The term 'versified prints' is used to describe images that are accompanied by poetic explanatory text. They were immensely popular and diffused throughout Europe in the eighteenth century, and many were shown at the Salon du Louvre. Although not all print verses are signed, their authors include occasional poets and members of the Academie Francaise. These prints remain among the most accessible documents for the study of art and society, but have never been examined before for their historical and cultural context.

With 112 full-page reproductions, Versified Prints offers an engaging and informative introduction to these intriguing works. W. McAllister Johnson's guide discusses print production, the nature of sources, and the relationship and transformations in both text and images. Proposing a typology and methodology for this artistic phenomenon, Versified Prints enhances our knowledge of this fascinating new area of research and lays the groundwork for future studies.

The fruits of knowledge--such as books, data, and ideas--tend to generate far more attention than the ways in which knowledge is produced and acquired. Correcting this imbalance, "Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe" brings together a wide-ranging yet tightly integrated series of essays that explore how knowledge was obtained and demonstrated in Europe during an intellectually explosive four centuries, when standard methods of inquiry took shape across several fields of intellectual pursuit.
Composed by scholars in disciplines ranging from the history of science to art history to religious studies, the pieces collected here look at the production and consumption of knowledge as a social process within many different communities. They focus, in particular, on how the methods employed by scientists and intellectuals came to interact with the practices of craftspeople and practitioners to create new ways of knowing. Examining the role of texts, reading habits, painting methods, and countless other forms of knowledge making, this volume brilliantly illuminates the myriad ways these processes affected and were affected by the period's monumental shifts in culture and learning.

Inspired by the recent identification of a third autograph version of Gainsborough's masterpiece The Cottage Door, this book examines the significance of the multiple versions of designs that the artist produced during the 1780s. It demonstrates that without the pressure of exhibiting his work annually at the Academy and without a string of sitters waiting for their finished portraits, Gainsborough's work became more personal, more thoughtful. This study of the last phase of the artist's work is a totally fresh interpretation of not only The Cottage Door but other key works such as Mrs Sheridan and Diana and Acteon. Gainsborough's creative energies changed around 1780. He became restless and wanted to promote his landscape painting more effectively. He started to paint coastal scenes using an innovative painting technique to depict the water and he embarked on a series of`fancy' pictures that he would position him as a descendant of an Old Master tradition. He was never happy with the constraints of the Royal Academy and he was at odds with the dictatorial opinions promoted by its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Removing himself from the Academy enabled him finally to do what he wanted. He began to turn to portrait compositions that he had developed and refined over a number of years. With subtle alterations they could be made suitable for a variety of sitters. The subtlety of his skilled observation was less easy to accommodate in standard-sized full-length canvases and in these portraits he sometimes resorted to rhetoric gesture that fought against the closely observed likenesses in his best portraits. The margin between`fancy' pictures and portraits became blurred and the categorization of some of these paintings changed while they were on the easel. Always finding composition difficult, rather than begin something new he often revisited earlier designs that had pleased him. He would paint them again and make slight changes of tone and emphasis that would radically change the concept and intention of the design. The subject matter in some of his late paintings veers towards the autobiographical and shows a certain rift between him and his family.

The DeMell Jacobsen Collection of paintings and sculpture—an assemblage rich in American cultural heritage—parallels the development of art in the United States. American Made features some of the country’s most recognized artists: Thomas Cole, John Kensett, Asher B. Durand and William Trost Richards, while works by Theodore Robinson, Childe Hassam, Willard Leroy Metcalf and William Merritt Chase represent the Grand Tour and concepts gained abroad. Wonderful still lifes appear throughout the collection, including paintings by Severin Roesen, William Harnett and a late work by William Bailey. Portraiture is represented in stellar examples by members of the Peale family, Thomas Sully, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and Edmund Charles Tarbell. Classically-inspired marble works from Hiram Powers and Randolph Rogers, bronze pieces from Paul Manship and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and a modern copper and bronze example from Harry Bertoia are highlights of the sculpture collection. Early modernist and interwar works by Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Emil Bisttram, Paul Cadmus and Joseph Stella explore colour, form and abstraction. Highlights of contemporary art include works by Frank Stella, Louise Nevelson and a recently acquired painting by Alexis Rockman. Fully illustrated—with several paintings including profiles of their appropriate period frames—each work of art features an extended entry with full specifications, information on style and stylistic influences, significance and social context.

