Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796) was an Austrian fresco painter known for his bold use of color. Although he has been recognized in the Central European regions where he worked, Maulbertsch has remained outside the general canon of art history. With Painterly Enlightenment, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann recovers the story of Maulbertsch, offering the first comprehensive English-language study of the long-neglected artist. Kaufmann situates Maulbertsch as a fresco painter at a time of transition to easel painting, a colorist at a time when color was not fully appreciated by contemporary observers, and an interpreter of religious themes at a time when secular subjects were becoming more popular. In this analysis, he is shown caught between the intellectual forces of the Enlightenment and the waning power of the traditional church, thus helping to illuminate the relationship between the Enlightenment and the arts. Kaufmann provides a thorough foundation for the fresh recognition of one of the great painters of eighteenth-century Europe, a leading fresco painter who is a colorist worthy of comparison to the best of his contemporaries, including the celebrated Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

This richly illustrated book covers 250 years of painting in Spain, opening with art created at the splendid16th-century court of Philip II, before turning to art and patronage in the cities of Toledo, Valencia and Seville. It then returns to Madrid to explore the work at the 17th-century Habsburg court, before introducing the transitions brought by the Bourbon monarchy. Janis Tomlinson traces the myriad influences reflected in the paintings of generations of artists from Sofonisba Anguissola, El Greco, Velazquez, and Zubaran to the unique accomplishment of Francisco Goya.

Full of repetition, pendants and series, this catalogue allows the reader to scrutinize some of Chardin's greatest works, and to follow the artist's exploration of some of his most arresting subjects. Prints by Pierre Filloeul, Antoine Marcenay de Ghuy and others demonstrate the shifts in appearance and meaning that Chardin's card-house compositions underwent through transposition from painting to engraving. The prints also help reconstruct some of the occasional pairings in which Chardin's figure paintings were staged, whether on the walls of the Salon or in the cabinets of private collectors. The pendants include two of the most famous of all Chardin's figure paintings, Lady Taking Tea and Girl with a Shuttlecock. Essays in self-containment and stillness, these works invite us to consider the nature of attention - the attention of the painter, his human subjects and ourselves.

Written over a period of years by the leader of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation is the single most complete authority for the story of the Pilgrims and the early years of the Colony they founded. Written between 1620 and 1647, the journal describes the story of the Pilgrims from 1608, when they settled in the Netherlands through the 1620 Mayflower voyage, until the year 1647.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Near the end of his life, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) created three colossal candelabra mainly from fragments of sculpture excavated near the Villa Hadriana in Tivoli, two of which are now in the Ashmolean Museum, and one in the Louvre. Although they were among the most sought-after and prestigious of his works, and fetched enormous prices during Piranesi's life, they suffered a steep decline in appreciation from the 1820s onwards, and even today they are among the least studied of his works. Piranesi's Candelabra and the Presence of the Past uncovers the intense investment, by artists, patrons, collectors, and the public around the start of the nineteenth century in objects that made Graeco-Roman Antiquity present again. Caroline van Eck's study examines how objects make their makers or viewers feel that they are again in the presence of Antiquity, that not only Antiquity has revived, but that classical statues become alive under their gaze. what it takes to make such objects, and what it costs to own them; and about the ramifications of such intense if not excessive attachments to artefacts. This book considers the three candelabra in depth, providing the biography of these objects, from the excavation of the Roman fragments to their entry into private and public collection. Van Eck considers the context that Piranesi gave them by including them in his Vasi, Candelabri e Cippi (1778), to rethink the processes that led to the development of neoclassicism from the perspective of the objects and objectscapes that came into being in Rome at the end of the eighteenth century.

This title includes a book and 4 CDs. A century in words, pictures and music - lucid, informative and entertaining. The earBOOKS "Masterpieces" series provides a compact overview of music and painting through the centuries. The "1600-1700" volume presents the most important artworks and musical compositions of the 17th century. Background detail and points of interest in relation to each painting or piece of music are conveyed through concise and illuminating commentaries. A comprehensive introduction sets the scene, expanding on the century's historical connection to the art of the period. Music CDs: A wealth of musical highlights from the 17th century can be enjoyed on the four CDs accompanying the book. Performers like Britta Schwarz, Christoph Genz, Ludwig Guttler, the Dresdner Kreuzchor, The Harp Consort with Andrew Lawrence King and the Schutz Akademie, directed by Howard Arman guarantee top-class performances.

