What role did visual artists play in the emergence and spread of nationalism and a sense of national identity? Focusing on late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britain and France, this original study in the historical sociology of nations and nationalism analyses the contributions of artists in these and other West European countries to the creation of memorable images of the abstract concept of the nation. By employing different modes of depiction for conveying moral lessons, evoking the atmosphere of the homeland, and commemorating the fallen in battle, David, Ingres, Turner, Constable, and Friedrich, as well as a host of lesser artists, were able to make the national idea appear palpable and accessible, and the abstract concept of the nation seem 'authentic' and 'real'. After a brief description of the main themes of the visual record of Dutch nation-building in the seventeenth century, Anthony D. Smith presents an original comparative analysis of the rise of 'national art' in eighteenth-century Britain and France. Subsequent chapters address the emblems and oath-swearing ceremonies of the citizen nation, the evocation of native poetic landscapes, the exempla virtutis of national heroes, ancient and modern, and the funerary memorials of martyrs and soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the nation in Britain and France. The conclusion highlights the common elements and the main differences in the French and British trajectories of artistic and national development. Illustrated with striking images, The Nation Made Real offers a new interpretation of the role of visual culture in the formation of nations and national identity among the educated classes in Western Europe.

This book presents the Gianfranco Luzzetti collection housed in the historic complex of the former convent of the Clarisse in Grosseto, a new museum in the city. The collection is the result of the donation to the Municipality, in 2018, of over 60 works from the personal heritage of Luzzetti, an antiquarian from Grosseto, deeply linked to his land. The paintings, of great quality, trace Italian art from the 14th to the 19th century, with particular attention to Florentine art of the 17th century. The collection includes masterpieces by Antonio Rossellino, Giambologna, Rutilio Manetti, Passignano, Niccolo di Pietro Lamberti, Corrado Giaquinto, Camillo Rusconi, Pier Dandini and Giovanni di Tano Fei, as well as important works by Donatello and Beccafumi and works already donated to the Municipality of Grosseto in past years, of Santi di Tito and Cigoli. This volume, with introductory texts regarding the history of the site, the birth of the Museum and the Collection, is complemented by an anthology of writings by Luzzetti and bibliographic apparatuses. Research and texts: Sandro Bellesi, Marco Ciampolini, Roberto Contini, Elena Dubaldo, Lucia Ferri, Claudia Ganci, Cecilia Luzzetti, Gianfranco Luzzetti, Andrea Marchi, Mauro Papa, Marcella Parisi, Francesca Perillo, Gianluca Sposato, Angelo Tartuferi. Italian edition, with English translation in the appendix.

Gothic Architecture and Sexuality in the Circle of Horace Walpole shows that the Gothic style in architecture and the decorative arts and the tradition of medievalist research associated with Horace Walpole (1717–1797) and his circle cannot be understood independently of their own homoerotic culture. Centered around Walpole’s Gothic villa at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, Walpole and his “Strawberry Committee” of male friends, designers, and dilettantes invigorated an extraordinary new mode of Gothic design and disseminated it in their own commissions at Old Windsor and Donnington Grove in Berkshire, Lee Priory in Kent, the Vyne in Hampshire, and other sites. Matthew M. Reeve argues that the new “third sex” of homoerotically inclined men and the new “modern styles” that they promoted—including the Gothic style and chinoiserie—were interrelated movements that shaped English modernity. The Gothic style offered the possibility of an alternate aesthetic and gendered order, a queer reversal of the dominant Palladian style of the period. Many of the houses built by Walpole and his circle were understood by commentators to be manifestations of a new queer aesthetic, and in describing them they offered the earliest critiques of what would be called a “queer architecture.” Exposing the role of sexual coteries in the shaping of eighteenth-century English architecture, this book offers a profound and eloquent revision to our understanding of the origins of the Gothic Revival and to medievalism itself. It will be welcomed by architectural historians as well as scholars of medievalism and specialists in queer studies.