By scrutinizing every possible Persian and European written source on the subject, Negar Habibi discusses the paintings known as farangi saz, and in particular those of 'Ali Qoli Jebadar, one of Iran's most important Safavid artists of the 2nd half of the 17th century. En resserrant plusieurs sources ecrites persanes et europeennes, Negar Habibi discute des peintures connues sous le nom de farangi sazi, specialement celles de 'Ali Qoli Jebadar, l'un des artistes emblematiques de la 2eme moitie du XVIIe siecle.

Every painted work that is on display in the Uffizi Gallery, The Pitti Palace, the Accademia, and the Duomo is included in the book, plus many or most of the works from 28 of the city's other magnificent museums and churches. The research and text are by Ross King (best-selling author), Anja Grebe (author or The Louvre and The Vatican), Cristina Acidini (former Superintendent of the public museums of Florence) and Msgr. Timothy Verdon (Director of the artworks for the Archdiocese of Florence).

This engaging book is the first full study of the satirical print in seventeenth-century England from the rule of James I to the Regicide. It considers graphic satire both as a particular pictorial category within the wider medium of print and as a vehicle for political agitation, criticism, and debate. Helen Pierce demonstrates that graphic satire formed an integral part of a wider culture of political propaganda and critique during this period, and she presents many witty and satirical prints in the context of such related media as manuscript verses, ballads, pamphlets, and plays. She also challenges the commonly held notion that a visual iconography of politics and satire in England originated during the 1640s, tracing the roots of this iconography back into native and European graphic cultures and traditions. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

George Stubbs (1724-1806), now recognized as one of the greatest and most original artists of the eighteenth century, stands out from other practitioners in the field of animal painting. His most frequent commissions were for paintings of horses, dogs, and wild animals, and his images invariably arrest attention and frequently strike a deeply poetic note. Stubbs did not emerge as a painter until he was in his mid-thirties, but then his genius flowered astonishingly. He steadily celebrates English sporting and country life and reveals himself-in his "incidental" portraits of jockeys and grooms, for example-as a perceptive observer of different levels of social behavior. Among his many experiments with technique were his chemical experiments with painting in enamels, first on copper and later on earthenware "tablets," manufactured for him in Wedgwood's potteries. This is the first full catalogue of Stubbs's paintings and drawings. Along with the full catalogue entries, the book offers a lengthy study of Stubbs's art and career. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Sculptor, architect, painter, playwright, and scenographer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the last of the great universal artistic geniuses of early modern Italy, placed by both contemporaries and posterity in the same exalted company as Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. And his artistic vision remains palpably present today, through the countless statues, fountains, and buildings that transformed Rome into the baroque theater that continues to enthrall tourists today. It is perhaps not surprising that this artist who defined the baroque should have a personal life that itself was, well, baroque. As Franco Mormando's dazzling biography reveals, Bernini was a man driven by many passions, possessed of an explosive temper and a hearty sex drive, and he lived a life as dramatic as any of his creations. Drawing on archival sources, letters, diaries, and - with a suitable skepticism - a hagiographic account written by Bernini's son (who portrays his father as a paragon of virtue and piety), Mormando leads us through Bernini's many feuds and love affairs, scandals and sins. He sets Bernini's raucous life against a vivid backdrop of baroque Rome, bustling and wealthy, and peopled by churchmen and bureaucrats, popes and politicians, schemes and secrets. The result is a seductively readable biography, stuffed with stories and teeming with life - as wild and unforgettable as Bernini's art. No one who has been bewitched by the baroque should miss it.