These 29 books all feature the works of a legendary artist, each a master of the period in which they painted. From old masters Rubens and Rembrandt, to impressionists Monet and Renoir, to modern artists Picasso and Dali, these square-shaped books are perfect overviews of each artist's scope of work.

His works have prompted a New York Times bestseller; 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 XXL edition brings together 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. With brand new photography of many works, Vermeer's restrained but richly evocative repertoire of domestic actions - ranging from letter writing to music making to preparations in the kitchen - unfolds in a generous format, including three fold-out spreads. Numerous details emphasize the artist's 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.

The Crocker Art Museum has one of the finest and earliest German drawings collections in the United States. Featuring artists such as Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner, Anton Raphael Mengs and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, The Splendor of Germany examines the major developments in German draughtsmanship over the course of the eighteenth century. Published to coincide with the collection's 150th anniversary. In the 21st century, the collecting and study of 18th-century German drawings has become a major focus for American museums. One of the finest collections of them, however, has been in California for 150 years. The superb drawings at the Crocker Art Museum, from a Baroque altarpiece design by Johann Georg Bergmuller to a Neoclassical mythology by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, provide a panorama of German draughtsmen and draughtsmanship throughout the century. Many of the drawings are remarkable for their modernity. A self-portrait by Johann Gottlieb Prestel bypasses convention to achieve a direct, unmediated likeness. Well-placed slashes with brush and black ink define the features below his peruke outlined in black chalk. Other drawings encapsulate specific developments and styles, such as Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner's Lazarus and the Rich Man, which shows the florid dynamism of the Augsburg Rococo. A full range of eighteenth-century German artists are represented here, from the satirizing moralists Johann Elias Ridinger and Daniel Chodowiecki to the Classicist and friend of the art theorist Johann Joachim Winkelmann, Anton Raphael Mengs. Landscape artists are especially well represented, such as the key figure Johann Georg Wille, printmaker to the French king Louis XV, and generations of artists he taught and influenced all the way to the early Romantic landscapists. The exhibition and catalogue gather together a variety of dynamic and sensitive portraits, charming scenes of daily life, and often humorous moralizing subjects, as well as narratives, both religious and mythological, from the late Baroque to Neoclassicism. In the realm of landscape, the depth of the collection allows the exhibition to trace schools and influences-in addition to Wille's mentioned above-even in families such as that of Prestel, whose wife and daughter were both landscapists. It also allows it to demonstrate the great variety of works by single artists such as Christoph Nathe, represented by four landscapes in four different genres including a splendid scene near Goerlitz. Some artists, in fact, work in several genres as in the case of Johann Christian Klengel, whose works include the scene of a family by candlelight, a farmstead landscape, and a sketchbook that he carried through the countryside to record picturesque views. This is a rare opportunity for the public and for drawings enthusiasts. Two-thirds of the drawings in the exhibition have not been shown before; most of the exceptions have not been seen since 1989. Because of the drawings' 150-year history of limited exposure, the state of preservation of the collection is exceptional, as is the condition of the new acquisitions included in the exhibition.

Precisely rendered to dazzle the eye with their botanical accuracy, the sumptuous arrays of fruit and flowers by Dutch painter Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) were among the most avidly collected paintings of the 18th century. The arrangements were painstakingly executed over many months and commanded exceptionally high prices from collectors throughout Europe. This delightful little book explores two of Van Huysum's most important still-life paintings, "Vase of Flowers" and "Fruit Piece", showing how his inimitable technique resulted in an illusion that continues to captivate us today. The book's sumptuous plates reveal the artist's highly nuanced palette, and his exuberant, asymmetrical arrangements reflect emerging rococo rhythms.

Federico Borromeo, Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan (1564 1631), is well known as a leading Catholic reformer and as the founder of the Ambrosiana library, art collection, and academy in that city. Less known is the fact that the institution's art museum was the culmination of many decades of reflection on the aesthetic qualities and religious roles of art. Borromeo recorded his reflections in two treatises.

