This volume completes the publication of the ancient Greek and Etruscan vases in the collection of the Reading Museum Service, most of which are displayed at the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, University of Reading (39 other vases were published in Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Great Britain 12, University of Reading, 1954).
Most of the vases are published here for the first time, with new attributions to identifiable vase painters or workshops. Painter/workshop attributions, fabric identifications, and iconographic discussions enlighten the reader with regard to new findings based on excavations and other fieldwork. The fabrics detailed in this volume range chronologically from Minoan to early Hellenistic, and include South Italian (Apulian, Campanian, Lucanian, and Sicilian), Etruscan, possibly East Greek, as well as mainland (Attic, Boeotian, and Corinthian) wares. It includes patterned, black-glazed, and unglazed wares from almost all of these fabrics, as well as those with figural decoration. The collection therefore represents all the major fabrics of ancient Greek and Etruscan ceramics.
The vases, many of which have recorded provenances, share an interesting collections history, which is documented by Jill Greenaway in the Introduction.

Always recognised as a master print from the moment of its appearance around 1649, the Hundred Guilder Print is one of Rembrandt's most compositionally complex and visually beautiful works. This book gives a full overview of the fascinating story surrounding this print, from its genesis and market value to attitudes towards it in the present day. Focusing on the tradition of printmaking as well as the reception of the print in Rembrandt's time, Golahny explores the ways the artist made visual references to the work of such masters as Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, while uniquely combining aspects of Christ's ministry. Placing the work within its wider cultural and historical context, Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print offers an original and engaging approach to current Rembrandt scholarship and is essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of the most famous artists of the Dutch Global Age.

From Still Life to the Screen explores the print culture of 18th-century London, focusing on the correspondences between images and consumer objects. In his lively and insightful text, Joseph Monteyne considers such themes as the display of objects in still lifes and markets, the connoisseur's fetishistic gaze, and the fusion of body and ornament in satires of fashion. The desire for goods emerged in tandem with modern notions of identity, in which things were seen to mirror and symbolize the self. Prints, particularly graphic satires by such artists as Matthew and Mary Darly, James Gillray, William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and Paul Sandby, were actively involved in this shift. Many of these images play with the boundaries between the animate and the inanimate, self and thing. They also reveal the recurring motif of image display, whether on screens, by magic lanterns, or in "raree-shows" and print-shop windows. The author links this motif to new conceptions of the self, specifically through the penetration of spectacle into everyday experience. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

In the past decade, there has been a surge of Anglophone scholarship regarding Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which has led to a reframing of the discourses around Spanish culture of this period. Despite this new interest-in which painting, in particular, has been singled out for treatment-a comprehensive study of sculpture collections and the status of sculpture in Spain has yet to be produced. Sculpture Collections in Early Modern Spain is the first book to assess the phenomenon of sculpture collecting and in doing so, it alters the previously held notion that Spanish society placed little value in this art form. Di Dio and Coppel reveal that, due to the problems and expense of their transport from Italy, sculptures were in fact status symbols in the culture. Thus they were an important component of the collections formed by the royal family, cultivated noble collectors, humanists, and artists who had pretensions of high status. This book is especially useful to specialists for its discussion of the typologies of collections and objects, and of the mechanics of state gifts, transport, and collection display in this period. An appendix presents extensive archival documentation, most of which has never before been published. The authors have uncovered hundreds of new documents about sculpture in Spain; and new documentary evidence allows them to propose several new identifications and attributions. Firmly grounded in extensive archival research, Sculpture Collections in Early Modern Spain redefines the socio-political and art historical importance of sculpture in early modern Spain. Most importantly, it entirely transforms our knowledge regarding the presence of sculpture in a wide range of Spanish collections of the period, which until now has been erroneously characterized as close to non-existent.

Early American painter Gilbert Stuart has long been mistakenly represented as a hard-drinking rogue, habitual liar, and inexplicable financial failure. To explain his stylistic unevenness as an artist, he is assumed to have had an inferior assistant, but the documentary evidence for an assistant who painted on his portraits is non-existent-in fact, there is evidence to the contrary. This ground-breaking study demonstrates that Stuart suffered from a hereditary form of manic depression, leading him to create pictures that contain peculiar lapses characteristic of a manic-depressive, or bipolar, artist. Using documentary and empirical evidence-from diaries and letters to x-radiographs of paintings-this book fills important gaps in our knowledge of Stuart, and connects the strange visual effects in some of Stuart's paintings with cognitive deficits attendant with the disorder. In addition to Stuart, other bipolar artists, including George Romney, Raphaelle Peale, Gilbert Stuart Newton, and William Rimmer, are discussed in relation to these deficits, revealing patterns which carry broader implications for all manic-depressive artists. This volume is a significant contribution not only to studies of Stuart and the four other painters but also to our understanding of the mind of a manic-depressive artist. It bridges the broad disciplines of art history and psychopathology.