The Arts of Living explores the range, depth and beauty of the V&A's European collections from 1600-1815, the period that laid the foundations for the world we know today. At the heart of the book is in investigation into the objects of everyday life, and the ways that art and design both reflected and changed how people lived. The works of art and manufactured goods with which men and women surrounded themselves defined their identity and role in society - from monarchs to merchants, craftsmen to housewives. Singular masterpieces by painters and sculptors including Boucher and Bernini, along with the work of such leading manufacturers as the Gobelins, Boulle and Meissen, illustrate a great diversity of subjects, from Louis XIV and Catherine the Great to male adornment and fashionable silks, from Jewish traditions and the Dutch interior to the East India trade and Africans in European art.

Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed monumental upheavals in both the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the repercussions rippled down to the churches' religious art forms. In this major new study, Nigel Aston chronicles the intertwining of cultural and institutional turmoil during this pivotal century. The sustained production and popularity of religious art in the face of competition from increasingly prevalent secular artworks lies at the heart of this book. Religious art staked out new spaces of display in state institutions, palaces and private collections as well as taking advantage of state patronage from monarchs such as Louis XIV and George III, who funded religious art in an effort to enhance their national projects and monarchial prestige. Aston explores the motivations of private collectors and how they exhibited their artworks, and analyses changing Catholic and Protestant attitudes toward art. He examines purchases made by corporate patrons such as charity hospitals and religious confraternities, and considers what this reveals about the changing religiosity of eighteenth-century Europe. An in-depth historical study, "Art and Religion in Eighteenth-century Europe" will be essential for art history and religious studies scholars alike.

George Stubbs (1724-1806), now recognized as one of the greatest and most original artists of the eighteenth century, stands out from other practitioners in the field of animal painting. His most frequent commissions were for paintings of horses, dogs, and wild animals, and his images invariably arrest attention and frequently strike a deeply poetic note. Stubbs did not emerge as a painter until he was in his mid-thirties, but then his genius flowered astonishingly. He steadily celebrates English sporting and country life and reveals himself-in his "incidental" portraits of jockeys and grooms, for example-as a perceptive observer of different levels of social behavior. Among his many experiments with technique were his chemical experiments with painting in enamels, first on copper and later on earthenware "tablets," manufactured for him in Wedgwood's potteries. This is the first full catalogue of Stubbs's paintings and drawings. Along with the full catalogue entries, the book offers a lengthy study of Stubbs's art and career. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

This text explores three of Bernini's baroque chapels to show how Bernini achieved his effects. Careri examines the ways in which the artist integrated the disparate forms of architecture, painting and sculpture into a coherant space for devotion, and then shows how this accomplishment was understood by religious practitioners. In the Fonseca Chapel, the Albertoni Chapel and the church of Saint Andrea al Quirinale, all in Rome, Careri identifies three types of ensemble and links each to a particular spiritual journey. Using contemporary theories in anthropology, film and reception aesthetics, he shows how Bernini's formal mechanisms established an emotional dynamic between the beholder and a specific arrangement of forms.

Bibliophiles in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century began to take a serious interest in the manuscripts of the Middle East and the paper on which they were written. Perhaps the most important of these men were C.-M. Briquet working in Geneva, and J. Wiesner and J. von Karabacek working in Vienna. All three were concerned with the burning topic of the moment: Was oriental paper made of cotton? Within the space of two years these three writers published seminal articles for the European study of Arab paper. Das Arabische Papier is one of those articles. The late Don Baker's inspiration to set about the translation and interpretation of this work was 'simply the desire to know the contents of this much quoted article'. Students, historians, curators, collectors, conservators and all those interested in the historical development and spread of papermaking will realise why Don Baker wished to make this important text available to English readers. This Archetype edition is a revised edition of the volume, which Don Baker produced in 1991.

