Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > 1600 to 1800
During his lifetime, Hokusai was one of the most revered artists working in the ukiyo-e school of painting and printmaking. This book gathers the finest examples of Hokusai's breathtaking prints, including his iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa, views of Mt. Fuji, landscapes, domestic scenes, and painstakingly rendered flora and fauna. An introduction by Matthi Forrer offers a brief biography of Hokusai and commentary on his practice and influence. Each full color poster is backed with a substantial caption that provides insights into the piece's significance and notable characteristics. Printed on heavy coated paper, these detachable posters are suitable for framing, but also taken together create a lasting and illuminating introduction to Hokusai's extraordinary accomplishment.
This volume presents the most noteworthy concepts, artists, and
cultural centers of the seventeenth century through a close
examination of many of its greatest paintings, sculptures, and
buildings.
An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying
palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty,
lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young
graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a
discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable
value, a painting lost for almost two centuries. "Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lost painting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste--and about the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fall prey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could ever hope to read." --"The Economist" "From the Hardcover edition."
The Wallace Collection has an internationally-renowned collection of French eighteenth-century art but perhaps lesser known today is their stunning collection of gilt-bronze objects. These bronzes d'ameublement - from clocks and mounted Sevres porcelain to wall lights and candelabra - epitomised the levels of luxury achieved in Parisian interiors. Highly expensive and expertly wrought, they illustrate the heights of skilled craftsmanship achieved by French bronze workers in the eighteenth century as well as showcasing the wealth and connoisseurship of their owners. Lavishly illustrated with new photography, this publication will be a book of 'highlights' to include the very best of what the Wallace Collection has to offer in this field.
Prophet, poet, painter and engraver -- Blake's uniqueness lies in no single achievement, but in the whole of what he was, which is more than the sum of all that he did. So writes Kathleen Raine in this classic study of William Blake, a man for whom the arts were not an end in themselves, but expressed his vision of the spiritual drama of the English national being. Profusely illustrated, this volume presents a comprehensive view of Blake's artistic achievements and a compelling and moving portrait of the life and thought of an extraordinary genius.
Some years ago, David Freedberg opened a dusty cupboard at Windsor Castle and discovered hundreds of vividly coloured, masterfully precise drawings of all sorts of plants and animals from the Old and New Worlds. Coming upon thousands more drawings like them across Europe, Freedberg finally traced them all back to a little-known scientific organization from 17th-century Italy called the Academy of Linceans (or Lynxes). Founded by Prince Federico Cesi in 1603, the Linceans took as their task nothing less than the documentation and classification of all of nature in pictorial form. In this first book-length study of the Linceans to appear in English, Freedberg focuses especially on their unprecedented use of drawings based on microscopic observation and other new techniques of visualization. Where previous thinkers had classified objects based mainly on similarities of external appearance, the Linceans instead turned increasingly to sectioning, dissection and observation of internal structures. They applied their new research techniques to an incredible variety of subjects, from the objects in the heavens studied by their most famous (and infamous) member, Galileo Galilei - whom they supported at the most critical moments of his career - to the flora and fauna of Mexico, bees, fossils and the reproduction of plants and fungi. But by demonstrating the inadequacy of surface structures for ordering the world, the Linceans unwittingly planted the seeds for the demise of their own favourite method - visual description - as a mode of scientific classification. Profusely illustrated and engagingly written, "The Eye of the Lynx" uncovers a crucial episode n the development of visual representation and natural history. And perhaps as important, it offers readers a dazzling array of early modern drawings, from magnificently depicted birds and flowers to frogs in amber, monstrously misshapen citrus fruits and more.
The age of the Baroque--a time when great strides were made in
science and mathematics--witnessed the construction of some of the
world's most magnificent buildings. What did the work of great
architects such as Bernini, Blondel, Guarini, and Wren have to do
with Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Desargues, and Newton? Here,
George Hersey explores the ways in which Baroque architecture, with
its dramatic shapes and playful experimentation with classical
forms, reflects the scientific thinking of the time. He introduces
us to a concept of geometry that encompassed much more than the
science we know today, one that included geometrics (number and
shape games), as well as the art of geomancy, or magic and prophecy
using shapes and numbers.
