John Soane died in 1837 but his legacy lives on in his architecture. Today architects across the world are inspired by his magical interiors. Four outstanding contemporary architects explore Sir John Soane's house and museum and identify works and motifs of his that have insired them or that they have specificaly referenced. More
This first volume cataloguing the Irish painters in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin covers more than 220 paintings from the late 17th century to the early 19th century, including figures such as George Barret, James Barry, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, William Hickey, Nathaniel Hone, Charles Jervas, James Latham, Thomas Roberts and Martin Archer Shee. More
The selection consists of Qur’ans, illustrated Islamic manuscripts and scientific and religious manuscripts. All are handsomely illustrated and fully discussed. The manuscripts are from all parts of the Islamic world and represent the finest achievements of the form. More
In the library of Sir John Soane’s remarkable house at 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, several volumes of Italian architectural drawings of the 16th and 17th centuries have remained until today one of London’s hidden treasures. They have never been catalogued before in detail. More
Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, is probably Japan’s most popular Buddhist deity. Images of Kannon – who hears the cries for help of all beings in distress – are the main focus of worship in many Japanese temples. This exhibition catalogue presents an exceptional selection of the most beautiful sculptures and paintings from the 7th to the 14th century, some of which have never been seen before outside Japan or which are rarely accessible even to the Japanese public. More
Ken Thomson was no mere trophy gatherer. A man of passionate commitment and of wide-ranging cultural curiosity, the late Lord Thomson of Fleet (1923–2006) began a half-century of collecting in 1953 and continued to the very end of his life. The Thomson Collection has drawn the respect of museum curators worldwide. In terms of quantity and quality, the Collection’s body of Canadian art has no equal; and a number of works, principal among them The Massacre of the Innocents, the masterpiece of Rubens’s early maturity, are of truly international significance. More
Oriental manuscripts were produced literally in hundreds of languages and scripts, on a wide range of materials. These range from modest palm-leaf books to grand volumes published on paper produced for the Mughal Emperors. Among the many items included in this catalogue is a complete Tibetan scroll of the early 8th century from the Dun Huang, a Devimahatmya of the eleventh century, perhaps the oldest copy of this celebrated text to survive... More
For more than a thousand years, the paths of the Silk Road joined the distant empires of East Asia and the Mediterranean, forming a complex web of trade, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange between China, Central Asia, Persia, Tibet, India, the Near East and Europe. The manuscripts collected in this book provide a sense of the fruitful exchanges as well as bitter struggles in these regions over the centuries. More
This book is about a family tree: the line of descent that can be traced from Perugino in Italy in the fifteenth century to Edouard Manet in France in the nineteenth. It is not the usual kind of genealogy, of those connected by blood, more an ‘apostolic succession’, following the way in which art in Europe was taught, from one generation to the next, from 1480 to 1880. More
These works of museum quality, from an anonymous collection (one of the most important currently in private hands), were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005. Many of the objects in the catalogue will be well known to those familiar with the specialist literature, even if they were unaware of their whereabouts. More