Art History
A Short Biography of James Abbott McNeill Whistler
$9.95
The Short Biographies series from Applewood's Benna Books imprint features short, intriguing, and entertaining biographies of world-renowned figures. Each beautiful hardcover book includes an interesting retelling of a single person's life, suitable for young adults and adults alike. These little gems will become beloved souvenirs of a favorite artist.
By Henri-Pierre Corbacho
Part of the Short Biographies Series
32 pages
Published by Applewood Books, 2017
Hardcover
4.2 x 0.3 x 6.8 inches
Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings & the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
$19.95
Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence’s art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city’s powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the ultimate visual homage to that “divine” poet.
This sparked a gripping encounter between poet and artist, between the religious and the secular, between the earthly and the evanescent, recorded in exquisite drawings by Botticelli that now enchant audiences worldwide. Yet after a lifetime of creating masterpieces including Primavera and The Birth of Venus, Botticelli declined into poverty and obscurity. His Dante project remained unfinished. Then the drawings vanished for over four hundred years. The once famous Botticelli himself was forgotten.
The nineteenth-century rediscovery of Botticelli’s Dante drawings brought scholars and art lovers to their knees: this work embodied everything the Renaissance had come to mean. From Botticelli’s metaphorical rise from the dead in Victorian England to the emergence of eagle-eyed connoisseurs like Bernard Berenson and Herbert Horne in the early twentieth century, and even the rescue of precious art during World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the posthumous story of Botticelli’s Dante drawings is, if anything, even more dramatic than their creation.
A combination of artistic detective story and rich intellectual history, Botticelli’s Secret shows not only how the Renaissance came to life, but also how Botticelli’s art helped bring it about―and, most important, why we need the Renaissance and all that it stands for today.
By Joseph Luzzi
352 pages
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2022
Hardcover
5.8 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches
Brilliant Bodies
$109.95
Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.
Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.
This groundbreaking study of masculinity makes an important intervention in the history of male ornamentation and fashion by examining a period when the public display of splendid men not only supported but also constituted authority. It will appeal to specialists in art history and fashion history as well as scholars working at the intersections of gender and politics in quattrocento Italy.
By Timothy McCall
240 pages
Published by University Press, 2022
Hardcover
9 x 0.94 x 10 inches
Chasing Beauty
$37.50
Copies signed by the author now available!
The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella’s world, museum, and the art she collected.
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella’s wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.
Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston’s insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.
But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace—all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent—whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal—came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.
From award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world—a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.
By Natalie Dykstra
512 pages
Published by Mariner Books, 2024
Hardcover
Colnaghi Journal Vol 4,
$50.00
Colnaghi Studies Journal is produced biannually by the Colnaghi Foundation. Its purpose is to publish texts on significant pre-twentieth-century artworks in the European tradition that have recently come to light or about which new research is underway, as well as on the history of their collection. Texts about artworks should place them within the broader context of the artist’s oeuvre, provide visual analysis and comparative images.
The Museum is featured in the essay "Selling Botticelli to America: Colnaghi, Bernard Berenson and the sale of the Madonna of the Eucharist to Isabella Stewart Gardner" written by Jeremy Howard.
Edited by Stijn Alsteens, et al.174 pages
Published by Colnaghi Foundation, March 2019
Paperback
Degas: A Passion for Perfection
$50.00
A beautiful celebration of six decades of work by Edgar Degas, published in the centennial year of the artist’s death.
Edgar Degas’s (1834–1917) relentless experimentation with technical procedures is a hallmark of his lifelong desire to learn. The numerous iterations of compositions and poses suggest an intense self-discipline, as well as a refusal to accept any creative solution as definitive or finite. Published in the centenary year of the artist’s death, this book presents an exceptional array of Degas’s work, including paintings, drawings, pastels, etchings, monotypes, counter proofs, and sculpture, with approximately sixty key works from private and public collections in Europe and the United States, some of them published here for the first time. Shown together, the impressive works represent well over half a century of innovation and artistic production.
Essays by leading Degas scholars and conservation scientists explore his practice and recurring themes of the human figure and landscape. The book opens with a study of Degas’s debt to the Old Masters, and it concludes with a consideration of his artistic legacy and his influence on leading artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Ryan Gander, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, R. B. Kitaj, Pablo Picasso, and Walter Sickert.
Edited by Jane Munro
272 pages
Published by Yale University Press, 2017
Hardcover
9.7 x 1 x 11.6 inches
Fernando Gallego and His Workshop: The Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo
$85.00
This major publication sheds new light on one of the most important artworks produced in late fifteenth century Spain.
