Near the end of his life, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) created three colossal candelabra mainly from fragments of sculpture excavated near the Villa Hadriana in Tivoli, two of which are now in the Ashmolean Museum, and one in the Louvre. Although they were among the most sought-after and prestigious of his works, and fetched enormous prices during Piranesi's life, they suffered a steep decline in appreciation from the 1820s onwards, and even today they are among the least studied of his works. Piranesi's Candelabra and the Presence of the Past uncovers the intense investment, by artists, patrons, collectors, and the public around the start of the nineteenth century in objects that made Graeco-Roman Antiquity present again. Caroline van Eck's study examines how objects make their makers or viewers feel that they are again in the presence of Antiquity, that not only Antiquity has revived, but that classical statues become alive under their gaze. what it takes to make such objects, and what it costs to own them; and about the ramifications of such intense if not excessive attachments to artefacts. This book considers the three candelabra in depth, providing the biography of these objects, from the excavation of the Roman fragments to their entry into private and public collection. Van Eck considers the context that Piranesi gave them by including them in his Vasi, Candelabri e Cippi (1778), to rethink the processes that led to the development of neoclassicism from the perspective of the objects and objectscapes that came into being in Rome at the end of the eighteenth century.

1924. These essays on Baroque Art constitute more than merely a book of music and art criticism. They are an attempt at a recreation, through a consideration of its artistic expression, of the civilization of seventeenth and eighteenth century Spain and Italy. The more famous names are deliberately omitted, the artists considered being the many lesser masters about whom the critical exegesis has not yet raged, and whose names are for the most part unfamiliar even to those with some pretensions to a knowledge of the period. It is through his analysis of the common motive force which actuated the productions of these men that Mr. Sitwell has arrived at an interpretation of the art and the spiritual life of the time to which a book of purely formal criticism might perhaps never have brought him. The book is in this way complementary to all the existing literature on the subject, and it provides an extremely valuable and definitive study of Baroque Art both for the student and the general reader. The wonders that the author describes are confirmed by the plates with which the work is illustrated.

Originally published London, 1924. Contents Include: The Serenade at Caserta "Les Indes Galantes" The King and the Nightingale Biography etc. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The Rizzoli Art Classics series brings you Piero della Francesca, Titian, Caravaggio, and Velazquez, all in beautifully illustrated monographs, offering high-quality reproductions in compact, accessible volumes. These books feature a literary introduction by a renowned art historian, a thoroughly researched essay, and captions describing the artist's most famous canvases. A useful appendix section includes an extensive chronology of the artist's life and important historical events of his time; a compilation of writings by well-known historians, insight into each painter's stylistic development; a geographical table detailing the location of each painting in the book; and a concise bibliography with suggested further readings.With authoritative text by leading art historians, these lavishly illustrated editions provide fresh insight into the art and lives of some of the most fascinating artists in the history of painting.

A study of the theory and practice of seventeenth-century Dutch group portraits, Manhood, Marriage, and Mischief offers an account of the genre's comic and ironic features, which it treats as comments on the social context of portrait sitters who are husbands and householders as well as members of civic and proto-military organizations. The introduction picks out anomalous touches with which Rembrandt problematizes standard group-portrait motifs in The Night Watch: a shooter who fires his musket into the company; two girls who appear to be moving through the company in the wrong direction; guardsmen who appear to be paying little or no attention to their leader's enthusiastic gesture of command. Were the patrons and sitters aware of or even complicit in staging the anomalies? If not, did the painter get away with a subversive parody of militia portrait conventions at the sitters' expense? Parts One and Two respond to these questions at several levels: first, by analyzing the aesthetic structure of group portraiture as a genre; second, by reviewing the conflicting accounts modern scholars give of the civic guard company as an institution; third, by marking the effect on civic guardsmen of a mercantile economy that relied heavily on wives and mothers to keep the homefires burning. Two phenomena persistently recur in the portraits under discussion: competitive posing and performance anxiety. Part Three studies these phenomena in portraits of married couples and families. Finally, Part Four examines them in The Night Watch in the light of the first three parts. The result is an interpretation that reads Rembrandt's painting both as a deliberate parody by the sitters and as the artist's covert parody of the sitters.

These 29 books all feature the works of a legendary artist, each a master of the period in which they painted. From old masters Rubens and Rembrandt, to impressionists Monet and Renoir, to modern artists Picasso and Dali, these square-shaped books are perfect overviews of each artist's scope of work.