De pictura sacra (Sacred Painting, 1624) laid out the rules that artists should follow when creating religious art. Borromeo touched on dozens of iconographical issues and in so doing drew on his deep knowledge not only of church fathers, councils, and scripture but also of classical art and literature. In Musaeum (1625) Borromeo showed a less doctrinaire and more personal side by walking the reader through the Ambrosiana and commenting on specific works in his collection. He offered some of the earliest and most important critiques to survive on works by artists such as Leonardo, Titian, and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

This volume offers, for the first time, translations of the treatises directly into English as well as freshly edited Latin texts, an introduction, extensive notes, and an appendix on the Academy of Design that was established in conjunction with the museum. These treatises will be of great interest to students of the history of art, museums, and religion.

For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country's favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century. This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.

Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age presents the finest pieces from one of the most important private collections in the field, The Leiden Collection, New York, alongside a selection from the Louvre's holdings. This exhibition catalogue illuminates the extraordinary art that flourished during the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century - a time of unprecedented prosperity. Pioneering still life, realism, portraiture, landscape and genre painting, artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris and Frans Hals infused new life into Dutch art, forming a national artistic awakening. Here, their collective work provides a glimpse into the Dutch Golden Age, where the encounter with the new inspired enthralling forms of artistic expressions.

Rembrandt, Vermeer et le Siecle d'or hollandais presente les pieces les plus remarquables de l'une des collections particulieres les plus importantes dans ce domaine, la collection Leiden, New York, ainsi qu'un choix d' uvres provenant du Louvre. Ce catalogue d'exposition met en lumiere l'extraordinaire epanouissement de l'art au dix-septieme siecle, pendant la periode appelee Siecle d'or hollandais, marquee par une prosperite sans precedent. Pionniers de la nature morte, du realisme, du portrait, du paysage, de la peinture de genre, des artistes tels que Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Lievens, Gerard Dou, Frans van Mieris ou Frans Hals ont insuffle une vie nouvelle dans l'art hollandais, suscitant un reveil artistique national. Leurs uvres reunies ici donnent un apercu du Siecle d'or hollandais, ce temps ou l'ouverture vers de nouveaux horizons engendra des formes d'expression artistique captivantes.

Prophet, poet, painter and engraver -- Blake's uniqueness lies in no single achievement, but in the whole of what he was, which is more than the sum of all that he did. So writes Kathleen Raine in this classic study of William Blake, a man for whom the arts were not an end in themselves, but expressed his vision of the spiritual drama of the English national being. Profusely illustrated, this volume presents a comprehensive view of Blake's artistic achievements and a compelling and moving portrait of the life and thought of an extraordinary genius.

This wide-ranging study traces the forces that drove the production and interpretation of visual images of Shakespeare's plays. Covering a rich chronological terrain, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the midpoint of the nineteenth, Stuart Sillars offers a multidisciplinary, nuanced approach to reading Shakespeare in relation to image, history, text, book history, print culture and performance. The volume begins by relating the production imagery of Shakespeare's plays to other visual forms and their social frames, before discussing the design and operation of illustrated editions and the 'performance readings' they offer, and analysing the practical and theoretical foundations of easel paintings. Close readings of The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, the Roman plays, The Merchant of Venice and Othello provide detailed insight into how the plays have been represented visually, and are accompanied by numerous illustrations and a beautiful colour plate section.

With over six thousand objects coming largely from Europe and Asia, the Villa San Luca in Ospedaletti (province of Imperia) is a splendid villa-museum set up by antique dealers and collectors Luigi Anton and Nera Laura, donated to the FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano, in 2001. It is one of Italy's most important private collections dedicated to the decorative arts. This catalogue presents a selection of the most representative pieces of the vast and diverse collection of silver produced in various European nations from the 17th to the first third of the 19th century: from the old Germanic States to those of the Italian peninsula, from France to England. The objects described in these pages testify to the great skill of master silversmiths in forging the precious metal while following the artistic trends of the moment, as well as proposing a 'nearly complete' compendium of the main types of tableware and household utensils in use on the tables of the upper classes over three centuries of European history. Text in English and Italian.