The twenty-six panels of the altarpiece of the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo (Castile) rank among the most beautiful and ambitious works by two of Castile’s gifted late medieval painters, Fernando Gallego and the virtually unknown Master Bartolomé. Accompanying a major new exhibition of their work, this extensively illustrated volume includes full catalog entries for each of the panels, as well as a collection of essays exploring both their cultural and artistic significance. Ranging in subject matter from the physical life and composition of the altarpiece itself, to Fernando Gallego, the Hispano-Flemish tradition in Spain and millennialism in late fifteenth-century Castile, these essays highlight individual techniques and workshop practices in the context of the cosmopolitan communities of a Gothic city.
Barbara C. Anderson, Amanda W. Dotseth, Mark A. Roglan366 pages
Philip Wilson Publishers, 2008
Hardcover
10 x 11.1 inches
Fra Angelico & the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance
$40.00
With illustrations that demonstrate the rich colors and intense light that imbue Fra Angelico’s work, this book takes a deeper look at one of the master painters of the Florentine Renaissance.
One of the great fifteenth-century masters, Fra Angelico was one of several painters who shaped the beginnings of the Florentine Renaissance. Although, because of his occupation as a friar, he is sometimes considered separately from his contemporaries, including Masaccio, Masolino, Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Nanni di Banco, and Filippo Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance examines his early works and shows that not only was he a participant in the artistic culture of the time, but also a key innovator. Angelico’s breakthrough work from the mid-1420s, the Prado’s great Annunciation altarpiece, is regarded as the first Renaissance-style altarpiece in Florence.
Published to accompany the exhibition “Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance” at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, this book reveals the results of the Prado’s extensive conservation and technological research efforts on The Annunciation, as well as two other recently acquired Angelico paintings: the Alba Madonna and the Funeral of Saint Anthony Abbot. Vividly illustrated and deeply illuminating, this book investigates the origins of the Florentine Renaissance and positions Angelico at the heart of the story.
By Carl Brandon Strehlke and Ana González Mozo
256 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2020
Paperback
9.6 x 0.9 x 11.9 inches
Gainsborough's Blue Boy
$20.00
Marking the return of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy to the UK exactly 100 years since it left for the United States, this richly illustrated publication will explore the lasting influence of this iconic painting on British art and culture. During the nineteenth century, the painting’s fame grew, and full-length portraits by Gainsborough and his contemporaries became much sought after by wealthy American collectors. The sale of The Blue Boy to the American railroad magnate and collector Henry E. Huntington in 1921 was unsurprisingly viewed as a national tragedy—emblematic of a shift in economic and cultural power. However, its afterlife, as a permanent ambassador for British art, has undoubtedly fed into ideas of Britain and Britishness—its history, society, culture and character—that still resonate today. Including a select group of paintings that demonstrate the profound influence of Sir Anthony van Dyck and the old master tradition on Gainsborough’s practice and identity, Gainsborough’s Blue Boy will examine this masterpiece within the context of the National Gallery’s collection.
By Christine Riding (Author) with contributions by Susanna Avery-Quash, Melinda McCurdy, Imogen Tedbury, and Jacqueline Riding
88 pages
Published by National Gallery London, 2022
Paperback
8.75 x 0.5 x 10.25 inches
Hans Holbein Paintings, Prints, and Reception
$55.00
This study brings together leading scholars from Europe and the United States to consider the art of Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. Generously illustrated and based on the most up-to-date research, the book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Holbein the Younger and his magnificent art.
In chapters relating to artistic exchange, the contributors discuss what Holbein knew of French and Italian art and how he utilized this knowledge. Conservation and technical chapters examine the materials and techniques in the painting The Ambassadors and documentary evidence on a series of festival paintings on canvas. Two contributors examine the artist’s woodcuts, particularly Dance of Death, in the light of contemporary political and theological issues. In addition, the historical and theoretical circumstances and contexts of Holbein’s portraits are investigated, notably their associations with classical antiquity and its revival in humanist thought. The book also considers the impact of the first scholarly monograph on Holbein’s reception and how German Romantic literary art criticism of the early nineteenth century shaped an image of his life and art.
Written by John Hand & Mary Roskill
252 pages
Published by National Gallery of Art, 2001
Hardcover
9.2 x 11 inches
Looking at Art with Alex Katz
$19.99
Have you ever dreamt of having your own private museum tour with one of the world’s most-celebrated artists? Take a walk through art history in the company of America’s foremost painter, Alex Katz. Describing his personal encounters with the work of around 100 key artists, Katz’s observations offer a fluent, vivid and incisive view, making Looking at Art with Alex Katzthe perfect guide both for those looking for an introduction to the world of visual art, and anyone looking for a fresh view on their favourite artist.
Includes entries on: Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, Joan Miró, Peter Doig, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, Leonardo da Vinci, David Hockey, Paul Cézanne, Johannes Vermeer and many more.
