An important reassessment of the later career and life of a beloved baroque artist Hailed as one of the most influential and expressive painters of the seventeenth century, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-ca. 1656) has figured prominently in the art historical discourse of the past two decades. This attention to Artemisia, after many years of scholarly neglect, is partially due to interest in the dramatic details of her early life, including the widely publicized rape trial of her painting tutor, Agostino Tassi, and her admission to Florence's esteemed Accademia del Disegno. While the artist's early paintings have been extensively discussed, her later work has been largely dismissed. This beautifully illustrated and elegantly written book provides a revolutionary look at Artemisia's later career, refuting longstanding assumptions about the artist. The fact that she was semi-illiterate has erroneously led scholars to assume a lack of literary and cultural education on her part. Stressing the importance of orality in Baroque culture and in Artemisia's paintings, Locker argues for her important place in the cultural dialogue of the seventeenth century.

The unique arts-and-crafts tradition of the American Southwest illuminates this economic and social history of colonial New Mexico, casting new light on the development of New Mexico's Hispanic community and its changing relationship with Pueblo Indians. Ross Frank's analysis of Pueblo Indian pottery, Pueblo and Spanish blankets, and Spanish religious images - or santos - links economic change to social and cultural change in this region. Using these cultural artifacts to gauge shifts in power and status, Frank charts the creation of a culturally innovative and dominating Hispanic settler - or vecino - community during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Contrary to previous views of this period as an economic backwater, Frank shows that Spanish New Mexico instead experienced growth that tied the region closely to colonial economic reforms of the Spanish empire. The resulting economic boom dramatically altered the balance of power between the Spanish settlers and the Pueblo Indians, giving the vecinos the incentive and the means to exploit their Pueblo Indian neighbors. Frank shows that the vecinos used different strategies to take control of the Pueblo textile and pottery trade. The Hispanic community began to define its cultural identity through the economic and social subordination of the Pueblo Indians. Connecting economic change to powerful cultural and social changes, Frank provides a new understanding of this 'borderlands' region of northern New Spain in relatoin to the Spanish colonial history of Mexico. At the same time, "From Settler to Citizen" recovers the previously unexplored history of an important Hispanic community.

In Painting as Medicine in Early Modern Rome, Frances Gage undertakes an in-depth study of the writings of the physician and art critic Giulio Mancini. Using Mancini’s unpublished treatises as well as contemporary documents, Gage demonstrates that in the early modern world, belief in the transformational power of images was not limited to cult images, as has often been assumed, but applied to secular ones as well. This important new interpretation of the value of images and the motivations underlying the rise of private art collections in the early modern period challenges purely economic or status-based explanations. Gage demonstrates that paintings were understood to have profound effects on the minds, imaginations, and bodies of viewers. Indeed, paintings were believed to affect the health and emotional balance of beholders—extending even to the look and disposition of their offspring—and to compel them to behave according to civic and moral values. In using medical discourse as an analytical tool to help elucidate the meaning that collectors and viewers attributed to specific genres of painting, Gage shows that images truly informed actions, shaping everyday rituals from reproductive practices to exercise. In doing so, she concludes that sharp distinctions between an artwork’s aesthetic value and its utility did not apply in the early modern period.

In this groundbreaking book, James Cahill expands the field of Chinese pictorial art history, opening both scholarly studies and popular appreciation to vernacular paintings, 'pictures for use and pleasure'. These were works commissioned and appreciated during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the non-elites of Chinese society, including women. Traditional Chinese collectors, like present-day scholars of Chinese painting, have favored the 'literati' paintings of the Chinese male elite, disparaging vernacular works, often intended as decorations or produced to mark a special occasion. Cahill challenges the dominant dogma and doctrine of the literati, showing how the vernacular images, both beautiful and appealing, strengthen our understanding of High Qing culture. They bring to light the Qing or Manchu emperors' fascination with erotic culture in the thriving cities of the Yangtze Delta and demonstrate the growth of figure painting in and around Beijing's imperial court. They also revise our understanding of gender roles and show how Chinese artists made use of European styles. By introducing a large, rich body of works, "Pictures for Use and Pleasure" opens new windows on later Chinese life and society.

"Baroque New Worlds" traces the changing nature of Baroque representation in Europe and the Americas across four centuries, from its seventeenth-century origins as a Catholic and monarchical aesthetic and ideology to its contemporary function as a postcolonial ideology aimed at disrupting entrenched power structures and perceptual categories. Baroque forms are exuberant, ample, dynamic, and porous, and in the regions colonized by Catholic Europe, the Baroque was itself eventually colonized. In the New World, its transplants immediately began to reflect the cultural perspectives and iconographies of the indigenous and African artisans who built and decorated Catholic structures, and Europe's own cultural products were radically altered in turn. Today, under the rubric of the Neobaroque, this transculturated Baroque continues to impel artistic expression in literature, the visual arts, architecture, and popular entertainment worldwide.