Using Pieter de Marees' Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602) as her main source material, author Elizabeth Sutton brings to bear approaches from the disciplines of art history and book history to explore the context in which De Marees' account was created. Since variations of the images and text were repeated in other European travel collections and decorated maps, Sutton is able to trace how the framing of text and image shaped the formation of knowledge that continued to be repeated and distilled in later European depictions of Africans. She reads the engravings in De Marees' account as a demonstration of the intertwining domains of the Dutch pictorial tradition, intellectual inquiry, and Dutch mercantilism. At the same time, by analyzing the marketing tactics of the publisher, Cornelis Claesz, this study illuminates how early modern epistemological processes were influenced by the commodification of knowledge. Sutton examines the book's construction and marketing to shed new light on the social milieus that shared interests in ethnography, trade, and travel. Exploring how the images and text function together, Sutton suggests that Dutch visual and intellectual traditions informed readers' choices for translating De Marees' text visually. Through the examination of early modern Dutch print culture, Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa expands the boundaries of our understanding of the European imperial enterprise.

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 is a comparative study of the national significance of the classical revival which marked English and French art during the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the main focus of artists' interest in classical Greece, was the body of the Greek athlete. It explains this interest, first, by artists' contact with the art of Pheidias and Polycletus which portrayed it; and second, by the claim, made by physical anthropologists, that the classical body typified the race of the European nations.

During the eighteenth century, porcelain held significant cultural and artistic importance. This collection represents one of the first thorough scholarly attempts to explore the diversity of the medium's cultural meanings. Among the volume's purposes is to expose porcelain objects to the analytical and theoretical rigor which is routinely applied to painting, sculpture and architecture, and thereby to reposition eighteenth-century porcelain within new and more fruitful interpretative frameworks. The authors also analyze the aesthetics of porcelain and its physical characteristics, particularly the way its tactile and visual qualities reinforced and challenged the social processes within which porcelain objects were viewed, collected, and used. The essays in this volume treat objects such as figurines representing British theatrical celebrities, a boxwood and ebony figural porcelain stand, works of architecture meant to approximate porcelain visually, porcelain flowers adorning objects such as candelabra and perfume burners, and tea sets decorated with unusual designs. The geographical areas covered in the collection include China, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, Britain, America, Japan, Austria, and Holland.

Elisabetta Sirani of Bologna (1638-1665) was one of the most innovative and prolific artists of the Bolognese School. Not only a painter, she was also a printmaker and a teacher. Based on extensive archival documentation and primary sources — including inventories, sale catalogues and her work diary — Elisabetta Sirani provides an overview of the life, work, critical fortune and legacy of this successful Baroque artist. Placing her within the context of the post-Tridentine society that both inhibited and supported her, Modesti examines Sirani's influence on many of the artists studying at Bologna's school for professional women artists, as well as her significance in the professionalisation of women’s artistic practice in the seventeenth century. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Elisabetta Sirani focuses on women’s agency. More specifically, it explores Sirani’s identity as both a woman and an artist, including her professional ambition, self-fashioning and literary construction as Bologna’s pre-eminent cultural heroine.

Illuminator, painter, scribe, clerk, teacher, doctor of theology, restorer and binder, Mesrop was one of the greatest Armenian artists of his and following generations. He was prolific, working for at least forty-two years in Sos (New Julfa) from 1608 to 1651. This book will be the first serious study of the 46 of his manuscripts that have survived. The focus of the book, however, is The Four Gospels, one of the few manuscripts painted entirely by Mesrop's hand and one of the most extensively illuminated in his oeuvre. It includes an extraordinary series of illuminations of both Old and New Testament scenes, with no less than twenty-three full page miniatures, and seventeen smaller miniatures. The author will shed light not only on Mesrop's career but on those of Armenian miniaturists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through a thorough analysis of Mesrop's works Arakelyan is able to closely study the working methods of artists working in the scriptoria of Vaspurakan, Mokk' and New Julfa. He demonstrates the dramatic and exciting way in which these artists deliberately maintained a style of illumination rooted in Early Christianity. The monograph will have tremendous significance not only for Armenologists but also for Byzantinists and all historians of Christian art.

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.

