The Musee du Louvre boasts an exceptional collection of 17th- and 18th-century European pastels. Due to their fragility, there have been scant opportunities to view and learn from these spectacular artworks. This in-depth examination of the collection, reproduced here for the first time in color, delves into their history and how they were created. Produced primarily during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the works-whose beautiful delicacy has been likened to the powder covering the wings of a butterfly-offer insights into society during the period of the Enlightenment. Featured artists include Rosalba Carriera, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Jean Etienne Liotard, Jean-Marc Nattier, and Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, as well as lesser-known masters such as Marie-Suzanne Giroust, Adelaide Labille-Guirard, Joseph Bose, and Joseph Ducreux. Distributed for Editions Hazan, Paris Exhibition Schedule: Musee du Louvre, Paris (06/07/18-09/10/18)

Pastels from the eighteenth century are fascinating - due to either their closeness to nature and immediacy or the virtuosity of their execution, but always because of their opulent and fragile quality. The richly illustrated collection guidebook provides information in a compact form about all the works of this genre created between 1700 and 1800 in the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen. They include more than one dozen masterpieces by Joseph Vivien, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Rosalba Carriera, and Jean-Etienne Liotard, as well as anonymous works. Introductory essays shed light on aspects connected with art history, the history of the collection, and art technology.