By Alex Katz208 pages
Published by Laurence King, 2018
Paperback
8.26 x 5.83 inches
Manet/Degas
$65.00
The first publication on the personal and professional relationship between Manet and Degas, two giants of nineteenth-century French art
Friends, rivals, and at times antagonists, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas maintained a pictorial dialogue throughout their lives as they both worked to define the painting of modern urban life. Manet/Degas, the first book to consider their careers in parallel, investigates how their objectives overlapped, diverged, and shaped each other’s artistic choices. Enlivened by archival correspondence and records of firsthand accounts, essays by American and French scholars take a fresh look at the artists’ family relationships, literary friendships, and interconnected social and intellectual circles in Paris; explore their complex depictions of race and class; discuss their political views in the context of wars in France and the United States; compare their artistic practices; and examine how Degas built his personal collection of works by Manet after his friend’s premature death. An illustrated biographical chronology charts their intersecting lives and careers. This lavishly illustrated, in-depth study offers an opportunity to reevaluate some of the most canonical French artworks of the nineteenth century, including Manet’s Olympia, Degas’s The Absinthe Drinker, and other masterworks.
By Stephan Wolohojian and Ashley Dunn
316 pages
Published by Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023
Hardcover
9.54 x 1.31 x 11.76 inches
Masters of Art: Matisse
$14.95
Learn about Henri Matisse, one of the 20th century's most beloved artists, and his artistic legacy.
From his earliest pointillist-influenced paintings to this mature and playful paper cut-outs; from enormous, ebullient murals to reverent stained glass--Henri Matisse was renowned for his dramatic use of color and fluid draftsmanship. Thirty of Matisse's most beloved works are given close attention in this introduction that explores the varying tensions of the artist's oeuvre--his embrace of pure color, patterns, and texture; the languorous pleasures of the Cote d'Azur; primitive displays of human ecstasy; tranquil scenes of domestic life and soaring monuments to religious life. An engaging biography takes readers through every phase of Matisse's career and reveals how his aversion to troubling or depressing subject matter was in direct opposition to the radical spirit of his work.
By Eckhard Hollmann
112 pages
Published by Prestel, 2022
Paperback
6.62 x 0.36 x 8.25 inches
Masters of Art: Rembrandt
$14.95
This generously illustrated volume on the work of Rembrandt makes the world’s greatest art accessible to readers of every level of appreciation. Celebrated for his penetrating portraits, richly detailed landscapes, and evocative narrative paintings, the seventeenth-century artist Rembrandt is generally considered one of Europe’s greatest painters and printmakers, and the master of the Dutch School. His work is distinguished by broad brushwork, luminous palettes, and a sense of order and movement that recalls the finest Renaissance art. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book offers full-page spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details—allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of the artist’s technique and oeuvre. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historical events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, a timeline, and suggestions for further reading.By Steffano Zuffi
160 pages
Published by Presetl, 2011
Paperback
6.75 x 0.56 x 8.25 inches
Masters of Art: Rubens
$14.95
Arguably the greatest artist of the Baroque period, Peter Paul Rubens was an accomplished painter and draftsman, as well as a valued diplomat. This accessible examination of his life and work looks at every aspect of Rubens's oeuvre; from his commissioned portraits of royalty and the nobility to his magnificent representations of ancient myths, Biblical stories, and historical events. This incisive biography traces his life as a student in Venice, where he encountered the works of Titian and Tintoretto, the establishment of his studio in Antwerp, and the lucrative patronages of Marie de' Medici and Phillip IV. Full page reproductions of Rubens's work communicate his energetic and dynamic style, along with his masterful use of color and sensuous depictions of the human body.
By Michael Robinson
112 pages
Published by Prestel, 2020
Paperback
6.75 x 0.4 x 8.31 inches
Masters of Art: Turner
$14.95
This generously illustrated volume on the work of Turner makes the world’s greatest art accessible to readers of every level of appreciation. Perhaps the best-loved English romantic painter, Turner became known as "the painter of light." The use of brilliant watercolor characterizes his numerous landscapes. Traveling throughout Europe, Turner captured the vitality of urban and pastoral scenes. As he developed his technique, his paintings took on the quality of pure luminescence, paving the way for the Impressionist era to come. Overflowing with images, the book offers full-page spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details, which allow every aspect of the artist’s technique and oeuvre to be appreciated. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historical events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, a timeline, and suggestions for further reading.
By Gabriele Crepaldi
160 pages
Published by Prestel, 2011
Paperback
6.75 x 0.56 x 8.25 inches
Michelangelo & Sebastiano
$50.00
The first publication to consider the relationship between these two major artists of the High Renaissance
Through most of Michelangelo’s working life, one of his closest colleagues was the great Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1541). The two men met in Rome in 1511, shortly after Sebastiano’s arrival from his native city, and while Michelangelo was based in Florence from 1516 to 1534 Sebastiano remained one of his Roman confidants, painting several works after partial designs by him. This landmark publication is about the artists’ extraordinary professional alliance and the friendship that underpinned it. It situates them in the dramatic context of their time, tracing their evolving artistic relationship through more than three decades of creative dialogue.
