Table of Contents: Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Introduction - Eric Jan Sluijter, The Nude, the Artist and the Model: The Case of Rembrandt - Erna Kok, The Female Nude from Life: On Studio Practice and Beholder Fantasy - Victoria Sancho Lobis, Printed Drawing Books and the Dissemination of Ideal Male Anatomy in Northern Europe - Paul Taylor, Colouring Nakedness in Netherlandish Art and Theory - Hubert Meeus, Two Founts of Ivory: Nudity on Stage in the Seventeenth Century Low Countries - -Johan Verberckmoes, Is that Flesh for Sale? Seventeenth-Century Jests on Nudity in the Spanish Netherlands - Ralph Dekoninck, Art Stripped Bare by the Theologians, Even: Image of Nudity / Nudity of Image in the Post-Tridentine Religious Literature - Veerle De Laet, Een Naeckt Kindt, een Naeckt Vrauwken ende Andere Figueren: An Analysis of Nude Representations in the Brussels Domestic Setting.

Taking as its point of departure the meeting of two artists at a tumultuous moment in the 1980s, "Almodovar's Gaze" explores how the photographic and filmmaking lens can fruitfully overlap. American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) and Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar (born 1949) first met in Madrid in 1984, when the photographer was there on a visit occasioned by his first exhibition in the city. Mapplethorpe was already an accomplished artist, 38 years old and sure of himself and his sensibility. Pedro Almodovar was a well-known filmmaker in the Spanish underground, and the best-known international representative of the Madrid-based countercultural Movida movement that arose after General Franco's death in 1975. Mapplethorpe and Almodovar had gone out partying in Madrid, which at the time was particularly receptive to young artists closer to the underground than to the establishment. The later impact that Mapplethorpe's retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art had on Almodovar in 1987 was tremendous. This intimate arrangement of Mapplethorpe's seductive and powerful images was carefully selected by Almodovar from over 1,700 of Mapplethorpe's photographs.

Presents nearly 70 works from Symbolists, Nabis, Fauves, Cubists and Surrealists: Gauguin, Bonnard, Rodin, Serusier, Denis, Redon, Matisse, Dufy, Picasso, Douanier Rousseau, Arp, Giacometti and Chagall. Since easel painting began, the figure of Eve has been found in the work of painters from Masaccio to Rubens, taking in Michelangelo, Bosch and Brueghel along the way. In the 12th century, the image of the first woman emerged as being the common theme which brought painters and sculptors together around issues relating to the body. The first woman, or the only woman in an artist's world, Eve is the intrinsic representation of the nude. So many artists, from Gauguin with his exotic Eve or Bonnard with Marthe-Eve, succumbed to this portrayal of nudity as either shameful or as an ideal, inherently primitive. The catalogue presents nearly 70 works from Symbolists, Nabis, Fauvists, Cubists and Surrealists: Gauguin, Bonnard, Rodin, Serusier, Denis, Redon, Matisse, Dufy, Picasso, Douanier Rousseau, Arp, Giacometti and Chagall. It endeavours to trace the story of Eve, the source for the figurative body, at greater length and in more depth, through essays by Jean Louis Schefer and Veronique Serrano, as well as focus pieces by Gilles Genty, Laurence Madeline, Aline Magnien and Elisabeth Pacoud-Reme. Roberto Mangu's contemporary view talks of the need that present-day painting, and art in general, has for the presence of Eve, in terms of her unchanging qualities.

Modern approaches to Roman imperialism have often characterized Romanzation as a benign or neutral process of cultural exchange between Roman and non-Roman, conqueror and conquered. Although supported by certain types of literary and archaeological evidence, this characterization is not reflected in the visual imagery of the Roman ruling elite. In official imperial art, Roman children are most often shown in depictions of peaceful public gatherings before the emperor, whereas non-Roman children appear only in scenes of submission, triumph, or violent military activity. Images of children, those images most fraught with potential in Roman art, underscore the contrast between Roman and non-Roman and as a group present a narrative of Roman identity. As Jeannine Diddle Uzzi argues in this 2005 study, the stark contrast between images of Roman and non-Roman children conveys the ruling elite's notions of what it meant to be Roman.

