280 pages, hardback, 300 x 245 mm, 175 colour illustrations, Sept 2011
PRICE: £40.00
ISBN: 978 1 907372 10 0
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This book concentrates on a few crucial years of Caravaggio’s development, in order to cast light on what made the artist such a revolutionary figure. It argues that this revolution was one of technique rather than style, and involved the sophisticated use of a camera obscura and so-called 'burning' or parabolic mirrors, exploiting new advances in glassmaking and optics. Because the results Caravaggio obtained by his new methods were so different he created a sensation, although these innovations were rapidly assimilated and the artistic establishment worked successfully to restore their way of doing things, so that the true novelty of his art in the 1590s has been obscured.
Clovis Whitfield uses a lifetime of study of the period to discuss not only Caravaggio's technology but also his patronage and cultural context, the Rome of Clement VIII, concentrating particularly on Caravaggio's homosexual patron Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte and analysing the taste and role of his other early supporters as well. Whitfield's Caravaggio was the son of a bricklayer, untrained in traditional artistic disciplines, who instead took the dramatic step of painting exactly what he saw with his reproductive aids. Galileo’s hypothesis drawn from observation and Caravaggio’s novel description of what he saw were, according to Whitfield, parallel attempts to explain features of the many-layered reality that surrounds us.
The book features remarkable new photographs and especially details of Caravaggio's paintings and those of his followers and rivals that will dramatically refresh hackneyed perceptions of this crucial figure and his world.
Originally painted for the Town Hall in Antwerp in 1609, Rubens's Adoration of the Magi subsequently passed to the King of Spain, and was rediscovered in Madrid by the artist in 1628. He repainted and extended it, in a dialogue with his younger self which this book studies. More
Accompanying a unique exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, of the work of Nicolas Poussin and Cy Twombly, who sadly died on 5 July this year, this book is "so unusual and its theme so enduringly relevant, especially now, that it truly should not be missed" (The Spectator). More
The Wallace Collection commemorated the 400th anniversary of Van Dyck's birth with this publication. The book examines Van Dyck's artistic achievement through the in-depth study of a selection of paintings, including portraits of Philippe le Roy, his teenage bride Marie de Raet and Isabelle Warbecke, wife of painter Paul de Vos, as well as his lyrical work, The Shepherd Paris. More
"What is remarkable about this volume is the number of quality reproductions of the artist's work that can be seen together for the first time. This collection of paintings demonstrates more comprehensively than ever before Elsheimer's extraordinary intuition for light and atmosphere..." Antiques Magazine More
This is an overdue investigation into one of the most remarkable artistic enterprises of the seventeenth century, much cited but seldom discussed, David Teniers the Younger’s publication in 1660 of the magnificent Theatrum Pictorium or Theatre of Painting, the first illustrated and printed collection catalogue. More
Over the course of the last forty years art historian Jonathan Brown has done more than anyone to reform our approach to the art of the Hispanic world between the age of El Greco and Velazquez and that of Goya. More
A very handsome addition to any art library" (Art Times) "There is a wealth of information, scholarly insight, and sound reasoning in this work, which serves as both a tribute to one man and a contribution to art history." (Library Journal Reviews) More
The recent rediscovery of Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents offers an important opportunity to reassess the painter’s early career. Of Rubens’s works immediately following his return to Antwerp in 1608, it is the most assured, achieving a remarkable complexity both compositionally and emotionally. More
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. More
Published to accompany the first substantial exhibition on the tradition of Spanish drawings to take place at The Courtauld Gallery, London, this catalogue captures the excitement and importance of this rapidly developing field of study. More
'Dutch Italianate painting’ is an important as well as appealing strand of landscape painting in the seventeenth century. Some of the artists who practised it – Jan Both, Jan Asselyn, Jan Baptist Weenix, Nicolaes Berchem – had visited Italy, others, most famously Aelbert Cuyp, had not. More
Annibale Carracci was the great genius of early Baroque painting in Italy, blighted by melancholia at the end of his life but full of promise and invention in his prime. This book concentrates on one of his most ambitious early works, the Venus, Adonis and Cupid in the Prado Museum, Madrid. The paintings has recently been cleaned and restored and this book establishes it as one of the great works of Annibale's career - and as a simply wonderful painting. More
Philip IV of Spain (ruled 1621-1665) was known as the 'Planet King', shining brightly in the universe of the arts even if the Golden Age of Spanish painting coincided with imperial decline. The Buen Retiro Palace surpassed any palace ever built in Europe for the collection of paintings it contained - Velázquez, Zurbarán, Rubens, Claude, Poussin.< More