Through historical coincidence that almost takes on a mythical character, 'Michelangelo' was the given name not only of the Florentine sculptor, but also of the painter who grew up in Caravaggio, a provincial town in Lombardy, about 25 miles east of Milan. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, commonly called by reference to his hometown, produced revolutionary paintings whose impact was as great - at the beginning of the 1600s - as the other Michelangelo's art had been a century earlier. In this book, author Bette Talvacchia explores the significant, but little-discussed, connection between the 'two Michelangelos'. She exposes the dynamic relationship between their work through looking at the ways in which Caravaggio creatively responded to the art of his namesake from the start of his youthful arrival in Rome. In addition, she suggests how Michelangelo's overwhelming achievement was a model that helped to drive the young Caravaggio's powerful ambition and shape his identity as an artist. With lucid and intelligent prose, this fascinating book sheds light on the similar 'artistic temperament' constructed in the biographies of each artist - glorifying their rebellious, anti-social behaviour and uncompromising artistic principles - examined both in its historical and contemporary configurations. Why does our culture find these two artists so compelling, and how were they seen in their time and in the intervening centuries until our own day? Linking the past to the present, Talvacchia encourages readers to appreciate more fully the individual works discussed, and to reflect upon the continuing relevance of these two artists to the culture of the present day.

This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts that will shine a spotlight on Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564 - 1637/38), an artist who was hugely successful in his lifetime but whose later reputation has been overshadowed by that of his famous father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525 - 1569). Peasants and Proverbs: Pieter Brueghel the Younger as Moralist and Entrepreneur shares recent research into the Barber's comical yet enigmatic little painting, Two Peasants Binding Firewood, setting out fresh insights and offering a new appreciation of a figure whose prodigious output and business skills firmly established and popularised the distinctive 'Brueghelian' look of Netherlandish peasant life. Born in Brussels, Pieter Brueghel the Younger was just five years old when his renowned father died prematurely. Clearly talented, by the time he was around 20 years old, Brueghel the Younger was already registered as a master in Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke. Between 1588, the year of his marriage, and 1626, he took on nine apprentices, demonstrating that he had established a successful studio. His workshop produced an abundance of paintings, ranging from exact copies of famous compositions by his father, to pastiches and more inventive compositions that further promoted the distinctive Bruegelian 'family style', usually focused on scenes of peasant life. He was, as a consequence, later deemed a second-rate painter, capable of only producing derivative works. This exhibition and book highlight how a more sophisticated understanding is now emerging of a creative and capable artist, and a savvy entrepreneur, who exploited favourable market conditions from his base in cosmopolitan Antwerp. From this deeper understanding of his practice, his favoured subjects and the market for them, we gain a more profound and compelling insight into the society in which he operated and its preoccupations and passions. A dozen other versions of Two Peasants Binding Firewood exist and, by examining some of them alongside the Barber painting, and using the insights gleaned from recent conservation work and technical analysis, the exhibition and book will explore how Brueghel the Younger operated his studio to produce and reproduce paintings, and the extent to which the entire enterprise was motivated by trends in the contemporary art market.

The Primacy of the Image in Northern Art 1400-1700: Essays in Honor of Larry Silver is an anthology of 42 essays written by distinguished scholars on current research and methodology in the art history of Northern Europe of the late medieval and early modern periods. Written in tribute to Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, the topics are inspired by Professor Silver's renowned scholarship in these areas: Early Netherlandish Painting and Prints; Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting; Manuscripts, Patrons, and Printed Books; Durer and the Power of Pictures; Prints and Printmaking; and Seventeenth-Century Painting. Studies of specific artists include Hans Memling, Albrecht Durer, Hans Baldung Grien, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Hendrick Goltzius, and Rembrandt.

In serveying how painting and sculpture were considered through the early 18th to the mid-19th century, this volume traces the development of modernism in art and theory.

This beautifully illustrated monograph presents the first overview in English of the life and work of Luisa Roldan (1652-1706), a prolific and celebrated sculptor of the Spanish Golden Age. The daughter of Pedro Roldan, a well-known sculptor from Seville, she developed her talent in her father's workshop. Early in her career she produced large polychromed wooden sculptures for churches in Seville, Cadiz, and surrounding towns. She spent the second half of her career in Madrid, where she worked in both polychromed wood and polychromed terracotta, developing new products for a domestic, devotional market. In recognition of her talent, she was awarded the title of Sculptor to the Royal Chambers of two kings of Spain, Charles II and Philip V. This book places Roldan within a wider historical and social context, exploring what life would have been like for her as a woman sculptor in early modern Spain. It considers her work alongside that of other artists of the Baroque period, including Velazquez, Murillo, and Zurbaran. Reflecting on the opportunities available to her during this time, as well as the challenges she faced, Catherine Hall-van den Elsen weaves the narrative of Roldan's story with analysis, revealing the complexities of her oeuvre. Every year, newly discovered sculptures in wood and in terracotta enter into Roldan's oeuvre. As her artistic output begins to attract greater attention from scholars and art lovers, Luisa Roldan provides invaluable insights into her artistic achievements.