In this book, Sheila Dillon offers the first detailed analysis of the female portrait statue in the Greek world from the fourth century BCE to the third century CE. A major component of Greek sculptural production, particularly in the Hellenistic period, female portrait statues are mostly missing from our histories of Greek portraiture. Whereas male portraits tend to stress their subject's distinctiveness through physiognomic individuality, portraits of women are more idealized and visually homogeneous. In defining their subjects according to normative ideals of beauty rather than notions of corporeal individuality, Dillon argues that Greek portraits of women work differently than those of men and must be approached with different expectations. She examines the historical phenomenon of the commemoration of women in portrait statues and explores what these statues can tell us about Greek attitudes toward the public display of the female body.

In this book, Sheila Dillon offers the first detailed analysis of the female portrait statue in the Greek world from the fourth century BCE to the third century CE. A major component of Greek sculptural production, particularly in the Hellenistic period, female portrait statues are mostly missing from our histories of Greek portraiture. Whereas male portraits tend to stress their subject's distinctiveness through physiognomic individuality, portraits of women are more idealized and visually homogeneous. In defining their subjects according to normative ideals of beauty rather than notions of corporeal individuality, Dillon argues that Greek portraits of women work differently than those of men and must be approached with different expectations. She examines the historical phenomenon of the commemoration of women in portrait statues and explores what these statues can tell us about Greek attitudes toward the public display of the female body.

Despite this famous protestation in a letter to his friend William Jackson, Gainsborough was clearly prepared to make an exception when it came to making portraits of his own family and himself. This book, and the major exhibition it accompanies, features a dozen portraits of his daughters Mary and Margaret, the same number of himself and his wife Margaret (though, perhaps tellingly, only one of the couple together), as well as works depicting four of his five siblings, his handsome nephew Gainsborough Dupont (who became his studio assistant) , an aunt and uncle, several in - laws and - last, but not least - his beloved dogs, Tristram and Fox. Spanning more than four decades, Gainsborough's family portraits chart the period from the mid - 1740s, when he plied his trade in his native Suffolk , through his time in Bath ( 1758 - 74 ), when he established hi mself with a rich and fashionable clientele , to his most successful latter years at his luxuriously appointed studio in London's We st End. Alongside this story of a provincial 18th - century artist's rise to fame and fortune runs a more private narrative, ab out the role of portraiture in the promotion of family values, at a time when these were assuming a recogni s ably modern form. In the first of three introductory essays, David H. Solkin writes on Gainsborough himself, placing his family portraits in the context of earlier practice - including that of the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and British portraitists from Mary Beale to Joseph Highmore . Ann Bermingham explores Gainsborough's portraits of his daughters, with particular reference to two finished double portraits painted seven years apart and the tragic story arising from them. Susan Sloman discusses Margaret's role as her husband's business manager, its effect on the family dynamic and hence the visual representation of its members.

This richly illustrated book features an introduction by the National Portrait Gallery's chief curator and nearly 150 insightful entries on key self-portraits in the museum's collection. Eye to I provides readers with an overview of self-portraiture while revealing the intersections that exist between art, life, and self-representation. Drawing primarily from the museum's collection, Eye to I explores how American artists have portrayed themselves over the past two centuries. The book shows that while each individual approaches self-portraiture under unique circumstances, all of their representations raise important questions about self-perception and self-reflection. Sometimes artists choose to reveal intimate details of their inner lives. Other times they use the genre to obfuscate their true selves or invent alter egos. Today, with the proliferation of selfies and the contemporary focus on identity, it is time to reassess the significance of the self-portrait.

Examines the styles and contexts of portrait statues produced during one of the most dynamic eras of Western art, the early Hellenistic age. Often seen as the beginning of the Western tradition in portraiture, this historical period is here subjected to a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis. Using a variety of methodologies from a wide range of fields - anthropology, numismatics, epigraphy, archaeology, history, and literary criticism - an international team of experts investigates the problems of origins, patronage, setting, and meanings that have consistently marked this fascinating body of ancient material culture.