The Rococo emerged in France around 1700 as a playful revolt against the grandeur of the Baroque and the solemnity of Classicism. It flourished during the reign of Louis XV and began to go out of fashion in the second half of the 18th century. During this brief period of less than a century, it spread throughout the courts and cities of Europe, with significant regional variations on the style developing in Bavaria, Potsdam, Venice, and Great Britain. The period produced an extraordinary number of artistic innovators, who challenged received conventions, developed novel subject categories, and eroded hierarchical distinctions between the arts. The Historical Dictionary of Rococo Art covers all aspects of Rococo art history through a chronology, an introductory essay, a review of the literature, an extensive bibliography, and over 350 cross-referenced dictionary entries on prominent Rococo painters, sculptors, decorative artists, architects, patrons, theorists, and critics, as well as major centers of artistic production. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Rococo art.

Taking the Noli me tangere and Doubting Thomas episodes as a focal point, this study examines how visual representations of two of the most compelling and related Christian stories engaged with changing devotional and cultural ideals in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. This book reconsiders depictions of the ambiguous encounter of Mary Magdalene and Christ in the garden (John 20:11-19, known as the Noli me tangere) and that of Christ's post-Resurrection appearance to Thomas (John 20:24-29, the Doubting Thomas) as manifestations of complex theological and art theoretical milieus. By focusing on key artistic monuments of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods, the authors demonstrate a relationship between the rise of skeptical philosophy and empirical science, and the efficacy of the senses in the construction of belief. Further, the authors elucidate the differing representational strategies employed by artists to depict touch, and the ways in which these strategies were shaped by gender, social class, and educational level. Indeed, over time St. Thomas became an increasingly public--and therefore masculine--symbol of devotional verification, juridical inquiry, and empirical investigation, while St. Mary Magdalene provided a more private model for pious women, celebrating, mostly behind closed doors, the privileged and active participation of women in the faith. The authors rely on primary source material--paintings, sculptures, religious tracts, hagiography, popular sermons, and new documentary evidence. By reuniting their visual examples with important, often little-known textual sources, the authors reveal a complex relationship between visual imagery, the senses, contemporary attitudes toward gender, and the shaping of belief. Further, they add greater nuance to our understanding of the relationship between popular piety and the visual culture of the period.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have had a lasting impact upon the intellectual landscape of the post-classical world. As well as provoking historical debate and reflection, they have proved an enduring yardstick by which succeeding generations have measured the architectural and cultural accomplishments of their own eras. Focusing particularly upon the Renaissance and Baroque periods, this book looks at how the Wonders of the World were represented in art, architecture and sculpture, and the ways that European courts could evoke them as a useful image of power. Within this artistic culture, special attention is paid to the recreations and constructions generated between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries in the sphere of ephemeral art, especially those linked to court celebrations in the principal European states. This approach provides a framework to analyse and evaluate the claims of other European Renaissance and Baroque architecture to Wonder status, an approach bolstered by the use of the Palace of El Escorial as a case study of a modern 'Eighth Wonder'.

This book theorizes the baroque as neither a time period nor an artistic style but as a collection of bodily practices developed from clashes between governmental discipline and artistic excess, moving between the dramaturgy of Jesuit spiritual exercises, the political theatre-making of Angelo Beolco (aka Ruzzante), and the civic governance of the Venetian Republic at a time of great tumult. The manuscript assembles plays seldom read or viewed by English-speaking audiences, archival materials from three Venetian archives, and several secondary sources on baroque, Renaissance, and early modern epistemology in order to forward and argument for understanding the baroque as a gathering of social practices. Such a rethinking of the baroque aims to complement the already lively studies of neo-baroque aesthetics and ethics emerging in contemporary scholarship on (for example) Latin American political art.

First published in 1951 Arnold Hauser's commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the Film Age. Exploring the interaction between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the frameworks in which visual art is produced. This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general introduction to The Social History of Art, Jonathan Harris asseses the importance of the work for contemporary art history and visual culture. In addition, an introduction to each volume provides a synopsis of Hauser's narrative and serves as a critical guide to the text, identifying major themes, trends and arguments.