Baroque and Rococo art and architecture have become popular once more, after a century and a half of neglect, misunderstanding and scorn. This radical shift in taste has led to a rapid growth of detailed knowledge about the artists who created these exhilarating styles. The famous masters have been reassessed and whole areas of achievement--Italian Baroque painting, German Rococo architecture--have been brought to a new, enthusiastic public. Germain Bazin's engaging survey of this rich subject ranges over all Europe and traces the origins and effects of these two periods of art--from the Counter-Reformation to Neoclassicism, Exoticism and even Art Nouveau. 218 illus., 43 in color.
In 1643/4 the once-famous Francis Cleyn painted the unhappy young heir of Corfe Castle, John Bankes, and his tutor, Dr Maurice Williams. The painter is now almost forgotten,the painting much neglected, and the sitters themselves have left little to mark their lives, but on the table of the painting lies a book, open to an immediately identifiable and very significant page. The representation omits the author's name and the book's title; it sits there as a code, as only viewers who had encountered the original and the characteristic figures on its frontispiece would have known its significance. The book is Galileo's Dialogue on the two chief world systems (1632), the defence of Copernican cosmology that incited the infamous clash between its author and the Church, and its presence in this painting is no accident, but instead a statement of learning, attitudes, and cosmopolitan engagement in European discourse by the painting's English subjects. Grasping hold of the clue, John Helibron deciphers the significance of this contentious book's appearance in a painting from Stuart England to unravel the interlocking threads of art history, political and religious history, and the history of science. Drawing on unexploited archival material and a wide range of printed works, he weaves together English court culture and Italian connections, as well as the astronomical and astrological knowledge propagated in contemporary almanacs and deployed in art, architecture, plays, masques, and political discourse. Heilbron also explores the biographies of Sir John Bankes (father of the sitter), Sir Maurice, and the painter, Francis Cleyn, setting them into the narrative of their rich and cultured history.
Winner of the 2022 Roland H. Bainton Book Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the original shrouds used to prepare Jesus Christ’s body for entombment. From that year into the next century, the Shroud of Turin emerged as Christianity’s preeminent religious artifact. In an unprecedented new look, Andrew R. Casper sheds new light on one of the world’s most famous and controversial religious objects. Since the early twentieth century, scores of scientists and forensic investigators have attributed the Shroud’s mysterious images to painterly, natural, or even supernatural forces. Casper, however, shows that this modern opposition of artifice and authenticity does not align with the cloth’s historical conception as an object of religious devotion. Examining the period of the Shroud’s most enthusiastic following, from the late 1500s through the 1600s, he reveals how it came to be considered an artful relic—a divine painting attributed to God’s artistry that contains traces of Christ’s body. Through probing analyses of materials created to perpetuate the Shroud’s cult following—including devotional, historical, and theological treatises as well as printed and painted reproductions—Casper uncovers historicized connections to late Renaissance and Baroque artistic cultures that frame an understanding of the Shroud’s bloodied corporeal impressions as an alloy of material authenticity and divine artifice. This groundbreaking book introduces rich, new material about the Shroud’s emergence as a sacred artifact. It will appeal to art historians specializing in religious and material studies, historians of religion, and to general readers interested in the Shroud of Turin.
Contrary to twentieth-century criticism that cast them as misguided
dabblers, English virtuosi in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries were erudite individuals with solid grounding in the
classics, deep appreciation for the arts, and sincere curiosity
about the natural world. Reestablishing their broad historical
significance, "The English Virtuoso" situates this polymathic group
at the rich intersection of the period's art, medicine, and
antiquarianism.
The artist and scientist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was born
in Frankfurt, Germany, into a middle-class family of publishers and
artists. With her meticulous depictions of insect metamorphosis,
she raised the standards of natural history illustration and helped
give birth to the field of entomology. At the age of fifty-two,
Merian traveled with her younger daughter to Suriname, a Dutch
territory in South America, to paint its exotic flora and fauna.