Since Neobaroque reconstitutions necessarily reference the European Baroque, this volume begins with the reevaluation of the Baroque that evolved in Europe during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Foundational essays by Friedrich Nietzsche, Heinrich Wolfflin, Walter Benjamin, Eugenio d'Ors, Rene Wellek, and Mario Praz recuperate and redefine the historical Baroque. Their essays lay the groundwork for the revisionist Latin American essays, many of which have not been translated into English until now. Authors including Alejo Carpentier, Jose Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, edouard Glissant, Haroldo de Campos, and Carlos Fuentes understand the New World Baroque and Neobaroque as decolonizing strategies in Latin America and other postcolonial contexts. This collection moves between art history and literary criticism to provide a rich interdisciplinary discussion of the transcultural forms and functions of the Baroque.

Contributors. Dorothy Z. Baker, Walter Benjamin, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Jose Pascual Buxo, Leo Cabranes-Grant, Haroldo de Campos, Alejo Carpentier, Irlemar Chiampi, William Childers, Gonzalo Celorio, Eugenio d'Ors, Jorge Ruedas de la Serna, Carlos Fuentes, edouard Glissant, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, angel Guido, Monika Kaup, Jose Lezama Lima, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mario Praz, Timothy J. Reiss, Alfonso Reyes, Severo Sarduy, Pedro Henriquez Urena, Maarten van Delden, Rene Wellek, Christopher Winks, Heinrich Wolfflin, Lois Parkinson Zamora

This pioneering book chronicles the transformation of public art in eighteenth-century France. As royal and ecclesiastical authority waned under the rule of Louis XV, there emerged nascent democratic institutions, a new metaphysics, and a radical political consciousness--a paradigm shift that profoundly marked the forms that commemorative sculpture and architecture took. As a French Catholic heritage gave way to more civic-minded and secular views of posterity, how was the monument reinterpreted? How did works by Clodion, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Augustin Pajou, Marie-Joseph Peyre, and Jacques Germain Soufflot, among others, speak to the aesthetic philosophies of Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire? Analyzing an extraordinary range of artistic projects--from unrealized plans for a Bourbon memorial to the sculptural program for the Pantheon--Erika Naginski appraises how the Enlightenment art of res publica intersected with historical forces, social movements, and continental philosophies that brought Western culture to the cusp of modernity.

His works have prompted a New York Times bestseller; a film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth; record visitor numbers at art institutions from Amsterdam to Washington, DC; and special crowd-control measures at the Mauritshuis, The Hague, where thousands flock to catch a glimpse of the enigmatic and enchanting Girl with a Pearl Earring, also known as the "Dutch Mona Lisa". In his lifetime, however, the fame of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) barely extended beyond his native Delft and a small circle of patrons. After his death, his name was largely forgotten, except by a few Dutch art collectors and dealers. Outside of Holland, his works were even misattributed to other artists. It was not until the mid-19th century that Vermeer came to the attention of the international art world, which suddenly looked upon his narrative minutiae, meticulous textural detail, and majestic planes of light, spotted a genius, and never looked back. This XXL edition brings together the complete catalog of Vermeer's work, presenting the calm yet compelling scenes so treasured in galleries across Europe and the United States into one monograph of utmost reproduction quality. With brand new photography of many works, Vermeer's restrained but richly evocative repertoire of domestic actions - ranging from letter writing to music making to preparations in the kitchen - unfolds in a generous format, including three fold-out spreads. Numerous details emphasize the artist's remarkable ability not only to bear witness to the trends and trimmings of the Dutch Golden Age but also to encapsulate an entire story in just one transient gesture, expression, or look.

Volume III in the 'Studies in the History of Collection' series, published in association with the Beazley Archive in the University of Oxford. 14 papers on The Mechanisms of the Art Market 1660-1830 presented at a symposium at the Wallace Collection, London in December 2003. Contents: Introduction (Neil De Marchi); 1) The Art Trade and its Urban Context: England and the Netherlands compared, 1550-1750 (David Ormrod); 2) The Auction Duty Act of 1777: the beginning of institutionalisation of auctions in Britain (Satomi Ohashi); 3) The Almoneda: the second-hand art market in Spain (Mari-Tere Alvarez); 4) The Market for Netherlandish Paintings in Paris, 1750-1815 (Hans J. Van Miegroet); 5) Le tableau et son prix a Paris, 1760-80 (Patrick Michel); 6) The System Governing Appraised Value in Ancien Regime France (Alden R. Gordon); 7) The Marquis de Vasse Against the Art Dealer Jacques Lenglier: a case-study of an eighteenth-century Parisian auction (Francois Marandet); 8) Pierre Sirois (1665-1726): le premier marchand de Watteau (Guillaume Glorieux); 9) The Purchase of the Past: Dr Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755) and the collecting of history (John Cherry); 10) John Anderson and John Bouttats: picture dealers in eighteenth-century London (David Connell); 11) Sir Godfrey Copley as Patron and Consumer, 1685-1705 (David Mitchell); 12) The Rise and Fall of a British Connoisseur: the career of Michael Bryan (1757-1821), picture dealer extraordinaire (Julia Armstrong-Totten); 13) 'In Keeping with the Truth': the German art market and its role in the development of connoisseurship in the eighteenth century (Thomas Ketelsen); 14) Abraham Hume e Giovanni Maria Sasso: il mercato artistico tra Venezia e Londra nel settecento (Linda Borean).

