Rubens was well placed to take advantage of the increasing demand for scenes of Christ's Passion in the Southern Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th Century. He had developed a reputation for his religious paintings in Italy, and his return to Antwerp coincided with the efforts of the Catholic Church to restore and replace altarpieces damaged by the Calvinists. The experience of Italy fostered Ruben's interest in both the historical and the human aspects of Christ's Passion. The influence of classical sculpture and of Titian, Michelangelo and Caravaggio is evident in the monumental quality of his compositions, but he also valued the emotional intensity of Northern masters like Rogier van der Weyden and Quentin Massys. He made many innovations in his concern for accuracy, especially in disputed subjects like the Elevation of the Cross. Ruben's success in transforming all these diverse influences is a tribute to his deeply held religious beliefs and his determination to give his viewers the sense of witnessing a moment in history. The images that Rubens created were appropriated throughout Europe.

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.

El presente estudio explora El libro de romances y coplas del Carmelo de Valladolid [c. 1590-1609] escrito por las hermanas carmelitas descalzas del Convento de la Concepcion del Carmen en Valladolid Espana a finales del siglo XVI y principios del XVII. Por medio de esta monografia demostraremos de que manera estas mujeres utilizaban la poesia, escrita por hombres, que tenian a su alcance y entonces, reconfiguraban el discurso masculino, haciendolo propio y lo adaptaban a su delicada voz. Apuntaremos la forma en que estas mujeres describian a otras mujeres revistiendolas de carne y hueso, tan poderosas, tan hermosas y tan espirituales, difiriendo - en muchas ocasiones - del convencional modelo petrarquista de descripcion femenina en el que la mujer era representada como una estatua fria y rigida. Estas escritoras entonaban sus versos para su esposo espiritual con la misma intensidad que los mas atrevidos poetas decantaban sus corazones al exaltar a sus musas. Las poetisas del cancionero tomaron prestada la forma y el contenido de la lirica masculina pero los adaptaron a su amorosa, delicada y religiosa voz.

The Baroque was the first truly global culture. The Ibero-American Baroque illuminates its dissemination, dynamism, and transformation during the early modern period on both sides of the Atlantic. This collection of original essays focuses on the media, institutions, and technologies that were central to cultural exchanges in a broad early modern Iberian world, brought into being in the aftermath of the Spanish and Portuguese arrivals in the Americas. Focusing on the period from 1600 to 1825, these essays explore early modern Iberian architecture, painting, sculpture, music, sermons, reliquaries, processions, emblems, and dreams, shedding light on the Baroque as a historical moment of far-reaching and long-lasting importance. Anchored in extensive, empirical research that provides evidence for understanding how the Baroque became globalized, The Ibero-American Baroque showcases the ways in which the Baroque has continued to define Latin American identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Between 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Acade mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Acade mie's 'confe rences', foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embody guided artistic practice and art theory in France and throughout Europe for two centuries. In the 1800s, the Acade mie's influence waned, and few of the 388 Acade mie lectures were translated into English. Eminent scholars Christian Michel and Jacqueline Lichtenstein have selected and annotated forty-two of the most representative lectures, creating the first authoritative collection of the 'confe rences' for readers of English. Essential to understanding French art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these lectures reveal what leading French artists looked for in a painting or sculpture, the problems they sought to resolve in their works, and how they viewed their own and others' artistic practice.

This is a fascinating exploration of the mystery that surrounds of Ruben's most well-known and intriguing drawings. Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most talented and successful artists working in 17th-century Europe. During his illustrious career as a court painter and diplomat, Rubens expressed a fascination with exotic costumes and headdresses. With his masterful handling of black chalk and touches of red, Rubens executed a compelling drawing that features a figure wearing Asian costume - a depiction that has recently been identified as Man in Korean Costume. Despite the drawings renown - both during Ruben's own lifetime and in contemporary art scholarship - the reasons why it was made and whether it actually depicts a specific Asian person remain a mystery. The intriguing story that develops involves a shipwreck, an unusual hat, the earliest trade between Europe and Asia, the trafficking of Asian slave, and Jesuit missionaries.

Gardens of Court and Country provides the first comprehensive overview of the development of the English formal garden from 1630 to 1730. Often overshadowed by the English landscape garden that became fashionable later in the 18th century, English formal gardens of the 17th century displayed important design innovations that reflected a broad rethinking of how gardens functioned within society. With insights into how the Protestant nobility planned and used their formal gardens, the domestication of the lawn, and the transformation of gardens into large rustic parks, David Jacques explores the ways forecourts, flower gardens, bowling greens, cascades, and more were created and reimagined over time. This handsome volume includes 300 illustrations - including plans, engravings, and paintings - that bring lost and forgotten gardens back to life. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

An expert look at the life and captivating work of the Dutch painter Nicolaes Maes, Rembrandt's most famous pupil This book offers a close look at the art of Dutch Golden Age painter Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693). One of Rembrandt's most talented students, Maes began by painting biblical scenes in the style of his famous teacher. He later produced extraordinary genre pieces, in which the closely observed actions of the main figure, often a woman, have a hushed, almost monumental character. Maes also depicted mothers with children or older women praying or sleeping; such works have placed him among the most popular painters of the Dutch Golden Age. From around 1660, Maes turned exclusively to portraiture, and his elegant style attracted wealthy and eminent clients from Dordrecht and Amsterdam. This generously illustrated volume is the first in English to cover the full range of his repertoire. The authors-curators from the National Gallery, London, and the Mauritshuis, The Hague-bring extensive knowledge to bear for the benefit of specialists and the general public. Published by National Gallery Company in association with the Mauritshuis, The Hague, and Waanders Publishers, Zwolle/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: Mauritshuis (October 17, 2019-January 19, 2020) National Gallery, London (February 22-May 31, 2020)