The Paston Treasure, a spectacular painting from the 1660s now held at Norwich Castle Museum, depicts a wealth of objects from the collection of a local landed family. This deeply researched volume uses the painting as a portal to the history of the collection, exploring the objects, their context, and the wider world they occupied. Drawing on an impressive range of fields, including history of art and collections, technical art history, musicology, history of science, and the social and cultural history of the 17th century, the book weaves together narratives of the family and their possessions, as well as the institutions that eventually acquired them. Essays, vignettes, and catalogue entries comprise this multidisciplinary exposition, uniting objects depicted in the painting for the first time in nearly 300 years. Published in association with the Yale Center for British Art Exhibition Schedule: Yale Center for British Art (02/15/18-05/27/18) Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery (06/23/18-09/23/18)

The papers in this volume offer a wide range of examples of how historians, writers, playwrights, and painters in the early modern period focused on classical antiquity as a source from which they could recreate the past as a way of understanding and legitimizing the present. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

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.
The Baroque, rooted in classicism but with a new emphasis on emotionalism and naturalism, was the leading style of the seventeenth century. The movement exhibited both stylistic complexity and great diversity in its subject matter, from large religious works and history paintings to portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life. Masters of the era included Caravaggio, whose innovations in the dramatic uses of light and shadow influenced many of the century's artists, notably Rembrandt; the sculptor, painter, and architect Bernini, with his combination of technical brilliance and expressiveness; and other familiar names such as Rubens, Poussin, Velazquez, and Vermeer.
This was the era of absolute monarchs, including Spain's Habsburgs and Louis XIII and IV of France, whose artistic patronage helped furnish their opulent palaces. But a new era of commercialism, in which artists increasingly catered to affluent collectors of the professional and merchant classes, was also flourishing."

The desire for things which are inspired by, imitate, or indeed are Greek, or Greco-Roman has been felt throughout history. The twenty contributions in this volume explore the presence and diffusion of what they term 'The Classical Taste' from the 5th century BC to the 20th century focusing on the methods and media through which this occurs. Including discussions on vase painting, ancient gems, the image of Alexander the Great, Roman medallions, cameos, statuettes and portraits, and the reception of Classicism in the medieval, Renaissance and modern periods.

The Ashmolean Museum holds a world-class collection of over 200 prints made by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669). Widely hailed as the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt was also one of the most innovative and experimental printmakers of the seventeenth century. Rembrandt was extraordinary in creating prints not merely as multiples to be distributed but also as artistic expressions by using the etching printmaking technique for the sketchy compositions so typical of him. Almost drawing-like in appearance, these images were created by combining spontaneous lines with his remarkable sense for detail. Rembrandt was a keen observer and this clearly shows in his choice of subjects for his etchings: intense self-portraits with their penetrating gaze; atmospheric views of the Dutch countryside; lifelike beggars seen in the streets of his native Leiden; intimate family portraits as well as portrayals of his wealthy friends in Amsterdam; and biblical stories illustrated with numerous figures. This book presents Rembrandt as an unrivalled storyteller through a selection of over 70 prints from the Ashmolean collection through a variety of subjects ranging from 1630 until the late 1650s.

Between the years 1710-1770, the inventive, ornate Rococo style should, in the natural course of events, have been Britain's prevailing decorative style. This text describes and explains its oddly frustrated course in England and its brilliant flourishes in Ireland. The authors controversially claim that Ireland, more sophisticated in the technical education of its craftsmen and artists, not only devised its own subtle "insular" Rococo, but exported this mode successfully in a gesture of cultural colonialism to the West of England. This text challenges the sacred cows of the English Georgians with reverence for correct forms, and it will oblige Ireland to rethink the faked historic priorities by which it has tried to live since 1922. Ireland was, far more effectively than England, a part of the European consensus of Rococo living. This fact should encourage debate, not only in Dublin and Belfast, but in Boston, New York and the Irish American communities caught up in the Celtic myth.

In 1600, Peter Paul Rubens left his home in Antwerp to travel to Italy and study the Italian masters. Eight years later, he returned to Belgium and quickly established himself as one of the foremost painters in Western Europe. This book explores Rubens' work from 1609 until 1621 and how, acutely aware of the possibilities for commercial success, he rose to fame by establishing a "brand" and promoting himself. He created multiple versions of paintings with subjects that had proven to be successful, used similar subject matter to that used by famous artists in the past, and sought collaborators to create more ambitious works than he could have done alone. He also created a studio and workshop with numerous students and assistants, the most famous being Anthony van Dyck who frequently collaborated with Rubens. Through paintings, drawings, and prints, this book shows how a desire for commercial success influenced and changed Rubens' artistic style. Essays delve into Italy's effect on Rubens, on the narrative aspect of his paintings, and how he managed commissions from famous patrons. Filled with new insights on the most fruitful phase of Rubens' career, this book offers a refreshing look at one of the most influential Baroque artists.

In the summer of 1648, yellow fever appeared for the first time on the Yucatán Peninsula, claiming the lives of roughly one-third of the population. To combat this epidemic, Spanish colonial authorities carried a miracle-working Marian icon in procession from Itzmal to the capital city of Mérida and back again as a means of invoking divine intercession. Idolizing Mary uses this event and this icon to open a discussion about the early and profound indigenous veneration of the Virgin Mary. Amara Solari argues that particular Marian icons, such as the Virgin of Itzmal, embodied an ideal suite of precontact numinous qualities, which Maya neophytes reframed for their community’s religious needs. Examining prints, paintings, and early modern writings about the Virgin of Itzmal, Solari takes up various topics that contributed to the formation of Yucatán Catholicism—such as indigenous Maya notions of sacrality, ritual purity, and the formal qualities of offering vessels—and demonstrates how these aligned with the Virgin of Itzmal in such a way that the icon came to be viewed by the native populations as a deity of a new world order. Thoroughly researched and convincingly argued, Idolizing Mary will be welcomed by scholars and students interested in religious transformation and Marian devotion in colonial Spanish America.