Matthias Wivel and other leading scholars investigate Michelangelo’s profound influence on Sebastiano and the Venetian artist’s highly original interpretation of his friend’s formal and thematic concerns. The lavishly illustrated text examines their shared preoccupation with the depiction of death and resurrection, primarily in the life of Christ, through a close analysis of drawings, paintings, and sculpture. The book also brings the austerely beautiful work of Sebastiano to a new audience, offering a reappraisal of this less famous but most accomplished artist.
272 pages
Published by Yale University Press, 2017
Hardcover
9 x 11 inches
Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania & the Americas
$40.00
The result of extensive recent research, Migrating Objects reveals Peggy Guggenheim's two-decade period of collecting beyond the European and North American art with which she is usually associated
In the 1950s and '60s, Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) began to turn her attentions as a collector toward the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Migrating Objects focuses on this lesser-known but crucial episode in her life and activities. In these years, Guggenheim acquired works created by artists from cultures worldwide, including early 20th-century sculpture from Mali, the Ivory Coast and New Guinea, and ancient examples from Mexico and Peru.
Migrating Objects emerges from an extended period of research and discussion on this largely ignored area of Guggenheim's collection by a curatorial advisory committee, which has yielded exciting results, including the reattribution of individual works, among them the Nigerian headdress (Ago Egungun) produced by the workshop of Oniyide Adugbologe--illustrated here alongside other pieces that will greatly expand understanding of Guggenheim's collecting.
Edited by Vivien Green156 pages
Published by Marsilio Editori, 2020
Hardcover
9 x 11.75 inches
Paintings from Murano by Paolo Veronese
$18.00
A new undertaking by Venetian Heritage and Bulgari for Venetian art offers the occasion to rediscover two paintings by Paolo Veronese, a great master of Venetian Renaissance art.
Two paintings by Paolo Veronese, Saint Jerome in the Desert and Saint Agatha in Prison, dating to 1566 and located in the church of San Pietro Martire in Murano, have been recently restored, together with their seventeenth-century gilded frames. Before the restoration, the paintings were in bad condition, very dark and scarcely readable, due to the application of varnishes that had oxidized over the years. The rich and unusual seventeenth-century frames, sculpted and gilded, were also in bad condition. Both works are relatively unknown because of their position in a lesser-known location and the poor condition they were in before the current restoration. The restoration has brought back to life the brilliant colors of the canvases and the vigorous gilded carvings of the frames, giving also the occasion to study their provenance and commission as well as their conservation history.
96 pages
Published by Rizzoli, 2018
Paperback
6.5 x 8.7 inches
Palmerino
$14.95
Welcome to Palmerino, the British enclave in rural Italy where Violet Paget, known to the world by her pen name and male persona, Vernon Lee, held court. In imagining the real life of this brilliant, lesbian polymath known for her chilling supernatural stories, Pritchard creates a multilayered tale in which the dead writer inhabits the heart and mind of her lonely, modern-day biographer.
Positing the art of biography as an act of resurrection and possession, this novel brings to life a vividly detailed, subtly erotic tale about secret loves and the fascinating artists and intellectuals—Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Robert Browning, Bernard Berenson—who challenged and inspired each other during an age of repression.
Written by Melissa Pritchard192 Pages
Published by Bellevue Literary Press, 2013
Paperback
8.20 x 5.40 inches
Paolo Veronese and the Practice of Painting in Late Renaissance Venice
$75.00
One of the premier artists of Renaissance Venice, Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) enjoyed a successful career creating splendid and sophisticated paintings for an elite clientele. Focusing on Veronese’s materials, workshop organization, and remarkably varied techniques, this important book provides a rich examination of the artist’s painting practice and how it developed throughout his career—from his initial training in Verona through the height of his fame in Venice. Diana Gisolfi’s multidisciplinary approach brings together information on the physical qualities of Veronese’s works discovered during recent conservation projects, a fresh look at contemporary texts from the 16th century, and a nuanced understanding of the world of Venetian artists and their patrons. This innovative approach elucidates the working life of Veronese and his circle of contemporaries in new and fascinating ways.
Written by Diana Gisolfi352 pages
Published by Yale Books, 2017
Hardcover
9.5 x 11.25 inches
Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism
$35.00
The Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic’s gripping account of the “Terrible Year” in Paris and its monumental impact on the rise of Impressionism.
From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the “Terrible Year” by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans―then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris. As renowned art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born―in response to violence, civil war, and political intrigue.
In stirring and exceptionally vivid prose, Smee tells the story of those dramatic days through the eyes of great figures of Impressionism. Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas were trapped in Paris during the siege and deeply enmeshed in its politics. Others, including Pierre-August Renoir and Frédéric Bazille, joined regiments outside of the capital, while Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro fled the country just in time. In the aftermath, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. That feeling for transience―reflected in Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things―became the movement’s great contribution to the history of art.
