A unique seventeenth-century account of painting as it was practiced, taught, and discussed during a period of extraordinary artistic and intellectual ferment in the Netherlands. The only comprehensive work on painting written by a Dutch artist in the later seventeenth century, Samuel van Hoogstraten's Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, anders de zichtbaere werelt (Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World, 1678) has long served as a source of valuable insights on a range of topics, from firsthand reports of training in Rembrandt's studio to contemporary engagements with perspective, optics, experimental philosophy, the economics of art, and more. Van Hoogstraten's magnum opus--here available in an English print edition for the first time--brings textual sources into dialogue with the author's own experience garnered during a multifaceted career. Presenting novel twists on traditional topics, he makes a distinctive case for the status of painting as a universal discipline basic to all the liberal arts. Van Hoogstraten's arguments for the authority of what painters know about nature and art speak to contemporary notions of expertise and to the unsettled relations between theory and practice, making this book a valuable document of the intertwined histories of art and knowledge in the seventeenth century.

The subject of writing and receiving letters, which recurs frequently in the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), is given dramatic tension in this masterful painting of two women in a mysterious moment of crisis. The artist seldom, if ever, surpassed the subtly varied effects of light seen here as it gleams from the pearl jewellery, sparkles from the glass and silver objects on the table, and falls softly over the figures in their shadowy setting. The Frick Diptych series sparks a dialogue between creative spirits and art historians, promising new insights into some of the Frick's most famous masterpieces. The third volume, to be published in 2019, will have a contribution by author Edmund de Waal on a pair of porcelain and bronze candlesticks by the 18th-century French metalworker Pierre Gouthiere.

The first study devoted to classical art's vital creative impact on the work of the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. For the great Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the classical past afforded lifelong creative stimulus and the camaraderie of humanist friends. A formidable scholar, Rubens ingeniously transmitted the physical ideals of ancient sculptors, visualized the spectacle of imperial occasions, rendered the intricacies of mythological tales, and delineated the character of gods and heroes in his drawings, paintings, and designs for tapestries. His passion for antiquity profoundly informed every aspect of his art and life. Including more than 150 color illustrations, this volume addresses the creative impact of Rubens's remarkable knowledge of the art and literature of antiquity through the consideration of key themes. The book's lively interpretive essays explore the formal and thematic relationships between ancient sources and Baroque expressions: the significance of neo-Stoic philosophy, the compositional and iconographic inspiration provided by exquisite carved gems, Rubens's study of Roman marble sculpture, and his inventive translation of ancient sources into new subjects made vivid by his dynamic painting style. This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa October 21, 2020, to January 11, 2021.

Karel van Manders Schilder-Boeck von 1604 ist eine der komplexesten kunsthistoriographischen und kunsttheoretischen Quellenschriften zur Malerei der Fruhen Neuzeit. Angesichts der theoretischen Gewichtung sind dem Schilder Boeck maltechnische Inhalte bislang konsequent abgesprochen worden. Die Vielzahl der in den Lebensbeschreibungen und im Lehrgedicht abgelagerten technischen Hinweise lasst jedoch auch eine auf die Malpraxis bezogene Lesart des Textes zu. Denn gerade durch die Einbeziehung von produktionsrelevanten Aspekten vermag van mander zwei wesentliche Intentionen seiner Theoriediskussion argumentative zu stutzen: Die Widerlegung der von Vasari beanspruchten kulturellen Autoritat der italienischen Malerei und die Formulierung eines demonstrativen Protests gegen das einengende, jeglichen kunstlerischen Fortschritt hemmende Regelwerk der niederlandischen Zunfte.

An original and breathtakingly beautiful perspective on how art developed through the ages, this book reveals how new materials and techniques inspired artists to create their greatest works. The Story of Painting will completely transform your understanding and enjoyment of art. Covering a comprehensive array of topics, from the first pigments and frescos to linear perspective in Renaissance paintings, the influence of photography, Impressionism, and the birth of modern art, it follows each step in the evolution of painting over the last 25,000 years, from the first cave paintings to the abstract works of the last 100 years. Packed with lavish colour reproductions of paintings and photographs of artists at work and the materials they used, it delves into the key paintings from each period to analyse the techniques and secrets of the great masters in detail. Immerse yourself in the pages of this stunning book and find yourself dazzled by new colours; marvel at the magic of perspective; wonder at glowing depictions of fabric and flesh; understand cubism; and embrace abstraction. You will look at paintings in a whole new light.

