Employing the methodologies of the new art history as well as some tools provided by poststructuralism, historiography, and analytic philosophy, Poussin's Paintings offers a novel approach to the art of Poussin. David Carrier begins with a comprehensive analysis of Poussin's self-portraits, which provides the starting point for a critical discussion of the traditional strategies of Poussin scholarship and for an evaluation of the status of this artist. Carrier shows that Poussin can be properly understood only by seeing how his visual and political culture differs from ours.

Carrier examines the traditional approaches of Poussin scholars, noting the limitations of their views and showing how they not only shape our image of the artist but also restrict out ability to properly grasp his concerns. Carrier also considers the important conceptual claims of connoisseurs and reveals how their work invokes an implicit theory of Poussin's development.

Carrier then focuses on a group of paintings concerned with erotic themes, demonstrating the inadequacy of traditional accounts of these pictures.

He extends his analysis to a discussion of Poussin's landscapes, which have a different and more important place in his development than the older accounts claim.

Carrier places Poussin within the artistic and political culture of seventeenth-century Rome. He asserts that artists of the time were concerned with the problem of belatedness and that Poussin attempted to return to the tradition of the High Renaissance, reworking images from that tradition in response to his own visual culture. Carrier argues that Poussin's art is thus best understood as a response to that setting for baroque art, and he relates Poussin's work to the later tradition of French history painting.

The Mughals seized political power in north India in 1526 and became the most important artistically active Muslim dynasty on the subcontinent. In this richly illustrated work, Dr. Milo Beach shows how Mughal patronage of the arts was radically innovative for the Indian context and profoundly altered the character of painting in the Rajput Hindu areas of north India. He reveals the different styles and subjects of Mughal and Rajput painting and the interplay of the two traditions. Beach also explores the tolerance each showed toward outside influence and change, demonstrating a uniquely Indian attitude towards the arts.

This book traces the development and spread of architecture under the Mughal emperors. Professor Asher considers the entire scope of architecture built under the auspices of the imperial Mughals and their subjects. She looks in particular at the role of political and cultural ideology, the relationship between construction in the major cities and in the provinces and the continuing Mughal fascination with paradisical imagery that culminated in the construction of the Taj Mahal.

In this ambitious study, Richard Wendorf establishes the grounds of comparison between two arts that have often been linked in a casual way but whose historical interrelations remain almost completely unexplored. By focusing on the great age of English portraiture - from the arrival of Van Dyck to the publication of Boswell's Life of Johnson - the author shows that, despite their obvious differences, visual and verbal portraits often shared similar assumptions about the representation of historical character. Grounded in modern theory devoted to the comparison of literature and painting and to the problem of representation, this book examines each form of portraiture in terms of the other. Among those writers considered are Izaak Walton, John Evelyn, John Aubrey, Roger North, Goldsmith, Johnson, Mrs Piozzi, Boswell; among the artists are Van Dyck, Lely, Samuel Cooper, Jonathan Richardson, Hogarth and Reynolds. The careers of `double agents' (painters, like Richardson and Reynolds, who experimented with biographical writing) are also discussed. The Elements of Life is a ground-breaking critical history of biography and portrait-painting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Jacopo Sansovino was the leading sculptor and architect of sixteenth-century Venice. His position and abilities enabled him to reshape Venetian sculpture, and his influence remained dominant long after his death. This beautiful book by Bruce Boucher is the first study of Sansovino's sculpture in over fifty years and the first ever to present a catalogue raisonne of his works. Boucher begins by discussing Sansovino's career chronologically and thematically. He describes how the sculptor was trained in his native Florence and in Rome, how he established himself as a serious rival to Michelangelo, and how the Sack of Rome in 1527 forced him to flee to Venice where he enjoyed a second, even more successful career. In Venice, says Boucher, Sansovino was taken up by a small band of influential patrons, became architect of the Doge's chapel, and received important commissions from both the state and individuals. Boucher discusses in detail commissions such as the Loggetta and the colossal Mars and Neptune for the Doge's Palace, critically assesses Sansovino's artistic style, analyzes the relationship between Sansovino's sculpture and sixteenth-century paintings, describes Sansovino's workshop and the division of labor in his major commissions, and explores Sansovino's influence during his life and after his death. The text and catalogue raisonne are complemented by an appendix of documents, some of which have never been published before, that add greatly to our knowledge of the sculptor in his social and artistic context. The resulting book is a superb visual and analytical record of the work and career of one of the greatest sculptors of the High Renaissance.