For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country's favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century. This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.

Propaganda in Revolutionary Ukraine is a survey of domestic government and party printed propaganda in revolutionary Ukraine. It is the first account in English to study these materials using an illustrative sample of printed texts and to assess their impact based on secret police and agitator situation reports. The book surveys texts published by the Central Rada, the Ukrainian State, the Ukrainian National Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Ukrainian Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Independentists, Ukrainian Communist Party (UCP), Ukraine's Bolshevik Party (CPU), and anti-Bolshevik warlords. It includes 46 reproductions and describes the infrastructure that underlay the production and dissemination of printed text propaganda. The author argues that in the war of words neither Ukrainian failures nor Bolshevik success should be exaggerated. Each side managed to sway opinion in its favour in specific places at specific times.

Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age presents the finest pieces from one of the most important private collections in the field, The Leiden Collection, New York, alongside a selection from the Louvre's holdings. This exhibition catalogue illuminates the extraordinary art that flourished during the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century - a time of unprecedented prosperity. Pioneering still life, realism, portraiture, landscape and genre painting, artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris and Frans Hals infused new life into Dutch art, forming a national artistic awakening. Here, their collective work provides a glimpse into the Dutch Golden Age, where the encounter with the new inspired enthralling forms of artistic expressions.

Rembrandt, Vermeer et le Siecle d'or hollandais presente les pieces les plus remarquables de l'une des collections particulieres les plus importantes dans ce domaine, la collection Leiden, New York, ainsi qu'un choix d' uvres provenant du Louvre. Ce catalogue d'exposition met en lumiere l'extraordinaire epanouissement de l'art au dix-septieme siecle, pendant la periode appelee Siecle d'or hollandais, marquee par une prosperite sans precedent. Pionniers de la nature morte, du realisme, du portrait, du paysage, de la peinture de genre, des artistes tels que Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Lievens, Gerard Dou, Frans van Mieris ou Frans Hals ont insuffle une vie nouvelle dans l'art hollandais, suscitant un reveil artistique national. Leurs uvres reunies ici donnent un apercu du Siecle d'or hollandais, ce temps ou l'ouverture vers de nouveaux horizons engendra des formes d'expression artistique captivantes.

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.

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.

This book is a comprehensive, well illustrated guide to one of the most important collections of 18th-century silver in Europe, extending to nearly a thousand individual pieces, being of the highest quality, style and exuberance of form and surviving virtually intact along with extensive and previously untapped archival evidence of its commissioning and use. The book analyses the silver from stylistic and technical perspectives and uses it to shed light on the patronage, fashion, and diplomatic, political and social history of the period. It also casts new light on the Herveys, one of England's most famous and eccentric aristocratic families.

Crowning Glories integrates Louis XIV's propaganda campaigns, the transmission of Northern art into France, and the rise of empiricism in the eighteenth century - three historical touchstones - to examine what it would have meant for France's elite to experience the arts in France simultaneously with Netherlandish realist painting. In an expansive study of cultural life under the Sun King, Harriet Stone considers the monarchy's elaborate palace decors, the court's official records, and the classical theatre alongside Northern images of daily life in private homes, urban markets, and country fields. Stone argues that Netherlandish art assumes an unobtrusive yet, for the history of ideas, surprisingly dramatic role within the flourishing of the arts, both visual and textual, in France during Louis XIV's reign. Netherlandish realist art represented thinking about knowledge that challenged the monarchy's hold on the French imagination, and its efforts to impose the king's portrait as an ideal and proof of his authority. As objects appreciated for their aesthetic and market value, Northern realist paintings assumed an uncontroversial place in French royal and elite collections. Flemish and Dutch still lifes, genre paintings, and cityscapes, however, were not merely accoutrements of power, acquisitions made by those with influence and money. Crowning Glories reveals how the empirical orientation of Netherlandish realism exposed French court society to a radically different mode of thought, one that would gain full expression in the Encyclopedie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

This is as the favoured artist of an enterprising Parisian elite, Robert is a prophetic case study of the intersection between aesthetics and modernity's dawning business culture. In this provocative study, Hubert Robert's paintings of urban ruins are interpreted as manifestations of a new consciousness of time, one shaped by the uncertainty of an economy characterized by the anxiety-inducing expansion of credit, frenzied speculation on the stock market, and foolhardy ventures in real estate. At the centre of this lively narrative lie Robert's depictions of the ruins of Paris - macabre and spectacular paintings of desolation - on the eve of the French Revolution. Drawing on a vast range of materials, Futures & Ruins interprets Robert's artworks as harbingers of a modern appetite for self-destruction: the paintings are examined as expressions of the pleasures and perils of a risk economy.