Can we really trust the things our bodies tell us about the world? This work reveals how deeply intertwined cultural practices of art and science questioned the authority of the human body in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Henry Fuseli, Anne-Louis Girodet and Philippe de Loutherbourg, it argues that romantic artworks participated in a widespread crisis concerning the body as a source of reliable scientific knowledge. Rarely discussed sources and new archival material illuminate how artists drew upon contemporary sciences and inverted them, undermining their founding empiricist principles. The result is an alternative history of romantic visual culture that is deeply embroiled in controversies around electricity, mesmerism, physiognomy and other popular sciences. This volume reorients conventional accounts of romanticism and some of its most important artworks, while also putting forward a new model for the kinds of questions that we can ask about them.

With the walls of their churches bereft of imagery and colour and their worship centered around sermons with carefully constructed outlines (as opposed to movement and drama), Reformed Protestants have often been accused of being dour and unimaginative. Here, William Dyrness explores the roots of Reformed theology in an attempt to counteract these prevailing notions. Studying sixteenth-century Geneva and England, seventeenth-century England and Holland and seventeenth and eighteenth-century Puritan New England, Dyrness argues that, though this tradition impeded development of particular visual forms, it encouraged others, especially in areas of popular culture and the ordering of family and community. Exploring the theology of John Calvin, William Ames, John Cotton and Jonathan Edwards, Dyrness shows how this tradition created a new aesthetic of simplicity, inwardness and order to express underlying theological commitments. With over forty illustrations, this book will prove invaluable to those interested in the Reformed tradition.

John Constable is one of the greatest painters of the English weather. His depictions of the sky are essential components of all his landscape paintings, from famous works such as The Hay Wain and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows to his numerous cloud studies painted on Hampstead Heath, culminating in paintings in which the landscape beneath the ever-changing sky is completely absent. Constable kept a weather diary and was endlessly fascinated by the sky. In a letter written in 1821 to friend John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, Constable commented, 'That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids ... It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.' Written by Mark Evans, a leading authority on the work of John Constable, Constable's Skies captures the artist's fascination with the sky and brings together his depictions of the English weather from throughout his career. It will appeal to a broad readership of museum visitors and art lovers, as well as practising landscape painters keen to learn new skills by studying the work of one of the most enduringly popular English artists of all time.

The seventeenth century was a time of exceptional mobility for Netherlandish artists. This mobility had a profound impact on artistic developments, stimulating innovation and creativity in the Netherlands as well as abroad. Whereas most artists undertook a relatively short study trip, others decided to settle down and shape their life in a new environment. This study traces the integration process - as artists and as migrants in general - of Aert Mytens, Louis Finson, Abraham Vinck, Hendrick De Somer and Matthias Stom in Naples between 1575 and 1655. Departing from the idea that the experience of every migrant is specific to their background and skills, The Neapolitan Lives and Careers of Netherlandish Immigrant Painters (1575-1655) examines the challenges each of these five artists faced, the choices they made and the opportunities they grasped. The dynamics of art and society in Naples, the bustling capital of the Spanish viceroyalty, forms the context for their lives and careers.

Master Carver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) is famous for his breathtakingly delicate, intricate and realistic carvings, both in wood and stone. Tantalising cascades of fruit and flowers, puffy-cheeked cherubs, crowds of figures and flourishes of architecture are all trademark features of his energetic, animated carvings that grace stately homes, palaces, churches and colleges across the country. His work can be found in some of Britain's most beloved buildings, including St Paul's Cathedral and Hampton Court Palace. From his early work in the Low Countries to his 'discovery' by the diarist John Evelyn in London, and his appointment as the king's Master Carver, this book celebrates Grinling Gibbons' unequalled talent, his visionary genius, and his ability to transform humble pieces of wood into some of the most exquisite artworks of his day.

This lively and erudite cultural history of Scotland, from the Jacobite defeat of 1745 to the death of an icon, Sir Walter Scott, in 1832, examines how Scottish identity was experienced and represented in novel ways. Weaving together previously unpublished archival materials, visual and material culture, dress and textile history, Viccy Coltman re-evaluates the standard cliches and essentialist interpretations which still inhibit Scottish cultural history during this period of British and imperial expansion. The book incorporates familiar landmarks in Scottish history, such as the visit of George IV to Edinburgh in August 1822, with microhistories of individuals, including George Steuart, a London-based architect, and the East India Company servant, Claud Alexander. It thus highlights recurrent themes within a range of historical disciplines, and by confronting the broader questions of Scotland's relations with the rest of the British state it makes a necessary contribution to contemporary concerns.