At the heart of it all is a love story; that of Manet, by all accounts the father of Impressionism, and Morisot, the only woman to play a central role in the movement from the start. Smee poignantly depicts their complex relationship, their tangled effect on each other, and their great legacy, while bringing overdue attention to the woman at the heart of Impressionism.
Incisive and absorbing, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the pressures of the siege and the chaos of the Commune had a profound impact on modern art, and how artistic genius can emerge from darkness and catastrophe.
By Sebastian Smee
384 pages
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2024
Hardcover
6.4 x 1.2 x 9.3 inches
Passion in Venice: Crivelli to Tintoretto and Veronese
$45.00
A beautifully illustrated volume which explores one of the central themes of Christian Art: Christ as the Man of Sorrows, Passion in Venice: Crivelli to Tintoretto and Veronese draws on works by some of the of the greatest names in Venetian painting including Veronese, Tintoretto, Crivelli, Giambono and the Bassano family. It creates a new and illuminating context for these great masters by considering their work alongside contemporary works in other media, and from other parts of Western Europe, including Tuscany, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.
Edited by Catherine R. Puglisi and William L. Barcham176 pages
Published by GILES, 2010
Hardcover
10 x 11.5 inches
Piero della Francesca
$14.99
Piero della Francesca was born in Borgo San Sepolcro, in a family of artisans and merchants, probably sometime between 1415 and 1420. Piero was in Florence around 1439, and his stay there became fundamental to his development, with his career as a painter beginning by Piero working with Domenico Veneziano on the frescoes in the choir of the church of Sant' Egidio. One of the most important aspects of Piero's work is his combination of the Florentine-based perspective-based art with the Netherlandish concentration on the study of light and natural phenomena.Piero della Francesca examines the artist's life and works, from his formative years in Florence, to the Fresco Cycle in the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo, to his later works and the development of Linear Perspective in Italian Painting.
From The Library of Great Masters series
By Alessandro Angelini, translated by Lisa Pelletti
80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1985
Paperback
8.2 x 11 inches
Raphael
$16.00
Christof Thoenes presents an essential introduction to supreme Renaissance master, Raphael Santi. With approximately one hundred illustrations and a detailed, chronological summary, this book explores how Raphael painted his way to legendary greatness in just two decades of work. Noting highlights from his prolific output, it presents the mastery of figures and forms that secured his place among the most esteemed artists of all time.
Written by Christof Thoenes96 pages
Published by Taschen, 2016
Hardcover
8.3 x 10.2 inches
Raphael: World of Art
$23.95
An authoritative introduction to Raphael, one of the most influential painters in the history of art, written by the preeminent authority on the subject and informed by the latest research.
For centuries, Raphael has been recognized as the supreme High Renaissance painter, with many considering him more versatile than Michelangelo and more prolific than his older contemporary Leonardo da Vinci. Though he died young at thirty-seven, Raphael’s example as a paragon of classicism dominated the academic tradition of European painting until the mid-nineteenth century.
This comprehensive survey looks at the different social and regional contexts of Raphael’s work and all aspects of his artistic production. From early training in Urbino to travels across central Italy, particularly Florence, where he became a noted portraitist and painter of Madonnas, to engagement by the papal court, this volume covers all areas of the artist’s practice. Focus is also devoted to the second half of Raphael’s career, when he became the dominant artist in Rome―even ahead of Michelangelo―and as a sophisticate entrepreneur, was able to extend the range of his activities to that of architect, designer, pioneer archaeologist, and theoretician.
A beautifully illustrated study with over 150 full-color reproductions of Raphael’s work, ranging from major masterpieces to lesser-known paintings and drawings from all periods; art historian Paul Joannides, one of the world’s leading experts on Raphael’s drawings, sheds new light on this seminal artist.
By Paul Joannides
256 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2022
Paperback
6 x 0.9 x 8.4 inches
Rembrandt & Amsterdam Portraiture, 1590-1670
$70.00
Having inspired fervent study for centuries, Rembrandt and his Dutch Golden Age contemporaries are admired especially for their portraiture, with Rembrandt in particular having captured a liveliness in his subjects that continues to inspire artists today. In the 17th century, there was a significant market demand for portraits among Amsterdam’s upper class; like Rembrandt, painters such as Thomas de Keyser (c. 1596-1667), Frans Hals (c. 1582-1666) and later Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613-70) relied on these commissions for a critical portion of their income and thus created a wealth of paintings depicting various sitters. Helmed by Amsterdam Museum curator Norbert Middelkoop, this 2020 Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza exhibit presents 20 painted portraits and 20 engravings by Rembrandt and some 60 pieces by his contemporaries in a comprehensive survey that reveals the everlasting quality of these works.