In this life of painter John Singleton Copley, Jane Kamensky untangles the web of principles and interests that shaped the age of America's revolution. Copley's talent earned him the patronage of Boston's leaders but he did not share their politics and painting portraits failed to satisfy his lofty artistic goals. A British subject who lamented America's provincialism, Copley looked longingly across the Atlantic. When resistance escalated into war, he was in London. A painter of America's revolution as Britain's American War, the magisterial canvases he created made him one of the towering figures of the British art scene. Kamensky brings Copley's world alive and explores the fraught relationships between liberty and slavery, family duty and personal ambition, legacy and posterity-tensions that characterised the era of the American Revolution and that beset us still.

This book illuminates the original meanings of seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century mural paintings in Britain. At the time, these were called 'histories'. Throughout the eighteenth century, though, the term became directly associated with easel painting and, as 'history painting' achieved the status of a sublime genre, any link with painted architectural interiors was lost. Whilst both genres contained historical figures and narratives, it was the ways of viewing them that differed. Lydia Hamlett emphasises the way that mural paintings were experienced by spectators within their architectural settings. New iconographical interpretations and theories of effect and affect are considered an important part of their wider historical, cultural and social contexts. This book is intended to be read primarily by specialists, graduate and undergraduate students with an interest in new approaches to British art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This is the story of the forging of a national cultural institution in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. The Royal Academy of Arts was the dominant art school and exhibition society in London and a model for art societies across the British Isles and North America. This is the first study of its early years, re-evaluating the Academy's significance in national cultural life and its profile in an international context. Holger Hoock reassesses royal and state patronage of the arts and explores the concepts and practices of cultural patriotism and the politicization of art during the American and French Revolutions. By demonstrating how the Academy shaped the notions of an English and British school of art and influenced the emergence of the British cultural state, he illuminates the politics of national culture and the character of British public life in an age of war, revolution, and reform.

This book examines the sociocultural networks between the courts of early modern Italy and Europe, focusing on the Florentine Medici court, and the cultural patronage and international gendered networks developed by the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Vittoria della Rovere. Adelina Modesti uses Grand Duchess Vittoria as an exemplar of pan-European 'matronage' and proposes a new matrilineal model of patronage in the early modern period, one in which women become not only the mediators but also the architects of public taste and the transmitters of cultural capital. The book will be the first comprehensive monographic study of this important cultural figure. This study will be of interest to scholars working in art history, gender studies, Renaissance studies and seventeenth-century Italy.

This book reveals the extraordinary artistic relationship between Canaletto (Venice 1697-1768) and Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1722-Warsaw 1780). This book reveals the extraordinary artistic relationship between Canaletto (Venice 1697-1768) and Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1722-Warsaw 1780): from the speed with which the exceptional young nephew learned from the teachings of his uncle - leading him to become his alter ego in works for English collectors - to the end of their direct relationship, with Canaletto based in London and Bellotto in European capitals such as Dresden and Warsaw. Then this book highlights the interests developed by Bellotto on his travels: his rigorous perspectives and precise rendering of architecture, but also of landscapes and portraiture, modern themes that differentiate him significantly from his uncle, who clung to the more splendid and idealised eighteenth century. The recent rediscovery of the inventory of goods from Bellotto's house in Dresden - included here - finally offers a key to understanding the culture and personality of an artist who was one of the eighteenth century's most restless and free.

Fashion ruled the courts of the "Sun King," Louis XIV (1638-1715), and his successor, Louis XV (1710-1774). The Sun King's quest for glory and love of conspicuous adornment manifested itself in his apparel, and he forced the courtiers of Versailles to adopt similarly grand Baroque styles. A lighter fashion sense prevailed at the court of Louis XV, who favored Rococo styles of exquisite refinement. This magnificently rendered, scrupulously researched coloring book features a wide spectrum of both fashion worlds, with detailed and informative captions for each illustration. Dover Original. 45 full-page black-and-white illustrations. 5 color illustrations on covers.

