The painting La Surprise by Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) belongs to a new genre of painting invented by the artist himself-the fete galante. These works, which show graceful open-air gatherings filled with scenes of courtship, music and dance, strolling lovers, and actors, do not so much tell a story as set a mood: one of playful, wistful, nostalgic reverie. Esteemed by collectors in Watteau's day as a work that showed the artist at the height of his skill and success, La Surprise vanished from public view in 1848, not to reemerge for more than a century and a half. Acquired by the Getty Museum in 2017, it has never before been the subject of a dedicated publication. Marking the three hundredth anniversary of Watteau's death, this book considers La Surprise within the context of the artist's oeuvre, and discusses the surprising history of collecting Watteau in Los Angeles.

Poussin's scenes of bacchanalian revelry, tripping maenads and skipping nymphs are often described as 'dancelike' and 'choreographed'. The artist's dancing pictures helped him develop a new approach to painting that would become the model for the French classical tradition. Shedding the sensuous, painterly manner of his early career, Poussin carved out the crisp, relief-like approach that characterized his mature work and set the precedent for three centuries of French art, from Le Brun and David to Cezanne and Picasso. He carried lessons learned from dance into every corner of his production. This book brings together a key group of paintings and drawings by Poussin, exploring the theme of dance and dancers in his production for the first time. Focusing on the dancing pictures created in Rome in the 1620s and 1630s, essays connect Poussin's interest in dance, his study of antiquities, and his formulation of a new classical style. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, this publication uses the prism of dance to cast Poussin in a new, fresh light.

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 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.

A new account of painting in early modern England centered on the art and legacy of Anthony van Dyck As a courtier, figure of fashion, and object of erotic fascination, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) transformed the professional identities available to English artists. By making his portrait sittings into a form of courtly spectacle, Van Dyck inspired poets and playwrights at the same time that he offended guardians of traditional hierarchies. A self-consciously Van Dyckian lineage of artists, many of them women, extends from his lifetime to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. Recovering the often surprising responses of both writers and painters to Van Dyck's portraits, this book provides an alternative perspective on English art's historical self-consciousness. Built around a series of close readings of artworks and texts ranging from poems and plays to early biographies and studio gossip, it traces the reception of Van Dyck's art on the part of artists like Mary Beale, William Hogarth, and Richard and Maria Cosway to bestow a historical specificity on the frequent claim that Van Dyck founded an English school of portraiture. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

The Kunstkammer in Dresden's Royal Palace houses a fascinating variety of collected objects from the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. It owes its unique collection of plain and ornate tools, for example, to the founder of the Kunstkammer, Elector August (1526-1586). They range from gardening equipment to goldsmithing, carpentry and ironworking tools and even to so-called Brechzeugen (tools for prising or breaking things open). In addition, the museum guide presents elaborately decorated art-room cabinets, two richly embellished Augsburg cabinets, tables inlaid with iridescent mother-of-pearl, precious board games, and musical instruments alongside filigree woodturned pieces, items of decorative art, and objects from distant cultures. Numerous previously unpublished masterpieces from the Kunstkammer in Dresden's Royal Palace

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar Degas Covering every era and over 650 artists, this comprehensive, illustrated guide offers an accessible yet expansive view of art history, featuring everything from iconic works and lesser-known gems to techniques and themes. Offering a comprehensive overview of Western artists, themes, paintings, techniques, and stories, Art: A Visual History is packed full of large, full-colour images of iconic works and lesser-known gems. Exploring every era, from 30,000BCE to the present, it includes features on the major schools and movements, as well as close-up critical appraisals of 22 masterpieces - from Botticelli's Primavera to J. M. W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire. With detailed referencing, crisp reproductions and a fresh design, this beautiful book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in art history - from first-time gallery goers to knowledgeable art enthusiasts. What makes great art? Discover the answer now, with Art: A Visual History.

An investigation into how landscape drawing informed a new Dutch identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, amid enormous expansion in global commerce and colonization, landscape drawing played a key role in forging Dutch national identity. Featuring works on paper by Rembrandt, Bruegel, and Ruisdael, among dozens of other artists, this study examines how a hyperlocal impulse in many of these drawings inspired domestic pride and a sense of connection to the land, as they also reflected aspects of the broader ecological and social change taking place. Incisive essays offer close readings that push our understandings of these artists and their work in important new directions, including eco-criticism, land use and environmentalism, race, and class. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums Exhibition Schedule: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (May 21-August 14, 2022)