'Painting contains a divine force which not only makes the absent present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.' Taking up Alberti's connection between divine power, mimesis and friendship, this study explores the artistry of the Utrecht portrait specialist Anthonis Mor. It considers Mor's work in relation to reformation debates, and to the challenges to dynastic authority that took place during his lifetime, tracing the breakdown and transformation of belief in 'friendship' or love as a means of binding abstract authority and the embodied world together. Although Mor succeeded Titian as principal portraitist to the Habsburgs, his ambition was not limited to portrayal in a narrow sense. His work enters into dialogue with the elevated conceptions of the artist being enunciated by his humanist friends, and with devotional and allegorical imagery. The book brings Mor's arresting vision to a wider public and reveals its centrality to a broader understanding of how authority was conceived and reshaped in the sixteenth-century.

EARLY NETHERLANDISH PAINTING

A fully illustrated survey of Early Netherlandish painting, featuring all of the major artists, and many lesser-known painters.

Early Netherlandish painting, also known as Flemish painting, is characterized by figurative realism, its incredible sense of domestic interiors and details, luminous light, its realist faces, and its fusions of a micro- and macro- cosmic vision.

We concentrate here on painters such as Rogier van der Weyden (1400-1464), Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441, commonly described as the founder of modern oil painting), Gerard David (c. 1460-1523), Hugo van der Goes (1440-1482), Hans Memling (1433-1494), Joos van Cleve (c. 1485-1540), Jan Gossaert, also called Mabuse (c. 1475/8-1532), Geertgen tot Sint Jans (fl. late 15th 1485/ 95), Quentin Massys (c. 1465-1530), Joachim Patinir (c. 1485-1524), Dieric Bouts (c. 1415-1475), Petrus Christus (fl. 1442-1473) and Bernard van Orley (c. 1488-1541).

One of the most celebrated aspects of Early Netherlandish or Flemish painting is its heartfelt, intense religious emotion. It is this aspect that interests us in this book. The new aesthetic vision of Early Netherlandish art was later applied to still life paintings, satires, landscapes, and portraits, but it is the religious works with which we are concentrating on here. Michelangelos famous statement about Early Netherlandish art pinpoints the depth of devout feeling found in so much of Northern European art:

Flemish painting will, generally speaking, please the devout better than any painting in Italy, which will never cause him to shed a tear, whereas that of Flanders will cause him to shed many...

The new vision of Northern European painting which flourished in the 15th century was a combination of a new aesthetic approach to reality, and an intensifying of religious fervour. The new vision aimed at sculptural accuracy, a naturalistic use of lighting, and three-dimensionality. Mixed with the new use of oil paint, the new vision gave the art of Philip the Goods reign a special flavour and style well suited to the circumscription of devout religious truths. The new painting inherited its jewel-like brilliancy partly because many painters were trained as goldsmiths. This skilled handling of metalwork and miniature illustration shows in Early Netherlandish art.

All Early Netherlandish paintings were made on wood panels, and painted from light to dark in thin glazes. It is partly this subtle glazing which gives Early Netherlandish painting its glorious luminescence. The Early Netherlandish artists exploited the effects of different hues and thicknesses of glazes of oil paint, controlling how the glazes reflected light.

Engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production, the essays in this volume are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.

With China’s rise as the new superpower, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture, however, is a neglected field.

Visualising China in Southern Africa is a ground-breaking volume that addresses this deficit through engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.

Richly illustrated, the collection includes scholarly chapters, photo essays, interviews, and artists’ personal accounts, organised around four themes: material flows, orientations and transgressions, spatial imaginaries, and biographies. Some of the artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors in this volume include: Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Gerald Machona, Nobukho Nqaba, Marcus Neustetter, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Kristin NG-Yang, Kok Nam, Mark Lewis, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Wu Jing, Henion Han and Shengkai Wu.

"Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World" is sponsored by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Muqarnas 29" features a subset of articles involving cross-cultural interactions between East and West as manifested in the visual culture of the region. Articles addressing this theme include Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation: Artistic Conversations with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II s Constantinople, by G lru Necipo lu, and The Bride of Trebizond: Turks And Turkmens on a Florentine Wedding Chest, circa 1460, by Cristelle Baskins. The Notes and Sources section highlights new research on the medieval town of Hulbuk in Central Asia. Contributors include: G lru Necipo lu, Cristelle Baskins, Ana Pulido-Rull, Matt D. Saba, Jasmin Badr, Mustafa Tupev, nver Rustem, Ethem Eldem and Pierre Sim on.