" A]n impressive and original work of synthetic scholarship that one hopes will be emulated by others." Phillip B. Wagoner, Wesleyan University

" A]n excellent and important work... with] a wonderful sophistication of method." Padma Kaimal, Colgate University

The patrons and artists of Bijapur, an Islamic kingdom that flourished in the Deccan region of India in the 16th and 17th centuries, produced lush paintings and elaborately carved architecture, evidence of a highly cosmopolitan Indo-Islamic culture. Bijapur s most celebrated monument, the Ibrahim Rauza tomb complex, is carved with elegant calligraphy and lotus flowers and was once dubbed "the Taj Mahal of the South." This stunningly illustrated study traces the development of Bijapuri art and courtly identity through detailed examination of selected paintings and architecture, many of which have never before been published. They deserve our attention for their aesthetic qualities as well as for the ways they expand our understanding of the rich synthesis of cultures and religions in South Asian and Islamic art."

In The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment Christopher Johns addresses the reforming impulse of the Catholic Church in the middle decades of the eighteenth century and its impact on art and visual culture, broadly defined. Until relatively recently, most scholars considered the notion of a Catholic Enlightment either oxymoronic or illusory, since received wisdom was that the Catholic Church was a tireless and indefatigable enemy of modernist progress. According to Johns, however, the eighteenth-century Papacy recognized many of the advantages of engaging certain aspects of enlightenment thinking and many in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, both in Italy and abroad, were sincerely interested in making the Church more relevant in the modern world and, above all, in reforming the various institutions that governed society. Johns presents the visual culture of papal Rome as a major change agent in the cause of Catholic enlightenment while assessing its continuing links to tradition. The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment sheds substantial light on the relationship between eighteenth-century Roman society and visual culture and the role of religion in both.

This is a brief history of and investigation into the collecting of sacred art. When works of art created for religious purposes outlive their original function, they often take on new meanings as they move from sacred spaces to secular collections. Focusing on the centuries in which the phenomenon of collecting came powerfully into its own, the fourteen essays presented here analyze the radical recontextualization of celebrated paintings by Raphael, Caravaggio, and Rubens; brings to light a lost holy tower from fifteenth-century Bavaria; and offers new insights into the meaning of 'sacred' and 'profane'. Collecting represents the primary mechanism by which a sacred work of art survives when it is alienated from its original context. In the field of art history, the consequences of such collecting - its tendency to reframe an object, metaphorically and physically - have only begun to be investigated. "Sacred Possessions" charts the contours of a fertile terrain for further inquiry.

The largest maps in the world are to be found in the floor of the Citizens' Hall, in the heart of the Royal Palace Amsterdam. The three circular mosaics, each measuring over six metres in diameter, together depict the known world and the night sky. They remain to this day an iconic and beloved part of the majestic palace, which was originally built in the mid-17th century to serve as Amsterdam's town hall. At that time, the city was the world's leading cartography centre. The prominent place of the floor maps relates directly to that primacy. This book tells the story of these unique maps and of the flourishing of cartography in Amsterdam in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In Absolutist Attachments, Chloe Hogg uncovers the affective and media connections that shaped Louis XIV's absolutism. Studying literature, painting, engravings, correspondence, and the emerging periodic press, Hogg diagnoses the emotions that created absolutism's feeling subjects and publics. Louis XIV's subjects explored new kinds of affective relations with their sovereign, joining with the king in acts of aesthetic judgment, tender feeling, or the "newsiness" of emerging print news culture. Such alternative modes of adhesion countered the hegemonic model of kingship upheld by divine right, reason of state, or corporate fidelities and privileges with subject-driven attachments and practices. Absolutist Attachments discovers absolutism's alternative political and cultural legacy-not the spectacle of an unbound king but the binding connections of his subjects.

Very little is known about The Green Florilegium. Neither signed nor dated, it is generally attributed to the German painter Hans Simon Holtzbecker and originates from the library at Gottorp Castle in Schleswig, on the border of Germany and Denmark. The album now resides at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. Recently the book was painstakingly restored, allowing the delicate illustrations to come to new life in their original colors. This beautiful and affordable volume reproduces the original work of 400 botanical illustrations in its entirety. It also includes an introductory essay and captions with basic information on each flower. This lovely book is a must-have for lovers of botanical illustration and a sublime example of the art of conservation.