The "paragone"--the notion of competition and rivalry among the arts--has been a topic of debate for centuries. It erupted with great force in the Renaissance, with sculptors vying with painters for superiority, modern artists competing with the ancients, and painting challenging poetry. If the traces of this lively conversation are most evident in the literature, the remarkable scholarship presented here demonstrates how the "paragone" was rendered visible also in works of art.

The essays on Renaissance and Baroque art reveal the "paragone" to be a crucial motive and key to the interpretation of some of the most celebrated works of art such as Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece and Michelangelo's "Pieta" in St. Peter's Basilica. The author's incisive and erudite analysis of social history, biography, rhetoric, art theory, wordplay, and history illuminates these works anew, thus affording a modern audience a better understanding of the subtleties of their composition and meaning. Readers will find surprising insights and unsuspected drama in works of art they may have thought they knew.

Die Neustadte von Bordeaux und Edinburgh waren die beiden flachenmassig groessten Stadterweiterungen ihrer Entstehungszeit in Europa. Beinahe gleichzeitig zwischen 1770 und 1830 als grossstadtische Wohnquartiere entstanden, stehen sie am UEbergang von der fruhneuzeitlichen Stadtplanung zur Urbanistik der burgerlichen Gesellschaft. Sie koennen exemplarisch den Weg von der klassischen Idealstadt zur Mietshausstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts veranschaulichen. Trotz dieser Relevanz haben die beiden Standorte im Diskurs uber die historische Urbanistik bisher jedoch kaum Aufmerksamkeit erhalten. Die hier vorgelegte Studie nimmt dieses Missverhaltnis zum Anlass, sich den beiden Stadterweiterungen in einer vergleichenden Perspektive zuzuwenden, um Schlussfolgerungen zur Geschichte der Stadtplanung abzuleiten.

Zwischen 1750 und 1753 schuf Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) seine weltberuhmten Fresken in der Wurzburger Residenz. Anlasslich seines 250. Todesjahrs prasentiert das in der Residenz gelegene Martin von Wagner Museum Zeichnungen, Radierungen und Gemalde Tiepolos, dazu zahlreiche Blatter aus seinem unmittelbaren Wurzburger Wirkungskreis: Merkskizzen seines Sohnes Giandomenico ebenso wie Pauskopien seines wichtigsten Mitarbeiters Georg Anton Urlaub. Gezeigt werden vor allem Werke aus dem Besitz des Universitatsmuseums, erganzt durch internationale Leihgaben. Der geniale Venezianer sollte, so die Hoffnung des Furstbischofs, "nach seiner geruhmten starcke der arbeit die schoenheit geben." Die Ausstellung zeigt auf, wie dieser Prozess in der Werkstattpraxis Realitat wurde.

The Carthusian monks at San Martino began a series of decorative campaigns in the 1580s that continued until 1757, transforming the church of their monastery, the Certosa di San Martino, into a jewel of marble revetment, painting, and sculpture. The aesthetics of the church generate a jarring moral conflict: few religious orders honored the ideals of poverty and simplicity so ardently yet decorated so sumptuously. In this study, Nick Napoli explores the terms of this conflict and of how it sought resolution amidst the social and economic realities and the political and religious culture of early modern Naples. Napoli mines the documentary record of the decorative campaigns at San Martino, revealing the rich testimony it provides relating to both the monks' and the artists' expectations of how practice and payment should transpire. From these documents, the author delivers insight into the ethical and economic foundations of artistic practice in early modern Naples. The first English-language study of a key monument in Naples and the first to situate the complex within the cultural history of the city, The Ethics of Ornament in Early Modern Naples sheds new light on the Neapolitan baroque, industries of art in the age before capitalism, and the relation of art, architecture, and ornament.

The Cardsharps, one of the paintings that launched Caravaggio's spectacular career in Rome, captured the turbulent social reality of the city in the 1590s. This early masterpiece not only documented one of the everyday activities of Rome's citizens, but its vivid, lifelike style also opened the door to a revolutionary naturalism that would spread throughout Europe. Helen Langdon, the scholar whose illuminating Caravaggio: A Life became a best-seller, returns to her subject and his milieu in this new, richly illustrated volume. She sets Caravaggio's Cardsharps within the context of contemporaneous literature, art theory, and theater and incorporates new archival research to enliven our understanding of the painter's time, place, and contemporaries. By fully analyzing one of Caravaggio's most daringly novel works, Langdon demonstrates the significant influence he had on the future of European art.

