The first exploration of Piranesi's work as a draughtsman, published to coincide with an exhibition at the British Museum. The Venetian-born artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) is best known for his dramatic prints of the architecture and antiquities of his adopted city of Rome, and for the extraordinary flights of spatial fancy in his series Le Carceri (Prisons). But he was also an astonishingly talented draughtsman, as revealed in this outstanding collection of drawings at the British Museum. This book explores the relationship between Piranesi's drawings and prints, and reveals the way in which his style and interests as a draughtsman evolved over time. Some are spontaneous 'primi pensieri', first thoughts that anticipate a bigger work; others explore more complex exercises in perspective and spatial representation. Piranesi drawings reveals the quality and lasting impact of the work of this remarkably influential artist.

The first comprehensive study of William Ince and John Mayhew's famous eighteenth-century cabinetmaking partnership, complemented by high-quality photographs of their work. The partnership of William Ince (1737-1804) and John Mayhew (1736-1811) ran from 1758 to 1804, and was one of the most enduring and well-connected collaborations in Georgian London's tight-knit cabinetmaking community. The partners' clientele was probably larger, and their work was arguably more influential over a longer period, than most other leading metropolitan makers - perhaps even than that of their older contemporary, the celebrated Thomas Chippendale. Despite their considerable output and an impressive tally of clients and commissions, much of Ince and Mayhew's work has remained unidentified until recent times. The authors' substantial research in private family archives, county record offices and bank archives has allowed them to uncover much new evidence about the business and its influence within cabinetmaking circles. In Industry and Ingenuity, the results of these new investigations are presented alongside an impressive selection of more than 500 colourful, vibrant photographs of Ince and Mayhew's works, many previously unpublished, which together emphasise the partnership's proper position in the pantheon of great eighteenth-century cabinetmakers.

Artemisia Gentileschi, widely regarded as the most important woman artist before the modern period, was a major Italian Baroque painter of the seventeenth century and the only female follower of Caravaggio. This first full-length study of her life and work shows that her powerfully original treatments of mythic-heroic female subjects depart radically from traditional interpretations of the same themes.

In 1646, on a panel fewer than nine inches wide, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) produced one of his most captivating images. In private hands and publicly exhibited only a handful of times, this extraordinary painting, Abraham Entertaining the Angels, is among the artist's lesser-known masterpieces and it is the inspiration for Divine Encounter. Rembrandt took an unusual and dramatic approach to Biblical subjects. He made use of the viewer's knowledge of the subject whilst finding ways to bring the familiar to life, a challenge he took on throughout his career. Abraham and the Angels is presented alongside a selection of Rembrandt's treatments of other biblical episodes in which Abraham encounters God and his angels. These are examined as a group, compared with versions by Rembrandt's contemporaries, and considered in relation to theological, philosophical and artistic debates of the period.

A sweeping history of premodern architecture told through the material of stone Spanning almost five millennia, Painting in Stone tells a new history of premodern architecture through the material of precious stone. Lavishly illustrated examples include the synthetic gems used to simulate Sumerian and Egyptian heavens; the marble temples and mansions of Greece and Rome; the painted palaces and polychrome marble chapels of early modern Italy; and the multimedia revival in 19th-century England. Poetry, the lens for understanding costly marbles as an artistic medium, summoned a spectrum of imaginative associations and responses, from princes and patriarchs to the populace. Three salient themes sustained this "lithic imagination": marbles as images of their own elemental substance according to premodern concepts of matter and geology; the perceived indwelling of astral light in earthly stones; and the enduring belief that colored marbles exhibited a form of natural-or divine-painting, thanks to their vivacious veining, rainbow palette, and chance images.

John Constable is one of the greatest painters of the English weather. His depictions of the sky are essential components of all his landscape paintings, from famous works such as The Hay Wain and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows to his numerous cloud studies painted on Hampstead Heath, culminating in paintings in which the landscape beneath the ever-changing sky is completely absent. Constable kept a weather diary and was endlessly fascinated by the sky. In a letter written in 1821 to friend John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, Constable commented, 'That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids ... It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.' Written by Mark Evans, a leading authority on the work of John Constable, Constable's Skies captures the artist's fascination with the sky and brings together his depictions of the English weather from throughout his career. It will appeal to a broad readership of museum visitors and art lovers, as well as practising landscape painters keen to learn new skills by studying the work of one of the most enduringly popular English artists of all time.