This clothbound volume accompanies the exhibit and includes color reproductions of key pieces as well as research into the stories behind the paintings’ subjects: married couples, craftsmen at work, children, scholars, businessmen, the artists themselves and important group portraits.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rjin (1606-69), better known by the mononym Rembrandt, was a draftsman, printmaker, art collector and painter whose tremendous output of work helped define the Dutch Golden Age. Although he died in near poverty, Rembrandt is now widely understood as one of the greatest and most-studied artists in the Western canon.
264 pages
Published by Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2020
Hardcover
9.5 x 10.5 inches
Rembrandt: World of Art
$21.95
This intelligently revised volume on the life and work of Rembrandt offers detailed insight into the artist from an authority on the subject.
Rembrandt is among the few old masters to retain universal appeal among art lovers today. His striking self-portraits and scenes are on view at museums around the world—yet he remains an elusive, enigmatic figure.
In Rembrandt, distinguished art historian Christopher White carefully considers Rembrandt’s history to build a sensitive and thorough account of the artist’s life and work. White describes the radiant happiness of Rembrandt’s marriage, tragically cut short by the death of his wife, and discusses the catastrophe of his bankruptcy. Digging deeper, White also explores the psychological factors that may have awakened Rembrandt’s sudden interest in landscape and examines the artist’s final decade, when he retreated into the private world of his imagination.
This comprehensive introduction is revised and updated to include recent scholarship and features an expanded bibliography. In this stunning new edition, Rembrandt’s artworks are now faithfully reproduced in color throughout.
By Christopher White
224 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2022
Paperback
6 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
Rembrandts Changing Impressions
$39.95
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) was restlessly experimental in his printmaking; he manipulated his copperplates in unprecedented ways in order to achieve an image that was often in flux. Rembrandt was the first artist to treat the print medium as a means of crafting visibly changing images, even as his prints were increasingly received in the market as finished works in their own right. Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions, published to accompany an exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, considers this aspect of Rembrandt’s art, and its position in the 17th-century print market, through the comprehensive exploration of 18 of his most dramatically altered works―the first time in more than four decades that such an investigation has been undertaken. Each print’s multiple impressions are displayed side by side, giving readers the opportunity to examine their range, power and nuance.
By Robert Fucci with foreword by David Freedberg
156 pages
Published by Walther König, 2016
Paperback
8.3 x 0.7 x 11 inches
Rubens
$16.00
There are over 1,000 cataloged works by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), the 16th-century flag bearer for Baroque drama, movement, and sensuality. This essential introduction takes in the most important works from this astonishingly prolific oeuvre to explore Rubens’s influences and innovations, and his remarkable visual, and art historical, impact.
The richly illustrated survey takes in Rubens’s portraits, landscapes, and historical paintings, as well as his famed and bountiful nudes. Along the way, we examine the artist’s astonishing technique and his deft ability to depict narrative in a compelling and legible visual form, whether an erotic mythological scene or a tender biblical story. This remarkable artistic bravura is placed in context both within Rubens’s long art historical legacy through Van Dyck, Velázquez, and beyond, and his other talents as a classical scholar, diplomat, and knight.
96 pages
Published by Taschen, 2017
Hardcover
8.3 x 10.2 inches
Simone Martini
$14.99
Very little is known about the life of Simone Martini; but it is thought that he was born around 1284 in Siena, and that he probably learned his trade in the workshop of Duccio di Buoninsegna. He found fame with his painting of the Maesta in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, completed in 1315.Simone Martini explores what is known and can be surmised about the life of this painter. This book shows reproductions of his paintings in full color, including the cycle of ten episodes from the life of St. Martin.
From The Library of Great Masters series
By Cecilia Jannella
80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1989
Paperback
8.2 x 0.5 x 11 inches
Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists
$19.99
A spellbinding journey into the high-stakes world of art theft.
Today, art theft is one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world, exceeding $6 billion in losses to galleries and art collectors annually. The masterpieces of Rembrandt van Rijn are some of the most frequently targeted.
In Stealing Rembrandts, art security expert and the Gardner's Head of Security Anthony M. Amore and award-winning investigative reporter Tom Mashberg reveal the actors behind the major Rembrandt heists in the last century. Through thefts around the world - from Stockholm to Boston, Worcester to Ohio - the authors track daring entries and escapes from the world's most renowned museums.
There are robbers who coolly walk off with multi million dollar paintings; self-styled art experts who fall in love with the Dutch master and desire to own his art at all costs; and international criminal masterminds who don't hesitate to resort to violence. They also show how museums are thwarted in their ability to pursue the thieves - even going so far as to conduct investigations on their own, far away from the maddening crowd of police intervention, sparing no expense to save the priceless masterpieces.
Stealing Rembrandts is an exhilarating, one-of-a-kind look at the black market of art theft, and how it compromises some of the greatest treasures the world has ever known.