A "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year
As vividly and unflinchingly presented herein with "blood and bone and sinew" ("Times Literary Supplement") by Peter Robb, Caravaggio's wild and tempestuous life was a provocation to a culture in a state of siege. The end of the sixteenth century was marked by the Inquisition and Counter-Reformation, a background of ideological war against which, despite all odds, brilliant feats of art and science were achieved. No artist captured the dark, violent spirit of the time better than Caravaggio, variously known as Marisi, Moriggia, Merigi, and sometimes, simply M. As art critic Robert Hughes has said, "There was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same." Robb's masterful biography "re-creates the mirror Cravaggio held up to nature," as Hilary Spurling wrote in "The New York Times Book Review," "with singular delicacy as well as passion and panache."

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

Die Villa Bellavista - bestehend aus Villa, Kapelle und Fattoria - stellt eines der bemerkenswertesten Bau- und Ausstattungsvorhaben im Grossherzogtum Toskana um 1700 dar. Sie hebt sich nicht nur aufgrund ihrer Groesse von anderen Florentiner Villen der Zeit ab, sondern auch durch ihre anspruchsvolle Architektur und Ausstattung. Der Marchese Fabio Feroni verpflichtete namhafte Kunstler, die seinerzeit fur die Medici, die fuhrende Adelsschicht und die einflussreichsten Orden in Florenz und der Toskana tatig waren. Die Autorin analysiert erstmals umfassend das Ensemble der Bauten und verortet es innerhalb der Kunstpatronage der Auftraggeber-Familie sowie im zeitgenoessischen Kontext.

Der heutige Museumsbesucher orientiert sich an eingeubten Verhaltensmustern, die eine eigene Geschichte haben. In dieser Studie wird am Beispiel der Jahresausstellungen der koeniglichen Kunstakademie im Louvre untersucht, wie sich Normen einer oeffentlichen Kunstbetrachtung im Zeitalter der Aufklarung etablierten und schliesslich hinterfragt wurden. Erstmalig wird auf Basis eines umfassenden und kritischen Quellenstudiums herausgearbeitet, wie sich das Verstandnis von einem passiv bewundernden hin zu einem kreativ (mit)gestaltenden, koerperlich wie emotional bewegten Bildbetrachter entwickelte. Die genaue Analyse der sich wandelnden Diskurse uber Rezeptionsgewohnheiten, die in Texten und Bildern der Zeit sichtbar werden, vermag auch den Blick auf "moderne" Rezeptionsbedingungen zu scharfen.

The author interprets the drapery of the Cappella Albertoni (1674-75) for the first time as a curtain - a leitmotif in Bernini's sculptural oeuvre - and as an overt figure of speech before the backdrop of the Counter Reformation and of Bruno and Galilei's "open vault of the sky". The curtain falls so as to be opened, as on the Baroque stage and in Bernini's comedies, and like the "metaphorical curtain" in theories of poetry of the seventeenth century, is linked with the eventfully induced affect of ecstasy. Metaphors reinterpret the unambiguous as the ambiguous. The mystical therefore becomes poetic ecstasy. No biographical narrative is hence provided; it is instead about a declaration of belief in an art that liberates the creative powers of the intellect by means of aesthetic experience rather than by linking it to perception.

Zar Peter der Grosse legte 1714 nahe St. Petersburg den Grundstein zu Schloss Peterhof, dem "russischen Versailles", das zwei Jahrhunderte lang als Sommerresidenz der Zaren diente. Wahrend die Schlossbauten im Zweiten Weltkrieg beinahe vollstandig zerstoert wurden und bis heute aufwendig rekonstruiert werden, gelang es, viele der Kunst- und Ausstattungsgegenstande des Palastkomplexes zu evakuieren. Der Katalog stellt mit zahlreichen Abbildungen und Textbeitragen die im Augsburger Schaezlerpalais erstmals in Deutschland gezeigte Auswahl von weit uber 100 original erhaltenen Objekten russischer und westeuropaischer Provenienz aus Schloss Peterhof vor. Sie umfasst samtliche Gattungen der Kunst und des Kunsthandwerks und spiegelt damit die hoefische Kunst und Wohnkultur des 18. Jahrhunderts.

Der geburtige Mailander Camillo Rusconi (1658-1728) gilt als der bedeutendste roemische Bildhauer des Spatbarock. In dieser Studie widmet sich Frank Martin erstmalig grundlegend Rusconis beachtlichem OEuvre. Seine grossen Werkkomplexe, darunter die beruhmten Apostelstatuen in der Lateranbasilika in Rom, werden detailliert erlautert und in ihrem Entstehungskontext gedeutet. Die Schilderung von Rusconis kunstlerischer Karriere, die der einflussreiche Maler Carlo Maratti massgeblich befoerderte, gewahrt Einblick in die Mechanismen des roemischen Kunstbetriebs. Camillo Rusconi etablierte ein klassisch orientiertes Stilideal in der Skulptur, das in den Arbeiten seiner Schuler Filippo della Valle, Giovanni Battista Maini, Pietro Bracci sowie Giuseppe Rusconi fortlebte und sich vom hochbarocken Pathos Gian Lorenzo Berninis signifikant abhob. Das langst uberfallige kritische Werkverzeichnis sowie die Auswertung zahlreicher Quellen und Dokumente runden die Monographie ab. Damit erweist sich der Band als Standardwerk fur die Erforschung der Skulptur im 18. Jahrhundert.