Universally regarded as the father of French painting, Nicolas Poussin is arguably the greatest of all painters of that school. Yet Poussin's reputation has been founded more on the intellectual and philosophical qualities of his art than its sheer visual beauty. In Poussin as a Painter: From Classicism to Abstraction, Richard Verdi redresses the balance, describing and analyzing Poussin's outstanding gifts as a pictorial storyteller, designer and colourist - in short, on the purely aesthetic (and often abstract) aspects of his art that have inspired so many later painters, from Cezanne to Picasso. The book features more than 220 fine illustrations, the majority in colour, and encompasses all aspects of Poussin's art from the mid 1620s to his death in 1665. This ground-breaking study gives new insight into Poussin, and is essential reading for all who admire this seminal French painter.

This collection brings together art historians, museum professionals, conservators, and conservation scientists whose work involves Rembrandt van Rijn and associated artists such as Gerrit Dou, Jan Lievens, and Ferdinand Bol. The range of subjects considered is wide: from the presentation of convincing evidence that Rembrandt and his contemporary Frans Hals rubbed elbows in the Amsterdam workshop of Hendrick Uylenburgh to critical reassessments of the role of printmaking in Rembrandt's studio, his competition with Lievens as a landscape painter, his reputation as a collector, and much more. Developed from a series of international conferences devoted to charting new directions in Rembrandt research, these essays illuminate the current state of Rembrandt studies and suggest avenues for future inquiry.

This book aims to present trompe-l'oeil painting, which epitomizes the myth of the illusionistic image - an early modern way of thinking about pictures, according to which it is possible to create an image identical to what it represents that at the same time preserves its own pictorial identity. Trompe-l'oeil, despite being a marginal genre, embodied an ideal that painting should attain, and therefore is a good point of departure for analyzing issues such as (aesthetic) illusion in art. As the myth undermines Plato's aesthetics, it is his philosophy of art, with its dichotomies of appearance/reality or mimesis/diegesis that offers the most useful context for the discussion of this topic and shows that trompe-l'oeil is a playful and ironic genre, which has cognitive value as well.

This is the first biography and reference book dedicated to Samuel Percy, a modeller who produced an impressive oeuvre of wax portraits and tableaux in the mid-to-late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Based in part on the author's own substantial collection of Percy waxes, this book follows Percy from his beginnings in Dublin, at the Dublin Society Drawing Schools, working with the famed statuary John Van Nost; to England, where he journeyed from town to town, putting advertisements in regional newspapers. These revealing advertisements have been gathered here for the first time, in order to track his travels. Whether taking the likeness of Princess Charlotte of Wales, or falling victim to a highway robber in Birmingham, these fragments of Percy's history paint a fascinating picture of his life as a wandering artisan. As well as a chronological narrative of Percy's life, this book commits an entire chapter to an area of his work that has never been studied before: his miniature tableaux. These portray various subjects, both religious and secular, from Christ on the Cross to playing children. They are catalogued in an appendix, and almost thirty are illustrated. Based entirely on original research, Mr. Percy: Portrait Modeller in Coloured Wax features over a hundred illustrations, celebrating both Percy's accomplishments and the works of other modellers for comparison.

The value of inventories in charting how houses were arranged, furnished and used is now widely appreciated. Typically, the listings and valuations were occasioned by the death of an owner and the consequent need to deal with testamentary dispositions. That was not always so. The inventory for Castlecomer House, Co. Kilkenny, for example, was drawn up to make a claim following the house's devastation in the 1798 uprising. Mostly hitherto unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into the lifestyle and taste of some of the foremost families of the day. Above stairs, the inventories show the evolving collecting habits and tastes of eighteenth-century patrons across Ireland and how the interiors of great town and country houses were arranged or responded to new materials and new ideas. The meticulous recording of the contents of the kitchen and scullery likewise sheds light on life below stairs. Itemized equipment required for the brewhouse, dairy, stables, garden and farmyard reflects the at times significant scale of the communities the houses supported and the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency at some of the demesnes. A comprehensive index facilitates access to the myriad items forming the inventories, while the books listed at three of the houses are tentatively identified in separate appendices. A foreword together with short preambles to the inventories set the households in their historical context. Illustrated with contemporary engravings of the houses and with portraits of the owners of the time, the inventories will appeal to country-house visitors, historians of interiors, patronage, collecting and material culture as well as to scholars, curators, collectors, creative designers, film directors, bibliographers, lexicographers and novelists. The eighteenth century is the period onto which the Knight of Glin directed his penetrating gaze as art historian. The book is dedicated to his memory.