Johan Gregor van der Schardt

Die Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munchen besitzt einen der weltweit bedeutendsten Bestande an deutschen Einblattholzschnitten des 15. Jahrhunderts. Sie werden in diesem Bestandskatalog erstmals in einem Buch vorgestellt. Die ersten europaischen Holzschnitte entstanden um 1400. Abbildungen wurden nun fur weite Kreise erreichbar und erschwinglich. Durch Gebrauch rasch verschlissen, zahlen diese fruhen Drucke heute zu den rarsten Kostbarkeiten. Aber nicht nur als historische Belege sind diese fruhen Blatter bedeutend. Es sind uberragende Meisterwerke linearer Ausdruckskraft, die zu den altesten Werken ihrer Art zahlen. Keine Sammlung der Welt vermag die Fruhzeit des Holzschnitts so uberragend zu belegen wie das Munchner Kabinett: Die Wiege der europaischen Druckgraphik wird in diesem Buch zuganglich.

This accompanying publication will explore the development and diversity of this legendary dynasty of Flemish painters over four generations and 150 years. From the proverb pictures and peasant festivals of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his eldest son Pieter Brueghel the Younger to the exquisite flower pieces of Jan 'Velvet' Brueghel and the captivating cabinet paintings of Jan van Kessel, the book will unravel the mysteries of the dynasty, and will explore how Bruegel's sons were able to emulate their father's model despite having no access to his paintings. The book will turn the spotlight on to the major Bruegel holdings in UK collections for the first time, telling the story of the dynasty through masterpieces from British public collections and a number of previously unseen works from private collections.

A richly illustrated book of hours was produced in the surroundings of the Parisian court at the beginning of the sixteenth century, presumably commis-sioned by Philippa von Geldern (1467- 1546), Princess of Lower Saxony and later Duchess of Lorraine. Jean Coene IV, one of the few illuminators of the time who is known by name, furnished the unusual work with a completely illustrated calendar and twenty-four - of formerly twenty-seven - large miniatures. The book of hours, which is privately owned, is now being presented to the public in its entirety for the first time - accompanied by an examination of the role of the client and of the classification of Jean Coene IV as an illuminator Roll within the context of Parisian book art around 1500.

When the Aztec Empire emerged to dominate central Mexico from 1460 to 1519, vast amounts of tribute wealth flowed into the capital city of Tenochtitlan, enabling artists and architects to create sophisticated works on a monumental scale. Confronting a civilization without precedent, some Spanish conquistadors and missionaries looked to the classical past for explanations and parallels were drawn between two great empires--the Aztec and the Roman.
While many studies dwell on the Aztec gods and the bloody rituals performed in their honor, this groundbreaking book examines little-known episodes in which classicism mediated a dialogue both within and between Mesoamerica and Spain. The authors engage contemporary approaches to cross-cultural analogy, shedding light on the function of monumental arts and religious spectacles and consciously classicizing traditions within empires. A foreword by Leonardo Lopez Lujan, director of the Proyecto Templo Mayor, places the comparison of Aztec and Roman empires in historical context. The publication accompanies an exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of Mexican Independence on view from March 25 to July 5, 2010, at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa.

The National Gallery in London houses one of the most important collections of early Italian paintings outside Italy, including works by Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto and the di Cione brothers. This completely updated catalogue of the collection is the first published since 1989, and it now includes four exceptional acquisitions from the intervening years: the 13th-century diptych now attributed to the Master of the Borgo Crucifix, The Virgin and Child by Cimabue, The Virgin and Child by the Clarisse Master, and The Coronation of the Virgin by Bernardo Daddi. For this volume, Dillian Gordon takes into account the substantial body of new research published over the past twenty years to review and in some cases reattribute the works. All but two paintings have been re-examined by the National Gallery's team of curators, conservators, and scientists. Through the use of infrared reflectography, much new information has been revealed regarding the significance of underdrawings and technique. Each work is illustrated in color, and many are accompanied by details and technical and comparative illustrations. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