Published to coincide with the major exhibition at the National Gallery this autumn, here is the ultimate book on Rembrandt's art and life - his work as an artist, his family, friends and patrons, his place in European culture - by one of the world's best-known writers on Dutch art. Designed to be the Rembrandt book of first resort, this complete and accessible volume, available again in a new, reduced format edition, will be an invaluable work of reference and vital reading for art lovers, art students and museum-goers.

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 Haukohl Family stands in the wake of a lasting tradition of European and American collecting practices for the benefit of future generations. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Luxembourg National Museum of Art, October 2018 to February 2019. For six generations the Haukohls have collected art, rare books, drawings, sculpture and textiles. It has been the fulfilling result of a Milwaukee-based American Midwestern family who has had equal determination and always with an eye towards acquiring fine art for the benefit of the future generations. This book presents masterworks of Italian painting and sculpture from the 16th through 18th centuries drawn from the largest private American collection of Florentine Baroque painting, featuring works by key artists such as Cesare Dandini, Jacopo da Empoli, and Francesco Furini.

This is a nonchronological introduction to Baroque, one of the great periods of European art. John Martin's descriptions of the essential characteristics of the Baroque help one to gain an understanding of the style. His illustrations are informative and he has clearly looked with a fresh eye at the works of art themselves. In addition to the more than 200 illustrations, the volume contains an appendix of translated documents.

A beautiful, lively tour through the portraits of one of the most celebrated painters of 17th century Europe In this sumptuously illustrated volume, eminent art historian Sir Christopher White places the portraiture of renowned Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) in context among the work of his contemporaries working in and around the courts of seventeenth-century Europe. Van Dyck's artistic development is charted through his travels, beginning in his native Antwerp, then to England, Italy, Brussels, the Hague, and back again. Combining historical insights with a discerning appreciation of the work, White brings Van Dyck's paintings to life, showing how the virtuoso not only admired his artistic predecessors and rivals but refashioned what he learned from them into new kind of portraiture. Beautifully produced and a pleasure to read, this book is an important contribution to the literature on a celebrated painter. Distributed for Modern Art Press

Caravaggio's astonishingly naturalistic and provocative Cupid Victorious hung in the palace of a famous family at the heart of seventeenth-century Rome. Helen Langdon explores how the artist, famed for his originality, created a balance between a suggestion of his own world - a world of lively and rowdy street life - and a complex and ambiguous response to both ancient and Renaissance art and literature. Langdon also looks at the challenge the painting threw out to contemporary painters, whose world was characterised by extreme and bitter rivalries; often they reject his irony, sometimes embellish the painting's sexuality, and at other times convey an opposing sense of the harmony of the arts.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), one of the great masters of the Dutch Golden Age, is among the world's best-loved artists. The poetry of Vermeer's painting, with its brilliant colors, exquisite textures, and pearly light effects, is as vivid to us today as it must have been to people of the artist's own time. This beautiful book illustrates every known work by Vermeer in full color. Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Curator of Northern Baroque Painting at the National Gallery of Art has written an illuminating essay on the artist and commentaries on the paintings.

What a shock it must have been for the Utrecht painters Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerard van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen when they first encountered the breathtaking and unconventional paintings of Caravaggio in Rome. This volume shows impressively how the young artists individually explored this role model and thereby developed their own individual style. In around 1600 Rome was the centre of the world. Attracted by Caravaggio's spectacular success, young artists from all over Europe converged on the bus tling metropolis. The up-and-coming painters studied the same works, discussed matters with each other and used Caravaggio's style to develop their own individual pictorial language. Tracing the careers of the three most important Utrecht Caravaggists, the authors describe the atmosphere of this artistic mood of renewal. Only in a comparison with their European fellow artists does it become evident how strongly the Dutch tradition, with its love of merciless realism, influenced the creative work of the Utrecht painters.

Catalogue exploring the five spectacular views of the Fortress of Koenigstein in Dresden by Venetian painter Bernardo Bellotto, nephew and pupil of Canaletto Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) ranks amongst the very greatest view painters of eighteenth-century Europe. Today, he is best known for his views of northern European cities: large-scale works characterised by panoramic compositions, a strongly contrasted use of light and shadow, and meticulous attention to architectural detail. This book provides an overview of Bellotto's life and career, as well as a record of the historic reuniting of his five spectacular views of the fortress of Koenigstein, displayed together for the first time in over 250 years, following the National Gallery's recent acquisition of The Fortress of Koenigstein from the North in 2017. Commissioned by August III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, these works depicting the fortress from different viewpoints are undoubtedly Bellotto's finest non-urban paintings. These remarkable pictures are imbued with a monumentality rarely seen at this time and the series dramatically illustrates the very different direction in which Bellotto took the tradition of European view painting. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The National Gallery, London (July 22-October 31, 2021) Manchester Art Gallery (November 20, 2021-February 27, 2022)