An art-oriented biography of the mighty Catherine the Great, who rose from seemingly innocuous beginnings to become one of the most powerful people in the world. A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace and herself crowned the Empress of Russia. Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed "glutton for art" and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art.
In the late 18th century, as a wave of English nationalism swept the country, the printseller John Boydell set out to create an ambitious exhibition space, one devoted to promoting and fostering a distinctly English style of history painting. With its very name, the Shakespeare Gallery signaled to Londoners that the artworks on display shared an undisputed quality and a national spirit. Exhibiting Englishness explores the responses of key artists of the period to Boydell's venture and sheds new light on the gallery's role in the larger context of British art. Tracking the shift away from academic and Continental European styles of history painting, the book analyzes the works of such artists as Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, James Northcote, Robert Smirke, Thomas Banks, and William Hamilton, laying out their diverse ways of expressing notions of individualism, humor, eccentricity, and naturalism. Exhibiting Englishness also argues that Boydell's gallery radically redefined the dynamics of display and cultural aesthetics at that time, shaping both an English school of painting and modern exhibition practices. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
In a garden glade before a grand fountain, surrounded by a musical party, an elegant woman in a lustrous white gown dances as part of a foursome, raising her eyes to the viewer as if extending an invitation to the dance. This is the enticing scene in the J. Paul Getty Museum's painting "Dance before a Fountain" by Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), an excellent example of the fete galante, a genre that was created and reached the peak of its popularity in France during the first half of the eighteenth century. This monograph seeks to familiarize American audiences with Lancret, a master of this genre, who was a revered painter in his own time, rivalling his contemporaries Antoine Watteau and Francois Boucher, and a favourite of crowned heads across Europe. Mary Tavener Holmes's engrossing text uses this painting as a springboard to reveal a remarkable amount about the painter, his mode of painting, Paris at the time this work was made, eighteenth-century dance, and the world of art patronage and collecting in France and elsewhere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lavishly illustrated with comparative paintings by artists such as Watteau, Boucher, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Francois De Troy, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Hubert Robert, this fascinating peek into a bygone Parisian era is a treat for the eyes and the intellect alike.
In “When All of Rome Was Under Construction,†architectural historian Dorothy Metzger Habel considers the politics and processes involved in building the city of Rome during the baroque period. Like many historians of the period, Habel previously focused on the grand schemes of patronage; now, however, she reconstructs the role of the “public voice†in the creation of the city. She presents the case that Rome’s built environment did not merely reflect the vision of patrons and architects who simply imposed buildings and spaces upon the city’s populace. Rather, through careful examination of a tremendous range of archival material—from depositions and budgets to memoranda and the minutes of confraternity meetings—Habel foregrounds what she describes as “the incubation of architecture†in the context of such building projects as additions to the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili and S. Carlo ai Catinari as well as the construction of the Piazza Colonna. She considers the financing of building and the availability of building materials and labor, and she offers a fresh investigation of the writings of Lorenzo Pizzatti, who called attention to “the social implications†of building in the city. Taken as a whole, Habel’s examination of these voices and buildings offers the reader a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the shape and the will of the public in mid-seventeenth-century Rome.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) is among the greatest portrait
painters of all time. The 1990s opened and closed with major
exhibitions devoted to his work, and now the long-awaited catalogue
raisonne of his painted oeuvre is complete.
Directing his pointed wit at the upper echelons of 18th-century British society, William Hogarth, a painter, printmaker, and social critic, mocked the politics and customs of his day. His series of satirical paintings and engravings, which still absorb viewers after nearly three centuries, record human vice and folly with a sharp eye and cutting intelligence. This compelling book, with an accompanying DVD narrated by Alan Bennett, examines Hogarth's best-known series of paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode, and unlocks many mysteries that have surrounded this gripping artistic commentary. Marriage A-la-Mode recounts the story of a marriage arranged between the son of a spendthrift nobleman who needs cash and the daughter of a rich City of London merchant who hopes to buy social status. Love never develops, and the discordant lives of the bride and bridegroom descend into adultery and venereal disease followed by murder, execution, and suicide. Judy Egerton deciphers the visual cues and symbols Hogarth employs in his comic story of doubtful morals. Published by National Gallery Company / Distributed by Yale University Press
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.