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was among the first British-born artists to rise to international recognition and acclaim and to this day he is considered one of the country's most celebrated and innovative masters. His output encompassed engravings, paintings, prints, and editorial cartoons that presaged western sequential art. This comprehensive catalogue of his paintings brings together over twenty years of scholarly research and expertise on the artist, and serves to highlight the remarkable diversity of his accomplishments in this medium. Portraits, history paintings, theater pictures, and genre pieces are lavishly reproduced alongside detailed entries on each painting, including much previously unpublished material relating to his oeuvre. This deeply informed publication affirms Hogarth's legacy and testifies to the artist's enduring reputation. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Published to mark the reopening of the spectacular baroque interior of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich after a landmark conservation project, The Painted Hall is a wonderful celebration of what has been called `the Sistine Chapel of the UK'. The ceiling and wall decorations of the Painted Hall were conceived and executed by the artist Sir James Thornhill between 1707 and 1726 - years that witnessed the Act of Union during the reign of Queen Anne and Great Britain's rise to become a dominant Protestant power in a predominantly Catholic Europe. The accessions to the throne of William III and Mary II in 1688 and George I in 1714 form the central narrative of a scheme that also honours Britain's maritime successes and mercantile prosperity. The artist drew on a cast of around 200 figures - a mixture of historical, contemporary, allegorical and mythological characters - to tell a story of political change, scientific and cultural achievements, naval endeavours, and commercial enterprise against a series of magnificent backdrops. In the first part of the book, Dr Anya Lucas describes the history and architecture of the building and the background to Thornhill's commission. The grandeur of his composition, which covers 40,000 square feet, reflects the importance of the space that the paintings adorn: the hall of the new Royal Hospital for Seamen. The Hospital was established in 1694 at Queen Mary's instigation for men invalided out of the Navy, and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor. The Painted Hall was originally intended as a grand dining room, but it soon became a ceremonial space open to paying visitors and reserved for special functions. The last naval pensioners left the site in 1869, when it became home to the Royal Naval College, an officers' training academy. The passage of nineteen years from the start of the commission to its completion, and the need to navigate contemporary political events, meant that Thornhill was required to rethink the design of his paintings several times. His preparatory sketches for the Painted Hall reveal how carefully he experimented with and planned the content. When he had finished his work, Thornhill wrote An Explanation of the paintings, which was published by the Hospital directors and sold to visitors. This guide is the subject of the second part of our book, by Dr Richard Johns. Johns also explores image and meaning in Thornhill's decorative scheme, which stretches across three distinct but connected spaces: the domed Vestibule, the long Lower Hall, and the Upper Hall, together presenting a vivid and compelling picture of Britain's place in the world according to those who governed it at the start of the 18th century. During the last 300 years, smoke and dirt built up on the fragile painted surfaces of the Hall, and varnish layers fractured under the effects of heat and humidity. In the final part of the book, the specialist conservators Sophie Stewart and Stephen Paine consider historic restorations of the Painted Hall from the 18th century to the Ministry of Works campaign of the late 1950s. The spring of 2019 sees the completion of a ground-breaking conservation programme that has reversed decades of decay and ensured the long-term preservation of the paintings. Now that every inch of decorated surface has been lovingly cleaned and conserved, new photography brings the colour, clarity and vibrancy of Thornhill's masterpiece to life.

