This book is the first complete study of the life and work of the 17th century Dutch painter Pieter Codde (1599-1678). Alongside Rembrandt, Codde was active in Amsterdam, the largest and busiest city of the Netherlands. Codde belonged to the first generation of painters who took part in the cultural phenomenon known as the Dutch Golden Age and therefore this monograph makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the early stages of development of the Dutch school of painting and its influence on later developments. The book includes a biography of the painter as well as a systematic and comparative iconographical and stylistic study of his work with an attached extensive critical oeuvre catalogue. This book is an important tool for both art enthusiasts and collectors as well as art professionals such as students, scholars, auctioneers and art dealers.

Portraits were the most widely commissioned paintings in 18th-century France, but most portraits were produced for private consumption, and were therefore seen as inferior to art designed for public exhibition. The French Revolution endowed private values with an unprecedented significance, and the way people responded to portraits changed as a result. This is an area which has largely been ignored by art historians, who have concentrated on art associated with the public events of the Revolution. Seen from the perspective of portrait production, the history of art during the Revolution looks very different, and the significance of the Revolution for attitudes to art and artists in the 19th century and beyond becomes clearer.

The city of Venice holds a special place in the global imagination. This book explores the creation of one of its largest surviving depictions, which has remained almost unknown to the wider public since its creation exactly four centuries ago. Singed and dated 1611, the painting is the work of the notable early seventeenth-century Bolognese artist Odoardo Fialetti. His huge birds-eye view of the watery townscape is enlivened by tiny vignettes of Venetian life. Eight square meters in size, this remarkable painting is a tour-de-force among depictions of cities. In 1636 the painting was given to Eton College by the former British ambassador to Venice, Sir Henry Wotton. Over the centuries it was known only to pupils and masters at the school, its surface obscured by layers of grime. Restored in 2010-11, Fialetti's view has emerged as a striking work of real artistic merit. Its prominent position in the British Museum's Shakespeare exhibition in the summer of 2012 brought it to the attention of the general public for the very first time. This book takes a closer look at the remarkable picture and the context in which it was created. What kind of artist was Odoardo Fialetti, a Bolognese immigrant hoping to fill the shoes of the recently deceased great masters of the Venetian Renaissance? What image does it present of Venice? What sort of a figure was Henry Wotton, and informed connoisseur and a passionate playing the European politics, though not as diplomatic as perhaps he should have been? This is a relatively neglected period of both in Venetian art history and in British culture, the Jacobean prelude to the enthusiasm for Venetian art of Charles I's court. This beautiful commemorative volume is interdisciplinary in scope, involving history of art, political history, cartography, architectural history and English literature and bibliophilia, as well as a story of restoration and its techniques, drawn together by one of the most distinctive views ever inspired by the townscape of Venice.

This fascinating catalogue documents the English obsession with marble sculpture, during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The display of classical sculpture was an essential requisite of every grand house in Britain during that period, and shaped the nature of the English country house - Holkham Hall, Kedleston Hall, Syon House, and many other equally famous examples. The master example was the Arundel collection, which itself drew on Italian precedents. There sculpture had been mounted in gardens, and the exedra as a means of display was taken over into English practice. The entrance hall with sculpture was then developed in unique form alongside the long gallery. Also to be considered are crypts and grottos, and study collections in the houses of men like Charles Townley, and indeed John Soane. This fascinating survey by Ruth Guilding gives valuable insight into an essential aspect of English 18th-century taste and culture. "...never forget that the most valuable acquisition a man of refined taste can make is a piece of fine Greek sculpture", as Hamilton wrote to Townley in 1771."