Approaching the Stuart courts through the lens of the queen consort, Anna of Denmark, this study is underpinned by three key themes: translating cultures, female agency and the role of kinship networks and genealogical identity for early modern royal women. Illustrated with a fascinating array of objects and artworks, the book follows a trajectory that begins with Anna's exterior spaces before moving to the interior furnishings of her palaces, the material adornment of the royal body, an examination of Anna's visual persona and a discussion of Anna's performance of extraordinary rituals that follow her life cycle. Underpinned by a wealth of new archival research, the book provides a richer understanding of the breadth of Anna's interests and the meanings generated by her actions, associations and possessions. -- .

Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer are still household names, even though they died over three hundred years ago. In their lifetimes they witnessed the extraordinary consolidation of the newly independent Dutch Republic and its emergence as one of the richest nations on earth. As one contemporary wrote in 1673: the Dutch were 'the envy of some, the fear of others, and the wonder of all their neighbours'. During the Dutch Golden Age, the arts blossomed and the country became a haven of religious tolerance. However, despite being self-proclaimed champions of freedom, the Dutch conquered communities in America, Africa and Asia and were heavily involved in both slavery and the slave trade on three continents. This substantially revised second edition of the leading textbook on the Dutch Republic includes a new chapter exploring slavery and its legacy, as well as a new chapter on language and literature.

Chinoiserie, a decorative style inspired by the art of the Far East, gripped Britain from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Despite taking its name from the French word for 'Chinese', the style also incorporated influences from other Asian countries, helping to shape the period's popular fantasy of the 'exotic Orient'. Wealthy consumers jostled to obtain imported wallpaper, lacquered cabinets and hand-painted porcelain, while domestic manufacturers such as Royal Worcester and Chippendale met demand with mass-produced items of their own. Though interest in the style waned as the Gothic Revival took hold, many examples of Chinoiserie have been preserved. In this beautifully illustrated book, Richard Hayman tells the story of this fascinating phenomenon, and explores the profound impact of Chinoiserie on the material culture of the West.

This generously illustrated volume on the work of Rembrandt makes the world's greatest art accessible to readers of every level of appreciation. Celebrated for his penetrating portraits, richly detailed landscapes, and evocative narrative paintings, the seventeenth century artist Rembrandt is generally considered one of Europe's greatest painters and printmakers, and the master of the Dutch School. His work is distinguished by broad brushwork, luminous palettes, and a sense of order and movement that recalls the finest Renaissance art. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book offers fullpage spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details--allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of the artist's technique and oeuvre. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historic events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, timeline, and suggestions for further reading.

Named retrospectively, the Golden Age was a period when the new Dutch Republic had become the most prosperous nation in Europe, leading in trade, science and art. From 1600 for almost a century, more than four million paintings were produced there, and the accomplishments in realism and naturalism by a large number of Dutch artists were unprecedented.These artists painted life as had never been seen before; their technical skills were often outstanding, and their art was distinctive in its depiction of lifelike objects, places and people of all ages and backgrounds. Unlike traditional Flemish and Italian Baroque paintings, Dutch artists in general avoided idealization or portrayals of splendour, and instead developed their own unique and innovative styles, themes and subjects. The first section of this detailed book considers all this in a biographical guide to some of the greatest Dutch Golden Age artists and their work. Roughly chronological in order, it explains who the painters were, where they lived and worked, who and what taught and influenced them, and why their work was often groundbreaking. Among many others, included are Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Nicolaes Maes, Jan Lievens, Judith Leyster, Gerrit Dou, Gerrit van Honthorst, Adriaen Brouwer, Jan Steen, Hendrick Avercamp, Jacob van Ruisdael, Pieter de Hooch, Johannes Vermeer and Rachel Ruysch. While most are discussed, some do not appear, as even in this substantial book, there is room for only a proportion of the exceptionally proficient painters of the period. The second part of the book is a gallery of outstanding works from a range of Dutch Golden Age artists, grouped into the broad themes of landscapes (and town- and seascapes), portraits, genre, history and religion, and still life, giving a fascinating, colourful and in-depth overview of what constituted the art of the period.With more than 500 reproductions, you can dip in and out of this beautifully illustrated volume, or peruse it from cover to cover. It is essential reading for anyone who would like to learn more about the extraordinary flowering of art during the Dutch Golden Age, and a book that you will turn to over and again