By Anthony M. Amore, Head of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Tom Mashberg
272 pages
Published by St. Martin's Griffin, 2012
Softcover
6.2 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
The Bold & The Beautiful: In Flemish Portraits
$68.00
Portraits from an important Belgian collection, most of which have never before been published
Men in stately black, women with huge ruffs, children with golden rattles, old women with wizened faces, and self-satisfied artists... These are the main players in just about every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the15th to the 17th centuries, the tract of land that we today call Flanders was the economic, cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money flows - with everyone who could afford it investing in a portrait.
Today, these cherished status symbols of the past have largely lost their original significance. But beyond their functional and emotional aspects, these portraits turn their subjects into gateways to the past. This book takes masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation and outlines the broad context in which they came into being, peeling back levels of meaning like the layers of an onion. Whether captured in an impressive Rubens or Van Dyck, or an intimate portrait by a forgotten artist, the persons portrayed were once flesh and blood, each with their own peculiarities, hidden agendas and ambitions. Some portraits are very personal and hyper-individual. Others are a little dusty, the ladies and gentleman being children of their time. In most cases, however, their dreams and aspirations are surprisingly timeless and soberingly recognizable.
The Bold and the Beautiful is an appointment with history: a meeting through portraiture with men and women from bygone centuries. But for those willing to look closely, the border between the present and the past is paper-thin.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Blind Date. Portretten met blikken en blozen, Autumn 2020, in Snijders & Rockoxhuis Antwerp, curated by Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren & Hildegard Van de Velde with a scenography by Walter Van Beirendonck.
400 pages
Published by Cannibal Publishing, 2020
Hardcover
10.19 x 11.71 inches
The Hidden Language of Symbols
$45.00
A stimulating resource that guides readers through the most significant symbols from art history, spanning many civilizations and centuries while revealing the common heritage of a global visual language
The Hidden Language of Symbols covers a wide-ranging selection of visual culture and art under one unified theme: symbols. Often not immediately apparent, our day-to-day lives abound with symbols of various kinds, from national emblems to emojis, allegories to logos, all of which have a fascinating story.
Organized across four all-encompassing themes―power, faith, hope, and uncertainty―this stimulating illustrated account of forty-eight key symbols from global art history is aimed at museum-goers, armchair art sleuths, or anyone who wants to understand the history of their visual environment from an unusual and creative angle. Drawing on artistic examples from the imaginary, natural, physical, and religious worlds, from dragons to eagles, butterflies to labyrinths, and rainbows to wheels, author and art historian Matthew Wilson discusses the lives of these different types of symbols. Analyzing their development, why they evolved, and the various ways they have been interpreted, Wilson also explains in what way symbols are markers of identity, that is, how they gain the power to unite and divide societies. Looking at how they have shaped the world beyond the museum, Wilson reveals their impact on the appearance of our cities, the language of advertising, and even the design of corporate logos.
By Matthew Wilson
272 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2022
Hardcover
7.7 x 1.2 x 10 inches
The Library of Great Masters: Botticelli
$14.99
Alessandro Filipepi, most commonly known as Botticelli, was born in Florence in 1444/5. For much of his life, he was closely allied to the house of the Medici, in whose sphere Botticelli's most important paintings were created, and whose patronage helped to establish him as a painter of considerable wealth and prestige. Botticelli presents the works of Sandro Botticelli, within the context of his life and the society in which he lived. The artist's early development is examined, and the two main influences on his work, the House of Medici and the friar Savonarola, and how these influences manifested themselves in his paintings.By Bruno Santi
80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1991
Paperback
8.5 x 11 inches
The Library of Great Masters: Carpaccio
$12.99
Vittore Carpaccio was probably born around 1465, in Venice, and started training as a painter in the 1480s. Venice at this time had a lively and artistic climate, open to the influences of Flemish painting and Northern European prints and etchings, as well as International Gothic and the new Renaissance style, which the young Carpaccio picked up on during his formative years as an artist. Carpaccio examines Carpaccio's paintings, reproduced in full colour, in the cultural context of Venice in the 15th and 16th century. The San Giorgio degli Schiavoni cycle in studied in depth, with paintings shown in detail.By Francesco Valcanover
80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1990
Paperback
8.5 x 11 inches
The Library of Great Masters: Filippo Lippi
$14.99
Fra Filippo Lippi was an eccentric artist, whose behavior was disreputable and dishonored the monk's habit that he had worn ever since he was little more than a child. Lippi quarreled with clients and workshop assistants, was constantly in trouble for being late in delivering his paintings, and was threatened with excommunication several times. Filippo Lippi examines the life of this controversial figure, citing the opinions of his contemporaries and patrons, such as Cosimo de Medici. The critical appraisal of Fra Filippo is discussed at length, followed by an examination of his works, including his great fresco cycles in Prato and Spoleto, and the influence on his work of Flemish Art.