The Path of Humility: Caravaggio and Carlo Borromeo establishes a fundamental relationship between the Franciscan humility of Archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo and the Roman sacred works of Caravaggio. This is the first book to consider and focus entirely upon these two seemingly anomalous personalities of the Counter-Reformation. The import of Caravaggio's Lombard artistic heritage has long been seen as pivotal to the development of his sacred style, but it was not his only source of inspiration. This book seeks to enlarge the discourse surrounding Caravaggio's style by placing him firmly in the environment of Borromean Milan, a city whose urban fabric was transformed into a metaphorical Via Crucis. This book departs from the prevailing preoccupation - the artist's experience in Rome as fundamental to his formulation of sacred style - and toward his formative years in Borromeo's Milan, where humility reigned supreme. This book is intended for a broad, yet specialized readership interested in Counter-Reformation art and devotion. It serves as a critical text for undergraduate and graduate art history courses on Baroque art, Caravaggio, and Counter-Reformation art.

This innovative study reappraises the Edwardian Baroque movement in British architecture, placing it in its wider cultural, political, and imperial contexts The Edwardian Baroque was the closest British architecture ever came to achieving an "imperial" style. With the aim of articulating British global power and prestige, it adorned civic and commercial structures both in Britain and in the wider British world, especially in the "white settler" Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Evoking the contemporary and emotive idea of "Greater Britain," this new book by distinguished historian G. A. Bremner represents a major, groundbreaking study of this intriguing architectural movement in Britain and its empire. It explores the Edwardian Baroque's significance as a response to the growing tide of anxiety over Britain's place in the world, its widely perceived geopolitical decline, and its need to bolster confidence in the face of the Great Power rivalries of the period. Cross-disciplinary in nature, it combines architectural, political, and imperial history and theory, providing a more nuanced and intellectually wide-ranging understanding of the Edwardian Baroque movement from a material culture perspective, including its foundation in notions of race and gender. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Through historical coincidence that almost takes on a mythical character, 'Michelangelo' was the given name not only of the Florentine sculptor, but also of the painter who grew up in Caravaggio, a provincial town in Lombardy, about 25 miles east of Milan. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, commonly called by reference to his hometown, produced revolutionary paintings whose impact was as great - at the beginning of the 1600s - as the other Michelangelo's art had been a century earlier. In this book, author Bette Talvacchia explores the significant, but little-discussed, connection between the 'two Michelangelos'. She exposes the dynamic relationship between their work through looking at the ways in which Caravaggio creatively responded to the art of his namesake from the start of his youthful arrival in Rome. In addition, she suggests how Michelangelo's overwhelming achievement was a model that helped to drive the young Caravaggio's powerful ambition and shape his identity as an artist. With lucid and intelligent prose, this fascinating book sheds light on the similar 'artistic temperament' constructed in the biographies of each artist - glorifying their rebellious, anti-social behaviour and uncompromising artistic principles - examined both in its historical and contemporary configurations. Why does our culture find these two artists so compelling, and how were they seen in their time and in the intervening centuries until our own day? Linking the past to the present, Talvacchia encourages readers to appreciate more fully the individual works discussed, and to reflect upon the continuing relevance of these two artists to the culture of the present day.

Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most productive and exciting painters of his time, noted for his expressive, emotive and sensual paintings which are now instantly recognizable. Indeed, his voluptuous female figures have given rise to the word 'Rubenesque'. This book explores the life and times of Rubens, from his early studies in Italy through to his apprenticeship in Antwerp and his subsequent outstanding accomplishments as 'the prince of painters and the painter of princes'. It also contains a gallery of 300 of his paintings and drawings, revealing his unparalleled position as an artist, diplomat, scholar, linguist, teacher, art collector and devoted family man.