By the end of the eighteenth century a distinctly modern vision of life was emerging. The revolutions in America and France revealed new beliefs about human nature, rights and duties, the natural and material worlds, and a new faith in science, technology and the idea of progress. As people began to change the way they thought about themselves and the world around them, a whole new way of thinking developed, which still has an overwhelming impact two centuries on.
The Enlightenment brings together the work of major Enlightenment thinkers to illustrate the full importance and achievements of this period in history. Extracts are gathered thematically into sections on such aspects of the Enlightenment as political theory, religion and belief, art and nature. In each section, the texts are introduced and a final section on 'Critical Reflections' provides a selection of modern critical opinions on the period.

This volume is dedicated to Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780), grandson of Canaletto and protagonist of 18th century landscape painting. It explores the less investigated period of the Venetian painter's life, the one preceding the successful career undertaken in the European courts starting from 1747, the year in which he moved to Dresden. In the age of the Grand Tour, the eighteen year old Bellotto visited the great Italian art cities, leaving us with exceptional views that already reveal the peculiar characteristics and modernity of his painting. This book contains precious and rare works, among which are the ones related to the itinerary followed by the painter in Tuscany in 1740, and the series dedicated to the city of Lucca, coming from the British Library in London and the York Art Gallery, along with the views of Florence and Livorno. Edited by Bozena Anna Kowalczyk, one of the greatest scholars of Canaletto and Bellotto, the volume is divided into sections introduced by texts resulting from new and unpublished historical and archival research, and is completed by a documentary appendix, bibliography and indicies. Text in English and Italian.

One of the most creative and accessible periods of art the world has ever known, the Golden Age is brought to life in an unprecedented series of biographies of the artists active in the Netherlands during the 17th-century. Painters in the Dutch Republic specialized in portraits, domestic genre scenes, still-lives, and landscapes--metaphors of the tiny new country's immense pride and wealth. This book features biographies on all the great masters from Frans Hals to Vermeer to Rembrandt. There are entries on more than 220 artists.

This unprecedented book draws together biographies of artists who worked in one of the most exciting and dramatic political eras in France, when Paris became the artistic capital of Europe. It features in-depth studies of such well-known Neo-classical artists as Jacques-Louis David, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the artist most revered by his fellow countrymen. Also included are artists of the Romantic Movement, like Delacroix and Gericault, as well as the painters of the Barbizon School, whose plein-air landscapes anticipated those of the Impressionists.

The Grove Art series, focusing on the most important periods and areas of art history, is derived from the critically acclaimed and award-winning The Grove Dictionary of Art. First published in 1996 in 34 volumes, The Dictionary has quickly established itself as the leading reference work on the visual arts, used by schools, universities, museums, and public libraries throughout the world. With articles written by leading scholars in each field, The Dictionary has frequently been praised for its breadth of coverage, accuracy, authority, and accessibility.

Charles Le Brun's drawing manual on human emotions has been used for centuries by artists and students as a model for depicting facial expressions. In David Schutter's work, Le Brun's manual is set to a different direction--a series of abstract drawings recalling vestiges of the human face animated by emotion. But Schutter's drawings are neither copies nor portraiture. Rather, they are reflections on how Lebrun's renderings were made. Collected here, Schutter's work recreates not the subject matter but the very values of Lebrun's drawings--light, gesture, scale, and handling of materials. The cross-hatching in the original was used to make classical tone and volume, in Schutter's hand the technique makes for unstable impressions of strained neck and deeply furrowed brow, or for drawing marks and scribbles unto themselves. As such, these drawings end up denying a neat closure--unlike their academic source material--and render unsettling states of mind that require repeated viewing. Accompanied by essays from art critic Barry Schwabsky and Neubauer Collegium curator Dieter Roelstraete, The Escape will appeal to students, critics, and admirers of seventeenth-century, modern, and contemporary art alike.