This comprehensive study of the sculptures of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) follows in twelve chapters his development as an artist and the area in which he excelled: portraits, the likeness of which astonished his contemporaries; the sculptures for St Peter in Rome; his extraordinary fountains; the timeless beauty of his renderings of mythological figures. German text. Die umfassende Monographie ueber die Skulpturen Gianlorenzo Berninis (1598-1680) beleuchtet in zwolf Kapiteln die Stationen seiner Entwicklung und die Gebiete, in denen er brillierte: die Portrats, deren -sprechende- Ahnlichkeit die Zeitgenossen verblueffte, die Werke fuer den Petersdom, die grandiosen Brunnen und seine Heiligen und zeitlos schonen Gestalten der antiken Mythologie. Den ausgefuehrten Werken gegenuebergestellte Vorzeichnungen, Tonskizzen und Modelle erlauben einen faszinierenden Einblick in den kuenstlerischen Schaffensprozea.

The age of the Baroque--a time when great strides were made in science and mathematics--witnessed the construction of some of the world's most magnificent buildings. What did the work of great architects such as Bernini, Blondel, Guarini, and Wren have to do with Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Desargues, and Newton? Here, George Hersey explores the ways in which Baroque architecture, with its dramatic shapes and playful experimentation with classical forms, reflects the scientific thinking of the time. He introduces us to a concept of geometry that encompassed much more than the science we know today, one that included geometrics (number and shape games), as well as the art of geomancy, or magic and prophecy using shapes and numbers.
Hersey first concentrates on specific problems in geometry and architectural design. He then explores the affinities between musical chords and several types of architectural form. He turns to advances in optics, such as artificial lenses and magic lanterns, to show how architects incorporated light, a heavenly emanation, into their impressive domes. With ample illustrations and lucid, witty language, Hersey shows how abstract ideas were transformed into visual, tactile form--the epicycles of the cosmos, the sexual mystique surrounding the cube, and the imperfections of heavenly bodies. Some two centuries later, he finds that the geometric principles of the Baroque resonate, often unexpectedly, in the work of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. A discussion of these surprising links to the past rounds out this brilliant reexamination of some of the long-forgotten beliefs and practices that helped produce some of Europe's greatestmasterpieces.

This work, the fruit of more than ten years of research, consists of a systematic cataloguing of all Florentine painters, and of all the painters active over many years in the Tuscan city, between the early 17 th and the end of the 18 th Centuries. Alongside artists who have already won renown and about whom various monographic studies already exist, this publication shines a collateral light on relatively unknown personages who are worthy of more than a little interest. In some cases these are artists otherwise unknown to contemporary criticism. The intention is to make a significant contribution to art history and the work is in some cases decisive in its attributions of uncertain works that have hitherto been habitually associated only with the better-known names. The three volumes are accompanied by biographies and lists of paintings along with, as is to be expected, an ample selection of approximately 1,800 colour and monochrome photographic reproductions. Volume I (312 pages) Presentation and introduction by Mina Gregori Colour plates I-CVI Biographies of the artists and index of works Bibliography, index of artists in the catalogue, of names and place names Volume II (376 pages) Plates 1-824 (Allori - Guiducci) Volume III (392 pages) Plates 825-1,698 (Hugford - Zocchi)

Imposing and famous sailing ships are the subject of countless Dutch paintings of the 17th Century. But the works not only bear witness to the skills of their creator; they are documents of historical, topographical and meteorological events. Visibly billowing sails, glorious and proud sailing ships, a ship heeled in the swell and the salvation of banks never to be reached: Many of the paintings of Dutch painters from the mid-17th Century give impressions of maritime affairs that never occurred. These images thus open a wide horizon of interpretations from different areas of knowledge from the period. They document the range and richness of Holland's marine culture in the 17th Century. The works stimulate multiple interpretations: the ship as a metaphor for life, as a symbol of the state, for the exploration of distant lands, as a demonstration of foreign and trade policy in the 17th Century. This book explains the various interpretations in selected examples while at the same time laying bare the picturesque characteristics of eachwork. In cooperation with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, the exhibition brings together masterpieces from the leading marine painters of the Golden Age, and show alongside unique, large-scale seascapes the subtle drawings from the Print Room of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. German text.

During the first half of the 17th century, Haarlem was a flourishing center of the arts and Frans Hals was its preeminent artist. This catalog demonstrates the variety of topics and genres painted, as well as the leading role of Haarlem artists in innovations in Dutch painting. German text.