They fascinate us today as they did 500 years ago: elaborate compositions of exotic fruits or platters with oysters, floral arrangements and skulls, exquisitely decorated musical instruments and scientific instruments. Magical things testify to exuberant wealth and hedonism as well as to the enlightened curiosity and religious fervour of the Baroque era. This lavishly illustrated book that even features a pictorial glossary sets the stage for the internationally renowned collection of still lifes housed in Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery). Focusing on the dazzling masterpieces of Dutch and Flemish painting, this book examines the genre in all its diverse facets. What meaning, what content, and what function did still lifes have, what allegories and symbols are concealed in their coded messages? How did the artists take the game of optical illusion to extremes? More than 70 still lifes from the Dresden collection by painters such as Cornelis de Heem, Abraham Mignon, Rachel Ruysch, and Frans Snyders provide a unique insight into the golden age of this magical genre.

Now available again, this visually stunning collection of Gustav Klimt's landscape paintings brings to light a lesser-known aspect of the Viennese painter's oeuvre. While Gustav Klimt is largely revered for his opulent, symbolladen portraits of the Viennese bourgeoisie, these works were just one aspect of his artistic expression. His landscapes represent an important facet of his career and are a valuable contribution to the school of European nature painting. For many years the artist travelled to the Austrian and Italian countryside during the summer, where he took advantage of the extraordinary light and spectacular hues to paint and sketch landscapes. Among the most exquisite of Klimt's landscapes are those in which he experimented with composition and style. Accompanied by scholarly essays, the images reproduced in this book comprise all extant landscapes from this brilliant artist, proving that his mastery extends beyond portraiture and revealing themes that appeared throughout his life's work.

Andrea Bischof is one of Austria's most important contemporary artists and has made a name for herself through the subtleness of the coloration and exceptional harmony of her compositions. She achieves this through weeks of patiently juxtaposing dazzling tones that. The alluring interplay between surface and depth literally makes the pictures begin to breathe and pulsate. Bischof has always felt a strong affinity with French art and, in her work, continues in the footsteps of the Impressionists, Nabis and Fauves. Like the Abstract Expressionist artists Bischof has also made a close study of the fulminant late work of the great French master Claude Monet. This volume portrays Bischof's development form the monochrome works of her early period and the arcane depths of her Reflections, over the experimental works on paper to the strongly colored, expressive large-formats of the magnificent Pulsations series. An interview with the artist and a lavishly illustrated biography complete this overview.

In the art of the Italian Renaissance, the subject of the Madonna with Child was chosen for pictures more frequently than any other. Raphael's paintings are regarded as some of the most innovative compositions to this day, 500 years after his death. Their groundbreaking significance is illuminated in this volume through comparisons with other principal works of the period, including those by Botticelli and Mantegna. Raphael's Sixtine Madonna is one of the most famous paintings in art history. The book traces how the artist arrived at this pioneering composition as well as the theological statement behind the picture and the original solutions that he found in his early Madonna paintings. Comparisons with Raphael's contemporaries in Bologna, Florence, Mantua and Venice show clearly the preferred picture types of the era as well as Raphael's highly individual pictorial language.