The essays in this volume show that Versailles was not the static creation of one man, but a hugely complex cultural space; a centre of power, but also of life, love, anxiety, creation, and an enduring palimpsest of aspirations, desires, and ruptures. The splendour of the Château and the masterpieces of art and design that it contains mask a more complex and sometimes more sordid history of human struggle and achievement. The case studies presented by the contributors to this book cannot provide a comprehensive account of the Palace of Versailles and its domains, the life within its walls, its visitors, and the art and architecture that it has inspired from the seventeenth century to the present day: from the palace of the Sun King to the Penthouse of Donald Trump. However, this innovative collection will reshape—or even radically redefine—our understanding of the palace of Versailles and its posterity.

Baroque between the Wars is a fascinating and new account of the arts in the twenties and thirties. We often think of this time as being dominated by modernism, yet the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque - eclectic, playful, camp, open to influence from popular culture yet in dialogue with the past, and unafraid of the grotesque or surreal - and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, exclusive, and essentially neo-classical. Jane Stevenson argues that both baroque and classical forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity, by setting painting and literature in the context of 'minor arts' such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, the volume focuses on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists to demonstrate how baroque offered a whole way of being modern which was actively subversive of the tenets of modernism and practised by the people modernism habitually defined as not worth listening to, particularly women and homosexuals.

This anthology presents classic and recent scholarship on Italian art from 1600-1750, highlighting the key debates with which art historians continue to grapple.
Explores themes including: style or the visuality of art; artistic practices and production; artistic communication as projected and experienced; and artists' interactions with the ancient world and with the new sciences
Examines the work of key painters, architects and sculptors from this period, including Caravaggio, Bernini, Guarini and Poussin
Published in the expanding "Blackwell Anthologies in Art History" series

"Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections: The Age of Bernini, Rembrandt, and Poussin" brings together more than one hundred treasures of the Baroque age from museum collections throughout the Midwest. The volume presents a fascinating and representative selection of Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and French drawings in Midwestern repositories, offering new insights on many of these works of art. Many are relatively unknown, and some have never before been published.
Authored by major scholars in the field, the catalogue presents each drawing along with a concise description with full scholarly apparatus. Four essays, written by Babette Bohn, George S. Keyes, Kristi A. Nelson, and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., respectively, introduce the Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and French schools. The catalogue's introductory essay, by Shelley Perlove, places these works within the historical, iconographic, and stylistic currents of seventeenth-century art. The catalogue is designed to have widespread appeal for art historians, curators, artists, collectors, students, and general readers interested in art and cultural history. Moreover, "Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections "highlights the surprising number of institutions throughout the Midwest that have acquired distinguished European drawings from the seventeenth century worthy of full recognition by collectors and connoisseurs.

Men in stately black, women with huge ruffs, children with golden rattles, old women with wizened faces, and self-satisfied artists... These are the main players in just about every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the15th to the 17th centuries, the tract of land that we today call Flanders was the economic, cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money flows - with everyone who could afford it investing in a portrait. Today, these cherished status symbols of the past have largely lost their original significance. But beyond their functional and emotional aspects, these portraits turn their subjects into gateways to the past. This book takes masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation and outlines the broad context in which they came into being, peeling back levels of meaning like the layers of an onion. Whether captured in an impressive Rubens or Van Dyck, or an intimate portrait by a forgotten artist, the persons portrayed were once flesh and blood, each with their own peculiarities, hidden agendas and ambitions. Some portraits are very personal and hyper-individual. Others are a little dusty, the ladies and gentleman being children of their time. In most cases, however, their dreams and aspirations are surprisingly timeless and soberingly recognisable. The Bold and the Beautiful is an appointment with history: a meeting through portraiture with men and women from bygone centuries. But for those willing to look closely, the border between the present and the past is paper-thin. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Blind Date. Portretten met blikken en blozen, Autumn 2020, in Snijders&Rockoxhuis Antwerp, curated by Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren & Hildegard Van de Velde with a scenography by Walter Van Beirendonck.

Baroque between the Wars is a fascinating account of the arts in the twenties and thirties. We often think of this time as being dominated by modernism, yet the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque - eclectic, playful, camp, open to influence from popular culture but connected with the past, and unafraid of the grotesque or surreal - and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, exclusive, and essentially neo-classical. Jane Stevenson argues that both baroque and classical forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity. Setting painting and literature in the context of 'minor arts' such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production, Stevenson offers a new and exciting interpretation of one of the most renowned artistic movements of the 20th century. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, the volume focuses on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists to demonstrate how baroque offered a whole new way of being modern. The modern baroque was an active subversion of the tenets of modernism, practised by the people that modernism habitually excluded. Stevenson brings those excluded groups into the centrefold of the modern baroque movement in a rich history of the alternative style which has influenced much of the art, architecture, performance and literature of today.