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

As the most important Danish history painter, Nicolai Abildgaard (1743-1809) worked in a century that saw marked shifts in the styles of painting, from the late Baroque via Rococo to Neoclassicism, as well as the emergence of art academies throughout Europe as the prevalent factor in the training of young artists. This book presents results of a paint technical study of his oeuvre, from early student paintings to mature works from his late years. As a result of the composite nature of his training in Copenhagen as well as in Rome in the 1760s and 70s, a number of factors in Abildgaard s formative years were influential in shaping his painting methods and choice of materials. Though his practice may at times appear unorthodox and inconsistent, most of its separate components are found in works by his contemporaries, making his technique a reflection of different characteristic currents in eighteenth-century painting.

This richly illustrated book examines the making of one of the earliest modern catalogues--"La galerie electorale de Dusseldorff." Published in 1778, the revolutionary two-volume publication showcases one of the most important European painting collections of the eighteenth century, reflecting a pivotal moment in the history of art as well as the history of the art museum. In two essays, the authors analyze the process by which the catalogue was produced and shed light on the historical and cultural context that gave rise to an innovative and didactic way of displaying paintings--and, by extension, to art history as a discipline. The volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name to be held at the Getty Research Institute from May 31 to August 21, 2011.

This is a technical art historical examination of selected works from 1500 to 1750 executed in dry colour and includes illustrations of works by Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Jacopo Bassano, Titian, Sir Peter Lely, Jean Clouet, Francois Clouet, Rosalba Carriera, Robert Nanteuil, Jean Etienne Liotard, Joseph Vivien etc.

The unique arts-and-crafts tradition of the American Southwest illuminates this economic and social history of colonial New Mexico, casting new light on the development of New Mexico's Hispanic community and its changing relationship with Pueblo Indians. Ross Frank's analysis of Pueblo Indian pottery, Pueblo and Spanish blankets, and Spanish religious images - or santos - links economic change to social and cultural change in this region. Using these cultural artifacts to gauge shifts in power and status, Frank charts the creation of a culturally innovative and dominating Hispanic settler - or vecino - community during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Contrary to previous views of this period as an economic backwater, Frank shows that Spanish New Mexico instead experienced growth that tied the region closely to colonial economic reforms of the Spanish empire. The resulting economic boom dramatically altered the balance of power between the Spanish settlers and the Pueblo Indians, giving the vecinos the incentive and the means to exploit their Pueblo Indian neighbors. Frank shows that the vecinos used different strategies to take control of the Pueblo textile and pottery trade. The Hispanic community began to define its cultural identity through the economic and social subordination of the Pueblo Indians. Connecting economic change to powerful cultural and social changes, Frank provides a new understanding of this 'borderlands' region of northern New Spain in relatoin to the Spanish colonial history of Mexico. At the same time, "From Settler to Citizen" recovers the previously unexplored history of an important Hispanic community.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) never left his homeland of the Netherlands but in his massive body of painting, drawing, and etching, he changed the course of Western art. His prolific oeuvre encompasses religious, historical, and secular scenes, as well as one of the most extraordinary series of portraits and self-portraits in history. Rembrandt's work foregrounds texture, light, and acute observation. Like sudden, startling apparitions in a shadowy street, his subjects are illuminated against deep, dark backgrounds and rendered with immense physical as well as psychological scrutiny. Whether biblical or mythological figures, powerful patrons, or fellow citizens, each subject is bestowed not only with meticulous facial features but also with the intrigue of thoughts and feelings so that even age-old narratives such as the bible story of David and Bathsheba find a new level of human drama. Rembrandt also left one of the most extensive series of self-portraits of any artist, chronicling his own face from his youth to the year of his death. Rembrandt's rise coincided with the blossoming of the Dutch Golden Age, an era of prosperity in the Netherlands. He was encouraged by wealthy patrons, but was above all driven by a profound fascination with people. In this book, we tour some of Rembrandt's key paintings, etchings, and drawings to introduce his techniques, inspirations, and exceptional achievements. From the Baroque Belshazzar's Feast to the world-famous Night Watch we uncover a world of deep, rich tones, masterful draftsmanship, and a remarkable sensitivity for the human condition. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions