rome. His startling, chiaroscuro images imbued the city's archaeological ruins with drama and romance and became favorite souvenirs for the Grand Tourists who traveled Italy in pursuit of classical culture and education. Today, Piranesi is renowned not just for shaping the European imagination of Rome, but also for his elaborate series of fanciful prisons, Carceri, which have influenced generations of creatives since, from the Surrealists to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Loosely based on contemporary stage sets rather than the actual dingy dungeons of Piranesi's day, these intricate images defy architectural reality to play instead with perspective, lighting, and scale. Staircases exist on two planes simultaneously; vast, vaulted ceilings seem to soar up to the heavens; interior and exterior distinctions collapse. With a low viewpoint and small, fragile figures, the prison scenes become monstrous megacities of incarceration, celebrated to this day as masterworks of existentialist drama.

In his monumental study, Christopher Braider explores the dialectical contest between history and truth that defines the period of cultural transition called the 'baroque'. For example, Annibale Carracci's portrayal of the Stoic legend of Hercules at the Crossroads departs from earlier, more static representations that depict an emblematic demigod who has already rejected the fallen path of worldly Pleasure for the upward road of heroic Virtue. Braider argues that, in breaking with tradition in order to portray a tragic soliloquist whose dominant trait is agonized indecision, Carracci joins other baroque artists, poets and philosophers in rehearsing the historical dilemma of choice itself. Carracci's picture thus becomes a framing device that illuminates phenomena as diverse as the construction of gender in baroque painting and science, the Pauline ontology of art in Caravaggio and Rembrandt, the metaphysics of baroque soliloquy and the dismantling of Cartesian dualism in Cyrano de Bergerac and Pascal.

In the rural plateaux of northern Ethiopia, one can still find scattered ruins of monumental buildings that are evidently alien to the country's ancient architectural tradition. This little-known and rarely studied architectural heritage is a silent witness to a fascinating if equivocal cultural encounter that took place in the 16th-17th centuries between Catholic Europeans and Orthodox Ethiopians. The Indigenous and the Foreign in Christian Ethiopian Art presents a selection of papers derived from the 5th Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art, which for the first time systematically approached this heritage. The book explores the enduring impact of this encounter on the artistic, religious and political life of Ethiopia, an impact that has not been readily acknowledged, not least because the public conversion of the early 17th-century Emperor SusA-nyus to Catholicism resulted in a bloody civil war shrouded in religious intolerance. Bringing together work by key researchers in the field, these studies open up a particularly rich period in the history of Ethiopia and cast new light on the complexities of cultural and religious (mis)encounters between Africa and Europe.

Bringing together more than 100 items of clothing, this book reveals the intricacies of Japanese dress from the 18th century to the present. Including garments for women, men and children, the details have been selected both for their exquisite beauty and craftsmanship, and for how much they impart about the wearer's identity, be it age, status or taste. A comprehensive introduction, illuminating the main periods and key themes of Japanese fashion history, is followed by thematic chapters that cover all aspects of clothing, from hair accessories and necklines to hemlines and shoes. Each garment or object is accompanied by a short text exploring its structure and the fascinating range of decorative techniques employed, including embroidery, weaving, lacquering, stencilling, dyeing and digital technology. Specially commissioned detail photography and line drawings provide an invaluable resource for Japanophiles, students, collectors, designers and lovers of fashion and world dress.

The relationship between music and painting in the Early Modern period is the focus of this collection of essays by an international group of distinguished art historians and musicologists. Each writer takes a multidisciplinary approach as he or she explores the interface between music performance and painting, or between music and art theory. The essays reflect a variety and range of approaches and offer methodologies which might usefully be employed in future research in this field. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Franca Trinchieri Camiz, an art historian who worked extensively on topics related to art and music, and who participated in some of the conference panels from which many of these essays originate. Three of Professor Camiz's own essays are included in the final section of this volume, together with a bibliography of her writings in this field. They are preceded by two thematic groups of essays covering aspects of musical imagery in portraits, issues in iconography and theory, and the relationship between music and art in religious imagery.

16 essays by a group of internationally acclaimed authors help contribute to a clearer perception of the complex facets of Jacob Jordaens' oeuvre -- and moreover to distinguish it from the works of Rubens, van Dyck, and his contemporaries. The title "Genius of Grand Scale" refers to the spectrum from history to genre as well as to Jordaens' preference for large formats. The greatness of the artist Jacob Jordaens needs to be emphasized, since even though he outlived Rubens for four whole decades, he was never able to escape from under his shadow. By reference to iconographic and iconological studies, single works are identified and presented in a broad review and the long, in many aspects fragmentary reception of his artistic work also forms a large part of the interpretations presented here. Furthermore, technical examinations of paintings assist in defining more precisely how they were generated.This overdue volume presents essential reading for anyone interested in Jacob Jordaens.

Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most productive and exciting painters of his time, noted for his expressive, emotive and sensual paintings which are now instantly recognizable. Indeed, his voluptuous female figures have given rise to the word 'Rubenesque'. This book explores the life and times of Rubens, from his early studies in Italy through to his apprenticeship in Antwerp and his subsequent outstanding accomplishments as 'the prince of painters and the painter of princes'. It also contains a gallery of 300 of his paintings and drawings, revealing his unparalleled position as an artist, diplomat, scholar, linguist, teacher, art collector and devoted family man.

Stretching back to antiquity, motion had been a key means of designing and describing the physical environment. But during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, individuals across Europe increasingly designed, experienced, and described a new world of motion: one characterized by continuous, rather than segmented, movement. New spaces that included vistas along house interiors and uninterrupted library reading rooms offered open expanses for shaping sequences of social behaviour, scientists observed how the Earth rotated around the sun, and philosophers attributed emotions to neural vibrations in the human brain. Early Modern Spaces in Motion examines this increased emphasis on motion with eight essays encompassing a geographical span of Portugal to German-speaking lands and a disciplinary range from architectural history to English. It consequently merges longstanding strands of analysis considering people in motion and buildings in motion to explore the cultural historical attitudes underpinning the varied impacts of motion in early modern Europe.

Even during the artist's lifetime, contemporary art lovers considered Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) to be an exceptional artist. In this revelatory sequel to the acclaimed Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, renowned Rembrandt authority Ernst van de Wetering investigates the painter's considerations that determined the striking changes in his development from an early age onwards. This gorgeously illustrated book explores how Rembrandt achieved mastery by systematic exploration of the 'foundations of the art of painting'. According to written sources from the seventeenth century, which were largely misinterpreted until now, these 'foundations' were considered essential at that time. From his first endeavours in painting, Rembrandt embarked on a journey past these foundations, thus becoming the 'pittore famoso', whom Count Cosimo the Medici visited at the end of his life. Rembrandt never stopped searching for solutions to the pictorial problems that confronted him; this led over time to radical changes that cannot simply be attributed to stylistic evolution or natural development. In a quest as rigorous and novel as the artist's, Van de Wetering reveals how Rembrandt became the revolutionary painter that would continue to fascinate the art world. This ground breaking exploration reconstructs Rembrandt's theories and methods, shedding new light both on the artist's exceptional accomplishments and on the theory and practice of painting in the Dutch Golden Age.

Art in Theory (1648-1815) provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents on the theory of art from the founding of the French Academy until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Like its highly successful companion volumes, Art in Theory (1815-1900) and Art in Theory (1900-1990), its' primary aim is to provide students and teachers with the documentary material for informed and up-to-date study. Its' 240 texts, clear principles of organization and considerable editorial content offer a vivid and indispensable introduction to the art of the early modern period.
Harrison, Wood and Gaiger have collected writing by artists, critics, philosophers, literary figures and administrators of the arts, some reprinted in their entirety, others excerpted from longer works. A wealth of material from French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Latin sources is also provided, including many new translations.
Among the major themes treated are early arguments over the relative merits of ancient and modern art, debates between the advocates of form and color, the beginnings of modern art criticism in reviews of the Salon, art and politics during the French Revolution, the rise of landscape painting, and the artistic theories of Romanticism and Neo-classicism.
Each section is prefaced by an essay that situates the ideas of the period in their historical context, while relating theoretical concerns and debates to developments in the practice of art. Each individual text is also accompanied by a short introduction. An extensive bibliography and full index are provided.
For more details of our book and journal list in Art, visit http: //www.blackwellpublishing.com/arttheory

Poussin's scenes of bacchanalian revelry, tripping maenads and skipping nymphs are often described as 'dancelike' and 'choreographed'. The artist's dancing pictures helped him develop a new approach to painting that would become the model for the French classical tradition. Shedding the sensuous, painterly manner of his early career, Poussin carved out the crisp, relief-like approach that characterized his mature work and set the precedent for three centuries of French art, from Le Brun and David to Cezanne and Picasso. He carried lessons learned from dance into every corner of his production. This book brings together a key group of paintings and drawings by Poussin, exploring the theme of dance and dancers in his production for the first time. Focusing on the dancing pictures created in Rome in the 1620s and 1630s, essays connect Poussin's interest in dance, his study of antiquities, and his formulation of a new classical style. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, this publication uses the prism of dance to cast Poussin in a new, fresh light.

Published to mark the reopening of the spectacular baroque interior of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich after a landmark conservation project, The Painted Hall is a wonderful celebration of what has been called `the Sistine Chapel of the UK'. The ceiling and wall decorations of the Painted Hall were conceived and executed by the artist Sir James Thornhill between 1707 and 1726 - years that witnessed the Act of Union during the reign of Queen Anne and Great Britain's rise to become a dominant Protestant power in a predominantly Catholic Europe. The accessions to the throne of William III and Mary II in 1688 and George I in 1714 form the central narrative of a scheme that also honours Britain's maritime successes and mercantile prosperity. The artist drew on a cast of around 200 figures - a mixture of historical, contemporary, allegorical and mythological characters - to tell a story of political change, scientific and cultural achievements, naval endeavours, and commercial enterprise against a series of magnificent backdrops. In the first part of the book, Dr Anya Lucas describes the history and architecture of the building and the background to Thornhill's commission. The grandeur of his composition, which covers 40,000 square feet, reflects the importance of the space that the paintings adorn: the hall of the new Royal Hospital for Seamen. The Hospital was established in 1694 at Queen Mary's instigation for men invalided out of the Navy, and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor. The Painted Hall was originally intended as a grand dining room, but it soon became a ceremonial space open to paying visitors and reserved for special functions. The last naval pensioners left the site in 1869, when it became home to the Royal Naval College, an officers' training academy. The passage of nineteen years from the start of the commission to its completion, and the need to navigate contemporary political events, meant that Thornhill was required to rethink the design of his paintings several times. His preparatory sketches for the Painted Hall reveal how carefully he experimented with and planned the content. When he had finished his work, Thornhill wrote An Explanation of the paintings, which was published by the Hospital directors and sold to visitors. This guide is the subject of the second part of our book, by Dr Richard Johns. Johns also explores image and meaning in Thornhill's decorative scheme, which stretches across three distinct but connected spaces: the domed Vestibule, the long Lower Hall, and the Upper Hall, together presenting a vivid and compelling picture of Britain's place in the world according to those who governed it at the start of the 18th century. During the last 300 years, smoke and dirt built up on the fragile painted surfaces of the Hall, and varnish layers fractured under the effects of heat and humidity. In the final part of the book, the specialist conservators Sophie Stewart and Stephen Paine consider historic restorations of the Painted Hall from the 18th century to the Ministry of Works campaign of the late 1950s. The spring of 2019 sees the completion of a ground-breaking conservation programme that has reversed decades of decay and ensured the long-term preservation of the paintings. Now that every inch of decorated surface has been lovingly cleaned and conserved, new photography brings the colour, clarity and vibrancy of Thornhill's masterpiece to life.

The painting La Surprise by Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) belongs to a new genre of painting invented by the artist himself-the fete galante. These works, which show graceful open-air gatherings filled with scenes of courtship, music and dance, strolling lovers, and actors, do not so much tell a story as set a mood: one of playful, wistful, nostalgic reverie. Esteemed by collectors in Watteau's day as a work that showed the artist at the height of his skill and success, La Surprise vanished from public view in 1848, not to reemerge for more than a century and a half. Acquired by the Getty Museum in 2017, it has never before been the subject of a dedicated publication. Marking the three hundredth anniversary of Watteau's death, this book considers La Surprise within the context of the artist's oeuvre, and discusses the surprising history of collecting Watteau in Los Angeles.

This book examines a range of visual images of military recruitment to explore changing notions of glory, or of gloire, during the French Revolution. It raises questions about how this event re-orientated notions of 'citizenship' and of service to 'la Patrie'. The opening lines of the Marseillaise are grandly declamatory: Allons enfants de la Patrie/le jour de gloire est arrive! or, in English: Arise, children of the Homeland/The day of glory has arrived! What do these words mean in their later eighteenth-century French context? What was gloire and how was it changed by the revolutionary process? This military song, later adopted as the national anthem, represents a deceptively unifying moment of collective engagement in the making of the modern French nation. Valerie Mainz questions this through a close study of visual imagery dealing with the issue of military recruitment. From neoclassical painting to popular prints, such images typically dealt with the shift from civilian to soldier, focusing on how men, and not women, were called to serve the Homeland.