Originally published in 1995. In The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange, Ronald Paulson fills a lacuna in studies of aesthetics at its point of origin in England in the 1700s. He shows how aesthetics took off not only from British empiricism but also from such forms of religious heterodoxy as deism. The third earl of Shaftesbury, the founder of aesthetics, replaced the Christian God of rewards and punishments with beauty-worship of God, with a taste for a work of art. William Hogarth, reacting against Shaftesbury's "disinterestedness," replaced his Platonic abstractions with an aesthetics centered on the human body, gendered female, and based on an epistemology of curiosity, pursuit, and seduction. Paulson shows Hogarth creating, first in practice and then in theory, a middle area between the Beautiful and the Sublime by adapting Joseph Addison's category (in the Spectator) of the Novel, Uncommon, and Strange. Paulson retrieves an aesthetics that had strong support during the eighteenth century but has been obscured both by the more dominant academic discourse of Shaftesbury (and later Sir Joshua Reynolds) and by current trends in art and literary history. Arguing that the two traditions comprised not only painterly but also literary theory and practice, Paulson explores the innovations of Henry Fielding, John Cleland, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith, which followed and complemented the practice in the visual arts of Hogarth and his followers.

The eighteenth century was a golden age of public building. Governments constructed theaters, museums, hospices, asylums, and marketplaces to forge a new type of city, one that is recognizably modern. Yet the dawn of this urban development remains obscure. In Architecture and Statecraft, Robin Thomas seeks to explain the origins of the modern capital by examining one of the earliest of these transformed cities. In 1737 King Charles Bourbon of Spain embarked upon the most extensive architectural and urban program of the entire century. A comprehensive study of these Neapolitan buildings does not exist, and thus Caroline contributions to this new type of city remain undervalued. This book fills an important gap in the scholarship and connects Charles’s urban improvements to his consolidation of the monarchy. By intertwining architecture and sovereignty, Thomas provides a framework for understanding how politics created the eighteenth-century capital.

Jennifer Montagu is a world-renowned art historian whose name has become synonymous with the study of Italian Baroque sculpture. In honor of Jennifer Montagu's immeasurable contribution to the field of Italian Baroque sculpture, sixty-two of the foremost scholars of European sculpture have been invited to participate in a symposium in her honor on 6 - 7 September 2013 at the Wallace Collection, London. Thirty of the papers presented there were selected for the publication as a tribute to this generous colleague and friend who has inspired and mentored dozens of younger historians in European art. Dr. Montagu's academic work began in Political Science at Oxford, but conversations with Ernst Gombrich led her to pursue an advanced degree in art history instead. In 1963, long before the study of Italian bronze statuettes reached the level of interest that it enjoys today, her classic survey, simply titled Bronzes, was met with great enthusiasm, eventually being printed in five languages. Montagu taught at the University of Reading until 1964, when she became an assistant curator of the Photographic Collection at the Warburg Institute. In 1971 she became a full curator of the collection, a position she held until 1991. During these years she published at an indefatigable rate, and following her retirement from that post, her productivity only increased. Montagu was a Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University, a Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art,Washington, D.C.), and a visiting professor at the College de France. Montagu's numerous publications include her monumental study of Alessandro Algardi (Yale University Press, 1985), Roman Baroque Sculpture: the Industry of Art (Yale, 1989) and Gold, Silver and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of the Italian Baroque (Mellon Lectures, CASVA; Yale University Press, 1996). She was appointed LVO (Royal Victorian Order) in 2006 for services to the Royal Collection and CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2012 for her contribution to the history of art.

A Guide to Eighteenth-Century Art offers an introductory overview of the art, artists, and artistic movements of this exuberant period in European art, and the social, economic, philosophical, and political debates that helped shape them. * Covers both artistic developments and critical approaches to the period by leading contemporary scholars * Uses an innovative framework to emphasize the roles of tradition, modernity, and hierarchy in the production of artistic works of the period * Reveals the practical issues connected with the production, sale, public and private display of art of the period * Assesses eighteenth-century art s contribution to what we now refer to as modernity * Includes numerous illustrations, and is accompanied by online resources examining art produced outside Europe and its relationship with the West, along with other useful resources