Co-published with the Philadelphia Museum of Art

When the Philadelphia lawyer John G. Johnson began to collect art in the late nineteenth century, he defied contemporary taste by acquiring Italian paintings from the early Renaissance. He eventually donated his distinguished collection to the City of Philadelphia, and it is now housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Although there have been several catalogues of these paintings, including one by Bernhard Berenson in 1913, Carl Brandon Strehlke, Adjunct Curator of the Johnson Collection, has prepared the first complete scholarly examination. His discussion of such art historical questions as dating and attribution combines extensive archival research with information he gained through his technical study of the paintings with Mark S. Tucker, the Museum's Vice Chairman of Conservation and Senior Conservator of Paintings.

Strehlke's introduction sheds new light on Johnson's collecting and traces the history of the acquisition, conservation, and installation of the Philadelphia paintings. Subsequent chapters situate detailed discussions of the pictures within the context of richly detailed biographies. All the paintings are furnished with a full description; technical report; provenance; art historical commentary; discussion of related works; comparative illustrations; and bibliography.

This extensively illustrated book also provides an appendix of punch marks and a bibliography of some 2,500 entries.

Im Italien des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts avancierte das formmimetische Abzeichnen zu einer zentralen Tatigkeit in den Kunstlerwerkstatten. OEkonomisierungsprozesse korrelierten mit einem neuartigen Bedurfnis nach Bildpropaganda, aber auch mit der Stilisierung bestimmter Kunstler und ihrer Werke zu originellen und kanonischen Vorbildern. So entstanden Zeichnungen, die den Anspruch erheben, das Werk einer individuellen Kunstlerpersoenlichkeit als abgeloestes Ganzes (opus absolutum) zu transportieren: Im Unterschied zu zeichenhaft verweisenden Kopien scheint hier jedes Bildelement zwingend. Diese Tendenz steht in einem wechselvollen Spannungsverhaltnis zu weiterlebenden Traditionen, in denen Vorbildliches als Muster (exemplum) weitergereicht oder bildthematische Vorgaben als iconographic guides nutzbar gemacht wurden.

Performative methods are playing an increasingly prominent role in research into historical production processes, materials, bodily knowledge and sensory skills, and in forms of education and public engagement in classrooms and museums. This book offers, for the first time, sustained, interdisciplinary reflections on performative methods, variously known as Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment (RRR) practices across the fields of history of science, archaeology, art history, conservation, musicology and anthropology. Each of these fields has distinct histories, approaches, tools and research questions. Researchers in the historical disciplines have used reconstructions to learn about the materials and practices of the past, while anthropologists and ethnographers have more often studied the re-enactments themselves, participating in these performances as engaged observers. In this book, authors bring their experiences of RRR practices within their discipline into conversation with RRR practices in other disciplines, providing a basis for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.

The history of art in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance has generally been written as a story of elites: bankers, noblemen, kings, cardinals, and popes and their artistic interests and commissions. Recent decades have seen attempts to recast the story in terms of material culture, but the focus seems to remain on the upper strata of society. In his inclusive analysis of art from 1300 to 1600, Rembrandt Duits rectifies this. Bringing together thought-provoking ideas from art historians, historians, anthropologists and museum curators, The Art of the Poor examines the role of art in the lower social classes of Europe and explores how this influences our understanding of medieval and early modern society. Introducing new themes and raising innovative research questions through a series of thematically grouped short case studies, this book gives impetus to a new field on the cusp of art history, social history, urban archaeology, and historical anthropology. In doing so, this important study helps us re-assess the very concept of ‘art’ and its function in society.

For the first time since its restoration, the copy of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, a tapestry made between 1505 and 1510, commissioned by Louise de Savoie and François, Duke of Angoulême, future king of France, is unveiled to the public. The tapestry, a monumental work of 6.5m x 9m, preserved in the Vatican Museums, was probably woven in Flanders by a Lombard artist, such as Bramantin or Marcod’Oggiono, artists known to have painted, as early as 1503, copies of the Leonardo’s fresco. The tapestry represents one of the first copies of the masterpiece intended for the French court and testifies to the admiration of the kings of France for the artist.This book will also highlight the previous relationship between Louis XII’s court and the Italian master and his disciples, such Andrea Solario, Andrea del Sarto and Bernadino de Conti.