The first comprehensive study of William Ince and John Mayhew's famous eighteenth-century cabinetmaking partnership, complemented by high-quality photographs of their work. The partnership of William Ince (1737-1804) and John Mayhew (1736-1811) ran from 1758 to 1804, and was one of the most enduring and well-connected collaborations in Georgian London's tight-knit cabinetmaking community. The partners' clientele was probably larger, and their work was arguably more influential over a longer period, than most other leading metropolitan makers - perhaps even than that of their older contemporary, the celebrated Thomas Chippendale. Despite their considerable output and an impressive tally of clients and commissions, much of Ince and Mayhew's work has remained unidentified until recent times. The authors' substantial research in private family archives, county record offices and bank archives has allowed them to uncover much new evidence about the business and its influence within cabinetmaking circles. In Industry and Ingenuity, the results of these new investigations are presented alongside an impressive selection of more than 500 colourful, vibrant photographs of Ince and Mayhew's works, many previously unpublished, which together emphasise the partnership's proper position in the pantheon of great eighteenth-century cabinetmakers.

Sir Joshua Reynolds could never have anticipated an edition of his letters; he once told Boswell that “If I felt the same reluctance in taking a Pencil in my hand as I do a pen I should be as bad a Painter as I am a correspondent.� Yet although his surviving letters are those of a busy man, and many are perfunctory responses or requests, they remain of considerable interest to the reader. This is the first edition of letters by Reynolds to be published since 1929. Since that date the number of known letters has almost doubled. The new volume contains a total of 308 letters by the artist to friends, family, and patrons, all of which are accompanied by detailed notes to identify the recipient and illuminate the text. Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

The popularity of the comic performers of late-Georgian and Regency England and their frequent depiction in portraits, caricatures and prints is beyond dispute, yet until now little has been written on the subject. In this unique study Jim Davis considers the representation of English low comic actors, such as Joseph Munden, John Liston, Charles Mathews and John Emery, in the visual arts of the period, the ways in which such representations became part of the visual culture of their time, and the impact of visual representation and art theory on prose descriptions of comic actors. Davis reveals how many of the actors discussed also exhibited or collected paintings and used painterly techniques to evoke the world around them. Drawing particularly on the influence of Hogarth and Wilkie, he goes on to examine portraiture as critique and what the actors themselves represented in terms of notions of national and regional identity.

The unexpected story of an essential 18th and 19th century accessory This fascinating and enlightening study of the tie-on pocket combines materiality and gender to provide new insight into the social history of women's everyday lives-from duchesses and country gentry to prostitutes and washerwomen-and to explore their consumption practices, sociability, mobility, privacy, and identity. A wealth of evidence reveals unexpected facets of the past, bringing women's stories into intimate focus. "What particularly interests Burman and Fennetaux is the way in which women of all classes have historically used these tie-on pockets as a supplementary body part to help them negotiate their way through a world that was not built to suit them."-Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian "A riveting book . . . few stones are left unturned."-Roberta Smith's "Top Art Books of 2019," The New York Times "A brilliant book."-Ulinka Rublack, Times Literary Supplement

In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy (with a focus on Kant), nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world.

Velázquez's 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas has inspired an avalanche of published attention since it was first placed on public view in the Museo del Prado in 1819. The essays in this volume survey the responses to the painting in the nineteenth century, when Velázquez's fame outside Spain peaked. They include introductions to interpretations of Las Meninas by twentieth-century art historians, critics, philosophers, and art theorists, as well as the modern appropriation of the work by Picasso.

The volume examines the mutually constitutive relationship between the materiality of objects and their aesthetic meanings. Its approach connects material culture with art history, curation, technologies and practices of making. A central dimension of the case studies collected here is the mobility of objects between Europe and China and the transformations that unfold as a result of their transcultural lives. Many of the objects studied here are relatively unknown or understudied. The stories they recount suggest new ways of thinking about space, cultural geographies and the complex and often contradictory association of power and culture. These studies of transcultural objects can suggest pathways for museum experts by uncovering the multi-layered identities and temporalities of objects that can no longer be labelled as located in single regions. It is also addressed to students of art history, of European and Chinese studies and scholars of consumer culture. " This eagerly awaited volume offers deep and extensive insights into the fast-growing field of material culture studies. Its fresh approach to Eurasian objects and materialities will serve as useful reading for all scholars interested in transcultural and global studies. A very helpful introductory essay. " Sabine du Crest, University of Bordeaux Montaigne, Former Fellow, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.