Marking the 50th anniversary of the acclaimed Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, this commemorative book presents masterpieces from the foundation's collection. The works span more than 400 years, from the 16th through the early 20th century, and feature a range of media including paintings, prints, and printed books. After a comprehensive introduction to the foundation and its collection, essays by eight scholars present new scholarship on key works. The featured objects include an image of the Madonna and Child by the Florentine painter Giuliano Bugiardini; Richard Wilson's iconic 18th-century composition The White Monk; printed materials in Venice that bridged Jewish and Christian cultures; and portraits by Paolo Veronese, Simon Vouet, and others. With more than 200 illustrations, this beautiful publication is a rich survey as well as a timely celebration of this exceptional collection. Distributed for the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

During the early modern period sculptors experimented with forms, typologies, and materials of their art in unprecedented ways. Sculpture was at the center of theoretical debates concerning the relative merits of the different arts, the differences between ancient and modern art, and the relationship between art and nature. Rome was a major center for these theoretical debates, as well as a locus for patronage and collecting. Sculptors from all over Europe came to Rome to study the remains of the antique past and to practice their art. Critical Perspectives on Roman Baroque Sculpture stakes out a new frontier of research on seventeenth-century sculpture in Rome--a frontier that looks well beyond attributional and technical questions, instead focusing on questions of historical context and criticism including the interaction of sculptural theory and practice; the creative roles of sculptors and their patrons; the relationship of sculpture to its antique models and to contemporary painting; and problems of contextual meaning and reception.
Aside from the editors, the contributors are Michael Cole, Julia K. Dabbs, Maarten Delbeke, Damian Dombrowski, Maria Cristina Fortunati, Estelle Lingo, Peter M. Lukehart, Aline Magnien, and Christina Strunck.

Initially published by Penn State Press in 1965, Catherine Enggass's translation of Filippo Baldinucci's Life of Bernini was the first English-language edition of this historic biography. Out of print for many years, The Life of Bernini is now available in a new paperback edition with an introduction by Maarten Delbeke, Evonne Levy, and Steven F. Ostrow, the editors of Bernini's Biographies.

Baldinucci's unusual stand-alone biography of Bernini, begun while his subject was still alive, offers important insights into contemporary perceptions of the artist, the motivations of its author, and the nature of literary biography in seventeenth-century Italy.

During the early modern period sculptors experimented with forms, typologies, and materials of their art in unprecedented ways. Sculpture was at the center of theoretical debates concerning the relative merits of the different arts, the differences between ancient and modern art, and the relationship between art and nature. Rome was a major center for these theoretical debates, as well as a locus for patronage and collecting. Sculptors from all over Europe came to Rome to study the remains of the antique past and to practice their art. Critical Perspectives on Roman Baroque Sculpture stakes out a new frontier of research on seventeenth-century sculpture in Rome-a frontier that looks well beyond attributional and technical questions, instead focusing on questions of historical context and criticism including the interaction of sculptural theory and practice; the creative roles of sculptors and their patrons; the relationship of sculpture to its antique models and to contemporary painting; and problems of contextual meaning and reception. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Michael Cole, Julia K. Dabbs, Maarten Delbeke, Damian Dombrowski, Maria Cristina Fortunati, Estelle Lingo, Peter M. Lukehart, Aline Magnien, and Christina Strunck.