Focusing on the interrelationship between Jacob van Loo's art, honor, and career, this book argues that Van Loo's lifelong success and unblemished reputation were by no means incompatible, as art historians have long assumed, with his specialization in painting nudes and his conviction for manslaughter. Van Loo's iconographic specialty - the nude - allowed his clientele to present themselves as judges of beauty and display their mastery of decorum, while his portraiture perfectly expressed his clients' social and political ambitions. Van Loo's honor explains why his success lasted a lifetime, whereas that of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Vermeer did not. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book reinterprets the manslaughter case as a sign that Van Loo's elite patrons recognized him as a gentleman and highly-esteemed artist.

Manet called him "the greatest painter of all." Picasso was so inspired by his masterpiece Las Meninas that he painted 44 variations of it. Francis Bacon painted a study of his portrait of Pope Innocent X. Monet and Renoir, Corot and Courbet, Degas and Dali... for so many champions of art history, the ultimate sounding board was-and remains-Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660). First available as an XXL-sized volume, this accessible edition brings together Velazquez's complete works with a selection of enlarged details and photography of recently restored paintings, achieved through the joint initiative of TASCHEN and Wildenstein. The dazzling images are accompanied by insightful commentary from Jose Lopez-Rey on Velazquez's interest in human life and his equal attention to all subjects, from an old woman frying eggs to a pope or king, as well as his commitment to color and light, which would influence the Impressionists over two centuries later.

The second largest city in 17th-century Europe, Naples constituted a vital Mediterranean center in which the Spanish Habsburgs, the clergy, and Neapolitan aristocracy, together with the resident merchants, and other members of the growing professional classes jostled for space and prestige. Their competing programs of building and patronage created a booming art market and spurred painters such as Jusepe de Ribera, Massimo Stanzione, Salvator Rosa, and Luca Giordano as well as foreign artists such as Caravaggio, Domenichino, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Giovanni Lanfranco to extraordinary heights of achievement. This new reading of 17th-century Italian Baroque art explores the social, material, and economic history of painting, revealing how artists, agents, and the owners of artworks interacted to form a complex and mutually sustaining art world. Through such topics as artistic rivalry and anti-foreign labor agitation, art dealing and forgery, cultural diplomacy, and the rise of the independently arranged art exhibition, Christopher R. Marshall illuminates the rich interconnections between artistic practice and patronage, business considerations, and the spirit of entrepreneurialism in Baroque Italy.

Johannes Vermeer's luminous paintings are loved and admired around the world, yet we do not understand how they were made. We see sunlit spaces; the glimmer of satin, silver, and linen; we see the softness of a hand on a lute string or letter. We recognise the distilled impression of a moment of time; and we feel it to be real. We might hope for some answers from the experts, but they are confounded too. Even with the modern technology available, they do not know why there is an absence of any preliminary drawing; why there are shifts in focus; and why his pictures are unusually blurred. Some wonder if he might possibly have used a camera obscura to capture what he saw before him. The few traces Vermeer has left behind tell us little: there are no letters or diaries; and no reports of him at work. Jane Jelley has taken a new path in this detective story. A painter herself, she has worked with the materials of his time: the cochineal insect and lapis lazuli; the sheep bones, soot, earth and rust. She shows us how painters made their pictures layer by layer; she investigates old secrets; and hears travellers' tales. She explores how Vermeer could have used a lens in the creation of his masterpieces. The clues were there all along. After all this time, now we can unlock the studio door, and catch a glimpse of Vermeer inside, painting light.

Universally regarded as the father of French painting, Nicolas Poussin is arguably the greatest of all painters of that school. Yet Poussin's reputation has been founded more on the intellectual and philosophical qualities of his art than its sheer visual beauty. In Poussin as a Painter: From Classicism to Abstraction, Richard Verdi redresses the balance, describing and analyzing Poussin's outstanding gifts as a pictorial storyteller, designer and colourist - in short, on the purely aesthetic (and often abstract) aspects of his art that have inspired so many later painters, from Cezanne to Picasso. The book features more than 220 fine illustrations, the majority in colour, and encompasses all aspects of Poussin's art from the mid 1620s to his death in 1665. This ground-breaking study gives new insight into Poussin, and is essential reading for all who admire this seminal French painter.