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

Despite numbering at just 35, his works have prompted a New York Times best seller; 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 40th anniversary edition showcases 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. Crisp details and essays tracing Vermeer's career illuminate his 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. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

'The nation-state is the enemy of the baroque.' This is the point of departure of this radical, even revolutionary, re-examination of the cultural history of the early-modern world. Drawing on sources in six languages, many of them hitherto unavailable to the English-speaking reader, and touching on the visual arts, architecture, music and literature, this study frees the word 'baroque' from being a term of periodisation into being the descriptor for a network of circulation of ideas, words, plants, arts and energies which encompassed the totality of the early-modern world. This challenging book also forces a reconsideration of many of the prejudices of the Anglophone perception of cultural history and in doing so opens to the reader a world of wonders: the allegorical dramas of Ireland and Belgrade; the arquebusier angels of Cuzco painting; the operas and festival music of Bolivia; the vertiginous architectural fantasies of the Jacobite exiles. -- .

The World Created in the Image of Man investigates the development of the third dimension in painting from the dramatic moment when spatial construction becomes charged with an external force antagonistic to the effort of forms, or human figures, to preserve their permanence. The competitive contact between the external and internal worlds represented in the picture brings a vital element to the unfolding of art as it occurs in both the West and the East. As the analysis of masterpieces from different historical periods and cultures demonstrates here, this vital impulse becomes a necessary part of pictorial composition and the measure of the quality of the work of art. It can reveal itself in a limitless and disparate variety of subject matter: a scene from Japanese court life, as depicted in the illustrations of the early twelfth century to the novel The Tale of Genji; a representation of the maternal feeling of the Virgin anticipating the fate of her child in Byzantine icon painting; Raphael's "universal interior" in The School of Athens; Rembrandt's allegory of historic continuity in Aristotle with the Bust of Homer. The progression of this dynamic eventually leads to the surrender of form to space with the Impressionists; and to the conclusion of the book, which considers Postmodern art in the form of the installation, where the emphasis is put on the unprecedented role of the viewer as a component of the work, and which suggests an environment that is totally alien, or even hostile to him. Art historians, students of art history and the educated general reader with an interest in painting will find this book a rewarding and stimulating read.

Die Burgerbibliothek Zürich wurde 1629 gegründet und ging 1631 in die Hände des Staates über, der durch die Bibliothek die Wissenschaften fördern wollte. 1645 gab der Bibliotheksrat der Burgerbibliothek ein Neujahrsblatt heraus, das den Kindern der Stadtbürger verteilt wurde. Daraus entstand die Tradition der Neujahrsblätter der Burgerbibliothek, die bis 1939 gepflegt wurde. Die Neujahrsblätter sind als Machtinstrumente des Staates einmalige Zeitzeugen von besonderer Bedeutung und geben Aufschluss über theologische, politische, soziale und historische Gegebenheiten der Zeit. Diese Arbeit analysiert 15 ausgewählte Blätter aus den Jahren 1645 bis 1672, die alle vom renommierten Künstler Conrad Meyer und dem ebenso bekannten Dichter und Theologen Johann Wilhelm Simler geschaffen wurden. Diese Blätter sind von besonderer Bedeutung, da die beiden Autoren erstmals die Kombination von Text und Bild zu erbaulichen Zwecken einsetzten. Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es, den Begriff der Erbauung näher zu beschreiben und damit die Funktion jedes einzelnen dieser Blätter genau zu definieren.

This volume brings together the papers presented at a conference entitled 'Experiencing the Garden in the Eighteenth Century', held at the Institute of Romance Studies, Senate House, University of London on 13 March 2004. Speakers came from Europe, the United States and New Zealand, and each gave a very different perspective on the eighteenth-century landscape garden in England, France and elsewhere in Europe. The papers focused on the theme of experience, an especially important aspect of eighteenth-century garden design. Landscape gardens were created for visitors to move through on a journey from one place to the next: the garden would not be seen all at once, but would be experienced as a story unfolding. The visitor would follow a circuit around the garden, moving from light to shade, being given suggestive prompts with statues, temples and viewpoints, as if on a sensory, emotional and intellectual journey.

This book focuses on key monuments of the Baroque style, which varies in different European contexts. It is intended to affirm the existence of individual genius, identifiable styles of art, and historical periods that produced them.

Stevenson introduces this book of a collection of the famous painter and drawer 'Rubens' artwork. This book is brought together with reproductions, notes and origins of the photographs.

Stevenson introduces this book of a collection of the famous painter and drawer 'Rubens' artwork. This book is brought together with reproductions, notes and origins of the photographs.

