440 pages, paperback, 242 x 168 mm, 180 colour illustrations
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ISBN: 978 1 903470 98 5
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This book examines the collecting practice and patronage of Camillo Massimo (1620–1677) in the context of the society that produced him, and demonstrates how his importance lies not simply in his own activities as a patron and collector, but in his role as an active force promoting particular artists and enterprises in Rome and in his legacy and impact on the following century.
As artist, relative of Vicenzo Giustiani, protégé of Angeloni, and friend of Bellori and Poussin, Massimo was able to move easily among a number of intersecting social circles. As a contributor to the Galleria Giustiana he had access to a large circle of foreign artists, including Claude Lorrain and François Duquesnoy. Massimo emerges from this study as a discerning patron with a clearly defined taste who created a collection remarkable for its coherence.
Chapters cover Massimo’s family background and early influences, his role as Papal nuncio to the court of Philip IV of Spain, and as art agent for the Altieri papacy, as well as his exile in Roccasecca dei Volsci. Using primary evidence in the form of the inventory, a manuscript building evaluation, prints and Lafage’s drawings, Massimo’s piano nobile is reconstructed and the way in which he used his collection to reiterate particular themes and project a certain image to his visitors is analyzed.
"This book is an important addition to patronal studies. It presents a clear case for the exceptional nature of Camillo Massimo's patronage, which was based on an unusual ability to unite the passions of a collector with an active and creative patronage." – Helen Langdon, The Burlington Magazine, July 2011
Celebrating the Beckett Centenary. Awarded third prize by The Art Newspaper/Axa Art Prize for best catalogue of the year published in the UK - "admired for the quantity of new material it presented about Beckett himself and the worlds of literature and visual arts". More
Accompanying a major international exhibition at the Wallace Collection (17 May – 16 September 2012), this book celebrates the artistic and cultural importance of the sword, as a symbol of power and prestige, as a flamboyant fashion statement and as an icon of the Age of Discovery. More
Seldom has there been a gift of equal magnificence. In 1947 the 7th Duke of Wellington presented to the nation his London residence – Apsley House – together with a large part of its contents, the collection of the 1st Duke. Among the paintings are some of the finest canvases from the Spanish Royal Collection, captured by the 1st Duke of Wellington from Joseph Bonaparte in 1813. There are also important seventeenth-century Dutch paintings bought by the 1st Duke himself, as well as a series of French and British portraits of his illustrious contemporaries and depictions of battle scenes, which provide a visual record of the Napoleonic period. More
Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow in 2007, this book provides a full study both of William Hunter - the many-faceted surgeon/connoisseur - and of his collection of art, which not only contains a number of outstanding masterpieces, such as a Rembrandt, but also provides a revealing snapshot of the taste of the period. While illuminating this crucial transitional period in British art, the book is at the same time a catalogue of the Hunterian collection. More
Accompanying an exhibition that promises to be the most comprehensive survey of Indian painting that the West has ever seen, this beautiful two volume catalogue spans 800 years of Indian painting, and some 240 masterpieces by more than 40 artists. These great Indian masters are unquestionably the equals of Dürer, Michelangelo or Vermeer. More
The group of about one hundred French bronzes in the Wallace Collection is justly considered one of the finest such collections in the world. Fifty-one of the best are featured in this book, the first in-depth study of the subject in English. 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