The essays will also focus on Leonardo da Vinci’s journey to and stay in France, through some copies of his most famous paintings and prints, prints and watercolors. Specialists in both Leonard’s art and the tapestry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shed light on the provenance and making of this work, as well as it’s meticulous restoration.

The Fonte Gaia from Renaissance to Modern Times examines the history of Siena's famous public fountain, from its fifteenth-century origins to its eventual replacement by a copy in the nineteenth century (and the modern fate of both). The book explores how both the Risorgimento and the Symbolist movements have shaped our perceptions of the Italian Renaissance, as the Quattrocento was filtered through the lens of contemporary art and politics.

In a major analysis of pictorial forms from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Christopher Braider argues that the painted image provides a metaphor and model for all other modes of expression in Western culture--particularly literature, philosophy, religion, and science. Because critics have conventionally explained visual images in terms of verbal texts (Scripture, heroic poetry, and myth), they have undervalued the impact of the pictorial naturalism practiced by painters from the fifteenth century onward and the fundamentally new conception of reality it conveys. By reinterpreting modern Western experience in light of northern "descriptive art," the author enriches our understanding of how both painted and written cultural texts shape our perceptions of the world at large. Throughout Braider draws on works by such painters as van der Weyden, Bruegel the Elder, Steen, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Poussin, and addresses such topics as the Incarnation of the Word in Christ, the elegiac foundations of Enlightenment aesthetics, and the rivalry between northern and southern art. His goal is not only to reexamine important aesthetic issues but also to offer a new perspective on the general intellectual and cultural history of the modern West. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A detailed account of a fascinating journey through the Ottoman Empire from 1588 to 1589 Traveller and explorer, art patron and collector, benefactor and connoisseur, politician and Danzig mayor, Bartholomaus Schachman lived in a time of major political and religious changes in Europe, a time of grand geographical discoveries, a time when both religious and secular arts flourished, a time of great expansion of the Ottoman Empire. He was born on 11th September 1559 in Danzig (nowadays called Gda'nsk), then the autonomy's trade city and member of The Hanseatic League, within the Kingdom of Poland. Danzig was one of the largest Hansa's cities and one of the most important sea port and shipbuilding markets. Bartholomaus Schachman's journey through the Ottoman Empire lasted two years from 1588 to 1589, and his album, conveying the tale of his adventures, became one of the greatest travelogues of the sixteenth century.

Art, Theory and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy was originally published in 1998, and offers a critical overview of the literature on the visual arts produced during the High and Late Renaissance. Analysing and interpreting texts by such writers as Vasari, Lomazzo, Zuccaro, and Tasso, Robert Williams demonstrates how these works offer insight into the experience of contemporary viewers, thus permitting a clearer view of the relationship between abstract thought and lived experience. Also examined is the argument that art is a privileged form of knowledge that subordinates all others. By focusing on a hitherto neglected, but important, body of literature, Williams shows how an understanding of it can transform our knowledge and appreciation of the Renaissance.

The British monarchy's abiding connection to the sea during the age of exploration was a critical factor in the establishment of Britain's first colonies in the New World. It is unsurprising, then, that, alongside grand portraiture, a strong tradition of maritime painting was established in the royal court during the seventeenth century. Rule Britannia explores the rich artistic culture of Elizabethan and Stuart England and the artists who forged their reputations in the alternately violent and decadent circles of some of the last exponents of absolute monarchy. Although trade wars with the Dutch featured large in the period, it was to be Dutch and Flemish artists who dominated the artistic landscape. Lely, van Dyck, Rubens, Willaerts, and the van de Veldes found ample opportunity for patronage from both king and courtiers and some of their finest works are featured here. Paintings from the Royal Collection, the National Maritime Museum, and other private and museum collections in England, Ireland, and the United States bring alive an era of grandeur in which the first tentative steps of imperial expansion occurred.