In the last decade of his life, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) undertook a printmaking project that changed the conventions of portraiture. In a series later named the Iconography, he portrayed artists alongside kings, courtiers, and diplomats-a radical departure from preexisting conventions. He also depicted his subjects in novel ways, focusing on their facial features often to the exclusion of symbolic costumes or props. In addition to illustrating approximately 60 works by Van Dyck and other artists from his era-particularly Rembrandt-this catalogue traces the artist's influence over hundreds of years. Showcasing both 17th century portraits in a variety of media and portrait prints by a wide range of artists spanning the 16th through the 20th centuries-including Albrecht Durer, Hendrick Goltzius, Francisco de Goya, Edgar Degas, and Jim Dine-the book demonstrates the indelible mark that Van Dyck left on the genre. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: Art Institute of Chicago (03/05/16-08/07/16)

This reference guide aims to explain and discuss four important periods in the history of Western art - the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque. Its goal is to create a sense of understanding, recognition and appreciation of art by analyzing, within the four periods, three distinct artistic genres: painting; sculpture; and architecture.

Artemisia Gentileschi was the greatest female artists of the Baroque age. In Artemisia Gentileschi, critic and historian Jonathan Jones discovers how Artemisia overcame a turbulent past to become one of the foremost painters of her day. As a young woman Artemisia was raped by her tutor, and then had to endure a seven-month-long trial during which she was brutally examined by the authorities. Gentileschi was shamed in a culture where honour was everything. Yet she went on to become one of the most sought-after artists of the seventeenth century. Yet she went on to become one of the most sought-after artists of the seventeenth century. Gentileschi's art communicated a powerful personal vision. Like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois or Tracey Emin, she put her life into her art. 'Lives of the Artists'is a new series of brief artists biographies from Laurence King Publishing. The series takes as its inspiration Giorgio Vasari's five-hundred-year-old masterwork, updating it with modern takes on the lives of key artists past and present. Focusing on the life of the artist rather than examining their work, each book also includes key images illustrating the artist's life.

The studies in which history of art and theatre are considered together are few, and none to date investigate the evolution of the representation of clouds from the early Renaissance to the Baroque period. This book reconsiders the origin of Italian Renaissance and Baroque cloud compositions while including the theatrical tradition as one of their most important sources. By examining visual sources such as paintings, frescos and stage designs, together with letters, guild-ledgers, descriptions of performances and relevant treatises, a new methodology to approach the development of this early modern visuality is offered. The result is an historical reconstruction where multiple factors are seen as facets of a single process which led to the development of Italy's visual culture. The book also offers new insights into Leonardo da Vinci's theatrical works, Raphael's Disputa, Vasari's Lives, and Pietro da Cortona's fresco paintings. The Spectacle of Clouds, 1439-1650 examines the different ways Heaven has been conceived, imagined and represented from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, crossing over into the fields of history, religion and philosophy.

Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni takes up the question of the issues involved in the formation of recent saints - or Beati moderni (modern Blesseds) as they were called - by the Jesuits and Oratorians in the new environment of increased strictures and censorship that developed after the Council of Trent with respect to legal canonization procedures and cultic devotion to the saints. Ruth Noyes focuses particularly on how the new regulations pertained to the creation of emerging cults of those not yet canonized, the so-called Beati moderni, such as Jesuit founders Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola, and Filippo Neri, founder of the Oratorians. Centrally involved in the book is the question of the fate and meaning of the two altarpiece paintings commissioned by the Oratorians from Peter Paul Rubens. The Congregation rejected his first altarpiece because it too specifically identified Filippo Neri as a cult figure to be venerated (before his actual canonization) and thus was caught up in the politics of cult formation and the papacy's desire to control such pre-canonization cults. The book demonstrates that Rubens' second altarpiece, although less overtly depicting Neri as a saint, was if anything more radical in the claims it made for him. Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni offers the first comparative study of Jesuit and Oratorian images of their respective would-be saints, and the controversy they ignited across Church hierarchies. It is also the first work to examine provocative Philippine imagery and demonstrate how its bold promotion specifically triggered the first wave of curial censure in 1602.