This volume represents a long overdue reassessment of the Neapolitan painter Paolo de Matteis, an artist largely overlooked in English language scholarly publications, but one who merits our attention for the quality of his work and the originality of its iconography, as well as for his remarkable ability to respond creatively to his patrons' aesthetic ideals and agendas. Following a meticulous examination of the ways in which posterity's impression of de Matteis has been conditioned by a biased biographical and literary tradition, Livio Pestilli devotes rich, detailed analyses to the artist's most significant paintings and drawings. More than just a novel approach to de Matteis and the Neapolitan Baroque, however, the book makes a significant contribution to the study and understanding of early eighteenth-century European art and cultural history in general, not only in Naples but in other major European centers, including Paris, Vienna, Genoa, and Rome.

The Erotics of Looking: Early Modern Netherlandish Art presents a collection of provocative essays that explore the material qualities of early Dutch art to reveal ways new forms of visual imagery solicit a beholder s involvement. * Explores how descriptive pictures during the early modern Dutch art period operated as social things and were designed to pleasurably engage the eye and prompt discussion and debate * Shows how these works potentially raised ethical and political questions about the interconnectedness of engaging with pictures and the material world * Represents a major contribution to the field of early modern Netherlandish art and to general debates about the status and functions of descriptive art * Features essays addressing a variety of aspects of the field, from the historiography of Dutch art to closely attentive readings of particular works * Crafts an original theoretical framework by applying recent insights about the making of early modern publics and the study of material things to the analysis of Netherlandish art

This gripping story of one of the great graphic satirists and watercolor artists of the British School is based upon a mass of new research. Rowlandson kept no diary, wrote few letters, and occurs only infrequently in the memoirs of others. Source material is not abundant. But in more than a decade's research, using church and official records, newspaper reports, contemporary accounts, sales catalogues and consideration of his pictures, the authors shed new light on Rowlandson's family background, his education and art training in London and Paris, his personal and professional associations, his travels in Britain and abroad, and the work itself.

Fully illustrated, this major contribution to scholarship will appeal to the general reader and specialist alike and is destined to become the standard work on this benchmark British artist.

"The behind-the-scenes story of the world's most famous palace, painting a picture of the way its residents truly lived and examining the palace's legacy, from French history through today
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The story of Versailles is one of historical drama, under the last three kings of France's old regime, mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts, all in an iconic home for the French arts. The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. "Versailles" sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today.""

Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King's construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a "perpetual house party" of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France's national identity since 1789.

Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself---from architecture and politics to scandal and restoration.

A new interpretation of the development of artistic modernity in eighteenth-century France What can be gained from considering a painting not only as an image but also a material object? How does the painter's own experience of the process of making matter for our understanding of both the painting and its maker? The Painter's Touch addresses these questions to offer a radical reinterpretation of three paradigmatic French painters of the eighteenth century. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth provides close readings of the works of Francois Boucher, Jean-Simeon Chardin, and Jean-Honore Fragonard, entirely recasting our understanding of these painters' practice. Using the notion of touch, she examines the implications of their strategic investment in materiality and sheds light on the distinct contribution of painting to the culture of the Enlightenment. Lajer-Burcharth traces how the distinct logic of these painters' work-the operation of surface in Boucher, the deep materiality of Chardin, and the dynamic morphological structure in Fragonard-contributed to the formation of artistic identity. Through the notion of touch, she repositions these painters in the artistic culture of their time, shifting attention from institutions such as the academy and the Salon to the realms of the market, the medium, and the body. Lajer-Burcharth analyzes Boucher's commercial tact, Chardin's interiorized craft, and Fragonard's materialization of eros. Foregrounding the question of experience-that of the painters and of the people they represent-she shows how painting as a medium contributed to the Enlightenment's discourse on the self in both its individual and social functions. By examining what paintings actually "say" in brushstrokes, texture, and paint, The Painter's Touch transforms our understanding of the role of painting in the emergence of modernity and provides new readings of some of the most important and beloved works of art of the era.

