Presented in a beautiful gift format and filled with a wealth of new photography, this engaging book aims to introduce to a general audience the National Trust's vast collections - a treasure chest of history. Arranged chronologically, starting with Roman sculpture and ending with 20th-century design, it focuses on museum-quality objects as well as important examples of decorative arts, furniture, textiles, books and items with fascinating stories behind them. Selected by the National Trust's curators from more than 1.5 million objects in its collections, the featured highlights include an ancient-Egyptian obelisk; Cardinal Wolsey's purse; the first English globe; one of the earliest surviving sofas; an incredible 18th-century dolls' house; an elephant automaton; a tent made for a sultan; a dress made of beetle-wing cases; hand-written manuscripts by Beatrix Potter and Virginia Woolf; Rodin's bust of George Bernard Shaw; rare, early colour photographs of the Sutton Hoo discovery; a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth and paintings by Holbein, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Reynolds, Stubbs, Burne-Jones, Monet and Sargent. Each featured object is accompanied by an illuminating, easy-to-read caption, a timeline of key moments in the Trust's history and a list of properties housing important collections items appear at the end.

This book brings together fifty exquisite observational portrait drawings from the Renaissance and Baroque periods , including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Durer, Holbein, Bernini, Carracci, Clouet , Rubens and Rembrandt . More than a record of the sitters ' appearance, these works capture a moment of connection between artist and sitter: an encounter.

A national pantheon of the greatest names in British history and culture, the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery contains more than 11,000 paintings, sculptures and works on paper and over a quarter of a million photographs. There are kings and queens, courtiers and courtesans, politicians and poets, soldiers and scientists, artists and writers, philosophers and film stars – individuals from every sphere. This book presents a broad selection of the personalities that have shaped the last four centuries of British life, from Elizabeth I to David Beckham, from Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, portrayed by artists as diverse as Hans Holbein, David Bailey, Joshua Reynolds and Paula Rego. The featured works are arranged chronologically in sections, each of which is prefaced by a text written by the curator responsible for that period, drawing on their expert knowledge and recent research. Each image is accompanied by an extended caption that provides key information on the sitter and the artist and places the work in its historical and creative context. Special features, which include making art in Tudor Britain, miniatures, sculpture, early photography, twenty- and twenty-first-century photography, self-portraits, celebrity and non-traditional media, offer insight into particular areas of the Collection. A fascinating introductory essay explains the history and purpose of this great public institution and is illustrated with a wealth of rare and illuminating material from the Gallery’s extensive archive, including photographs, plans, letters and sketchbooks, some previously unpublished.

For much of early modern history, the opportunity to be immortalized in a portrait was explicitly tied to social class: only landed elite and royalty had the money and power to commission such an endeavor. But in the second half of the 16th century, access began to widen to the urban middle class, including merchants, lawyers, physicians, clergy, writers, and musicians. As portraiture proliferated in English cities and towns, the middle class gained social visibility-not just for themselves as individuals, but for their entire class or industry. In Citizen Portrait, Tarnya Cooper examines the patronage and production of portraits in Tudor and Jacobean England, focusing on the motivations of those who chose to be painted and the impact of the resulting images. Highlighting the opposing, yet common, themes of piety and self-promotion, Cooper has revealed a fresh area of interest for scholars of early modern British art. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

This book is the first major essay volume in over a decade to focus on Tudor and Jacobean painting. Its interdisciplinary approach reflects the dynamic state of research in the field, utilising a range of methodologies in order to answer key art historical questions about the production and consumption of art in Britain in the 16th and early 17th century. The introduction sets the tone for the interdisciplinary approach that is taken throughout the volume .It brings together a discussion of the context for the production of painted images in Tudor and Jacobean England with a selection of technical images of twenty paintings that span the period and demonstrate the information that can be gained from material analysis of paintings. In further chapters, leading exponents of painting conservation and conservation science discuss the material practices of the period, using and explaining a range of analytical techniques, such as infrared reflectography and dendochronology. Questions of authorship and aspects of workshop practice are also discussed. As well as looking at specific artists and their studios, the authors take a broader view in order to capture information about the range of artistic production during the period, stretching from the production of medieval rood screens to the position of heraldic painters. The final section of the book addresses artistic patronage, from the commissioning of works by kings and courtiers, to the regional networks that developed during the period and the influence of a developing antiquarianism on the market for paintings. The book is lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, with reproductions of whole paintings and many details selected to amplify the text. It will be an essential source for those working in the fields of art history, conservation and material science, and of interest to lovers of British Tudor and Stuart painting.