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.

Christopher White explains why he chose this title for his new book: 'The often intimate, reflective and personal side to Rembrandt's work in treating subjects from history or the Bible reveals an increasingly more introspective interpretation than his contemporaries.' Rembrandt's sharp eye draws inspiration from the domestic scene, the local street and wherever he went. His subjects include: children, beggars, musicians, dogs, pigs, horses; even elephants and lions. White studies Rembrandt's technique from an aesthetic rather than a scientific point of view; his willingness to experiment whether drawing, painting or etching is a notable feature of his work, and by discussing examples of the three different media side by side, the author demonstrates their interdependence.

The legacy of graphic artist William Hogarth (1697-1764) remains so emphatic that even his last name has evolved into a common vernacular term referring to his characteristically scathing form of satire. Featuring rarely seen images and written contributions from leading scholars, this book showcases a collection of the artist's works gathered from the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University and other repositories. It attests to the idiosyncratic nature of his style and its international influence, which continues to incite aesthetic and moral debate among critics. The eight essays by eminent Hogarth experts help to further contextualize the artist's unique narrative strategies, embedding the work within German philosophical debates and the moral confusion of the Victorian period and emphasizing the social and political dimensions that are part and parcel of its profound impact. Endlessly parodied and emulated, Hogarth's distinctive satire persists in its influence throughout the centuries and this publication provides the necessary lens through which to view it. Distributed for the Lewis Walpole Library

"In this admirable work, at once passionately argued and lucidly written, Professor Garrard effectively considers the social, psychological, and formal complexity of the shaping and reshaping not only of the artist's feminine and feminist identity in the misogynistic society of the seventeenth century, but also of that identity in the discipline of art history today."--Steven Z. Levine, author of "Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection

"Mary Garrard's detailed investigation into attribution problems in two Artemisia Gentileschi paintings brilliantly interweaves connoisseurship, constructions of gender and artistic identity, and historical analysis. The result is a richer and more nuanced vision of the best-known female artist in western history before the modern era, and an important contribution to feminist studies." --Whitney Chadwick, author of "Women, Art, and Society

"In her new book, Garrard has taken two bold steps that challenge much received opinion in the 'discipline' of art history. Analyzing two of Gentileschi's least violent but most moving images, Garrard argues that the painter's personality is discernible no less in the subjects and their interpretation than in the 'style' of the works; consideration of both aspects is essential to understanding the meaning of these extraordinary pictures and her authorship. Perhaps even more important, Garrard makes crystal clear that Artemisia Gentileschi, far from a 'good woman painter, ' was one of the major visual thinkers of her time."--Irving Lavin, co-author with Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, of "La Liturgia d'Amore: Immagini dal Canto dei Cantici nell'arte di Cimabue, Michelangelo, e Rembrandt (Modena, 2000)

"Developing herearlier methodologies and revising some conclusions, Garrard clarifies her distinct theoretical approach and voice among feminist critiques of art history. In this text, which reads in part like a forensic mystery, Garrard builds not only an argument for attributions of particular works, but a new understanding of Gentileschi herself at a particular moment in history."--Hilary Robinson, editor of "Visibly Female: Feminism and Art Today

"One of our most distinguished feminist art historians brings contemporary gender studies to bear on traditional paintings connoisseurship to show how attributions to female artists have often been governed by tacit cultural assumptions about the limitations of women. Her case makes compelling reading for anyone interested in early modern society, culture, women and art in Italy, and in the problematics of feminism and art history."--Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, author of "Leonardo e la Scultura

"By revealing a great woman painter's ways of expressing uniqueness while negotiating expectations, Mary Garrard helps each of us with the subtleties of remaining authentic while living in the world. Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622 is art history to live by."--Gloria Steinem

Godefridus Schalcken: A Late 17th-century Dutch Painter in Pursuit of Fame and Fortune is the first book in English dedicated to the entire artistic output of seventeenth-century Dutch artist Godefridus Schalcken (1643-1706). It examines the artist's paintings and career trajectory against the background of his ceaseless pursuit of fame and fortune. Combining a comprehensive analysis of Schalcken's artistic development and style with our increasing biographical knowledge, it provides an authoritative overview of Schalcken's ample production as an artist. It also integrates his art into the circumstances of his life in relation to his ambitious career aspirations, exploring how economic conditions, a concomitantly oversaturated art market, talent and ambition, demographics, and even sheer luck all played a role in Schalcken's great professional success. Since Schalcken's art, like that of all Dutch painters, provides a plethora of information about seventeenth-century culture-its predilections, its prejudices, indeed, its very mind-set-the book inevitably links his work to the broader socio-cultural contexts in which it was created.