The fin de siecle not only designated the end of the Victorian epoch but also marked a significant turn toward modernism. Extraordinary Aesthetes critically examines literary and visual artists from England, Ireland, and Scotland whose careers in poetry, fiction, and illustration flourished during the concluding years of the nineteenth century. This collection draws special attention to the exceptional contributions that artists, poets, and novelists made to the cultural world of the late 1880s and 1890s. The essays illuminate a range of established, increasingly acknowledged, and lesser-known figures whose contributions to this brief but remarkably intense cultural period warrant close attention. Such figures include the critically neglected Mabel Dearmer, whose stunning illustrations appear in Evelyn Sharp's radical fairy tales for children. Equally noteworthy is the uncompromising short fiction of Ella D'Arcy, who played a pivotal role in editing the most famous journal of the 1890s, the Yellow Book. The discussion extends to a range of legendary writers, including Max Beerbohm, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats, whose works are placed in dialogue with authors who gained prominence during this period. Bringing women's writing to the fore, Extraordinary Aesthetes rebalances the achievements of artists and writers during the rapidly transforming cultural world of the fin de siecle.
In The Enlightenment's Animals Nathaniel Wolloch takes a broad view of changing conceptions of animals in European culture during the long eighteenth century. Combining discussions of intellectual history, the history of science, the history of historiography, the history of economic thought, and, not least, art history, this book describes how animals were discussed and conceived in different intellectual and artistic contexts underwent a dramatic shift during this period. While in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century the main focus was on the sensory and cognitive characteristics of animals, during the late Enlightenment a new outlook emerged, emphasizing their conception as economic resources. Focusing particularly on seventeenth-century Dutch culture, and on the Scottish Enlightenment, Wolloch discusses developments in other countries as well, presenting a new look at a topic of increasing importance in modern scholarship.
The Galleria Borghese brings together an extraordinary collection of ancient and modern sculpture within a beautifully decorated villa. This volume, dedicated to modern sculpture (Late Renaissance to Baroque to Neoclassical), marks the start of a new general catalogue of the collection. The introduction narrates the history of the collection, from its creation by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 17th century to its sale to the Italian Republic at the end of the 19th century. The entries are full of chronological details, new attributions, information on restorations and account for the different historical settings thanks to an accurate study of the inventory records of the villa. They include world-famous masterpieces by Algardi, Bernini and Canova among others. The sale to Napoleon of many of its Antique works of art (now in the Louvre) was key to the Borghese's commission works of ancient inspiration, the analysis of which animates the pages of another section, based on the concepts of copy and remake. The catalogue closes with a section on restoration, that gives an account of the fundamental role of 16- to 18th-century sculptors in the maintenance and transformation of the archaeological collection in relation to the villa's display requirements. Text in Italian.
This monograph on Ingres art includes a broad biographical account of his life and the artistic scene he frequented in Paris and Rome. It places his art within the context of 19th-century art movements, from his youth under the Bonaparte regime to the Third Republic. |
You may like...
Women and the Art and Science of…
Arlene L Eis, Kacie L. Wills
Paperback
R1,265
Discovery Miles 12 650
Rococo Echo - Art, History and…
Melissa Lee Hyde, Katie Scott
Paperback
R3,079
Discovery Miles 30 790
Seeing Satire in the Eighteenth Century
Elizabeth C. Mansfield, Kelly Malone
Paperback
R2,983
Discovery Miles 29 830
The Baroque in Architectural Culture…
Andrew Leach, John MacArthur
Paperback
R1,540
Discovery Miles 15 400
|