In this new monograph, the latest in Phaidon's Art and Ideas series, Wayne Franits examines the work of Vermeer within the framework of his times, one of the most intellectually creative periods in this history of art. Written in a lively and accessible style, and incorporating the latest scholarship on the artist, Franits provides fresh insights into many of Vermeer's most famous works, uncovering the creative process behind them and their wealth of meanings.

Until recently, the Dutch draughtsman Johan Thopas, who was born in 1626 both deaf and dumb, was only known to a small group of connoisseurs, dealers and collectors. However, his remarkable, subtle and technically refined portrait drawings on parchment deserve a wider audience. This handsome publication, the first devoted to his work, will prove to be an eye opener for many art lovers. Beginning with his earliest works (two beautiful miniatures of 1646 in the Fondation Custodia in Paris), Thopas produced incredibly refined drawings, usually with lead point on parchment. He had an almost magic control of the lead point, and his sense of texture and the way he was able to achieve this with minimal means is astounding, setting him apart from other draughtsmen in the Dutch Golden Age. Thopas was also able to capture brilliantly the characters of his sitters– such as the sulky husband and trouser-wearing wife in the 1684 companion pieces in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Apart from lead-point drawings, Thopas made several drawings in colour, on parchment and on Japanese paper. In most cases these drawings were done after life, although we do know that the large commission he received from the Bas-Kerckrinck family in Amsterdam included several drawings that were done after existing portraits. Furthermore, he produced at least one brilliant copy after a painting by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Venus, Mars and Cupid, and even a painting, portraying a dead child. He must have made more paintings and certainly more drawings than the seventy we know today (all of which are catalogued and illustrated here). In this exhibition his only known painting and the one mythological drawing are accompanied by thirty of his most beautiful portraits, from private collections in the US, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as well-known museums and print rooms, such as the Albertina in Vienna, the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, the Städel in Frankfurt or the Victoria& Albert Museum in London. The author of the catalogue, Prof. Dr Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, is regarded as the most important connoisseur in the field of Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraiture and the author of many important monographs and other publications in the field of Dutch portraiture. He was Director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in The Hague between 1990 and 2012 and gained momentum as Chairman of the Committee that carried his name and proved responsible for the return of many looted works of art that were returned to the heirs of many Jewish collectors in The Netherlands. Included in the book are Dutch and German translations of the essays.

In drawing or painting from live models and real landscapes, more was at stake for artists in early modern Italy than achieving greater naturalism. To work with the model in front of your eyes, and to retain their identity in the finished work of art, had an impact on concepts of artistry and authorship, the authority of the image as a source of knowledge, the boundaries between repetition and invention, and even the relation of images to words. This book focuses on artists who worked in Italy, both native Italians and migrants from northern Europe. The practice of depicting from life became a self-conscious departure from the norms of Italian arts. In the context of court culture in Rome and Florence, works by artists ranging from Caravaggio to Claude Lorrain, Pieter van Laer to Jacques Callot, reveal new aspects of their artistic practice and its critical implications.

Caterpillage is a study of seventeenth-century Dutch still life painting. It develops an interpretive approach based on the author's previous studies of portraiture, and its goal is to offer its readers a new way to think and talk about the genre of still life. The book begins with a critique of iconographic discourse and particularly of iconography's treatment of vanitas symbolism. It goes on to argue that this treatment tends to divert attention from still life's darker meanings and from the true character of its traffic with death. Interpretations of still life that focus on the vanity of human experience and the mutability of life minimize the impact made by the representation of such voracious pillagers of plant life as insects, snails, and caterpillars. The message sent by still life's preoccupation with these small-scale predators is not merely vanitas. It is rapacitas. Caterpillage also explores the impact of this message on the meaning of the genre's French name. We use the conventional term nature morte ("dead nature") without giving any thought to how misleading it is. Because so many portrayals of still life involve cut flowers, which, although still in bloom, are dying, it would be more accurate to name the genre nature mourant. The subjects of still life are plants that are still living, plants that are dying but not yet dead.