By Gloria Fossi
80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1989
Paperback
8.5 x 11 inches
The Library of Great Masters: Mantegna
$12.99
Andrea Mantegna was born in 1430-1, probably at Isola di Carturo, near Vicenza and Padua Piazzola in between. One of Mantegna's early works is on the fresco decoration of the chapel Ovetari in the Eremitani church in Padua, where he painted three figures of saints - Peter, Paul and Christopher. Mantegna follows the life and works of this painter, with his frescoes and paintings Reproduced in full color. This book explores Mantegna's work, falling on his periods in Padua, Mantua and Rome, including the Camera degli Sposi and the Triumph of Caesar.
By Ettore Camesasca80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1992
Paperback
8.5 x 11 inches
The Library of Great Masters: Masaccio
$14.99
Masaccio was born at San Giovanni Valdarno on 21st December 1401, and moved to Florence in 1417, where he quickly became known as a painter. Masaccio was above all involved in the humanistic avant-garde of Brunelleschi and Donatello. The tendency of both these artists to exalt human value in every way and to restore dignity to the vulgar tongue is already evident in Masaccio's first known painting, the San Giovenale Triptych, dated 23rd April 1422. Masaccio explores the works of this painter in full, concentrating on the Brancacci Chapel and famous works such as the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and the Tribute Money.By Ornella Casazza
80 pages
Published by Riverside Book Company, 1990
Paperback
8.5 x 11 inches
The Story of Art Without Men
$45.00
The story of art as it’s never been told before, from the Renaissance to the present day, with more than 300 works of art.
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?
Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States and the artist who really invented the “readymade.” Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it’s never been told before.
By Katy Hessel
512 pages
Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2023
Hardcover
6.5 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
The Timeline Book of Titian
$9.95
A quick visual reference intended to gauge the evolution of Titian's style at a glance.
The Timeline book of Titian is accompanied by a full chronology of the artist's life, and includes key works from Musée du Louvre, Paris; Museo del Prado, Madrid; National Gallery, London; Chiesa dei Gesuiti, Venice; S. Maria dei Frari, Venice; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence and Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Written by Jacopo Stoppa36 pages
Published by Antique Collector's Club, 2008
Hardcover, accordion book
4.77 x 6.27 inches
Tintoretto in Venice: A Guide
$19.95
Unlike the other two master Renaissance painters associated with Venice, Titian and Veronese, Tintoretto (1519–94) alone was born in Venice and he left his mark there more than either artist. His paintings can still be found everywhere in the city: not only in museums, but as part of the original decorative cycles in public buildings such as the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the Doge's Palace and the Liberia Marciana, and serving as altarpieces or chapel decorations in Venetian churches. Over one hundred and twenty of Tintoretto's breathtaking paintings spill out of the pages, divided into sections that correspond to the Venetian Sestieri or districts. Each painting is accompanied by entries written by an international team of art historians covering major issues and placing them in their artistic and cultural context.
By Frederick Ilchman
144 pages
Published by Marsilio Editori, 2019
Paperback
6.4 x 0.6 x 9.4 inches
Titian Metamorphosis: Art, Music, Dance
$40.00
This beautiful publication celebrates a unique collaboration between two of London’s greatest cultural institutions. Together The Royal Ballet and the National Gallery commissioned three acclaimed contemporary artists – Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger – to work with international choreographers and composers to create three new ballets inspired by the Titian paintings Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon and The Death of Actaeon. As well as designing all the sets and costumes, the artists also produced new works in response to Titian’s masterpieces for a show at the National Gallery.
The book tells the story of this extraordinary, complex project from conception to stage and gallery. The artists’ notebooks, sketches and other material from the studio are reproduced to show how they evolved their initial ideas into working designs. Numerous views of the dancers’ rehearsals, the creation of the sets and the gallery installations, as well as dozens of unseen photographs of the performances themselves, take the reader behind the scenes to see the many processes and people involved in transforming the artists’ vision into a finished production.
All three creative teams offer their own reflections on the project and on working with very different art forms. An introduction by National Gallery curator and originator of the project, Dr. Minna Moore Ede, explains how the collaboration came to fruition and unfolded. A foreword by Dame Monica Mason, outgoing director of The Royal Ballet, completes this stunning volume.
Edited and with introduction by Minna Moore Ede. Foreword by Monica Mason.182 pages
Published by Art/Books, 2013
Hardcover
8.75 x 11 inches
Titian's Hidden Double Portrait: Unveiled After 500 Years
$55.00
This book recounts the fascinating history of Titian's unfinished portrait, A Lady and her Daughter (possibly his mistress Milia and their daughter), which dates from the early 1550s. After Titian's death in 1576, it was repainted in his studio with a more saleable image of Tobias and the Angel. Often presented as Titian's work but in a style which made the attribution suspect, the painting has had a succession of owners. It belonged to Tsar Nicholas I for a short time, and ultimately to the art dealer René Gimpel, who hid it with other artwork in a warehouse in London during World War II, where it miraculously survived the Blitz. It was not until the mid-20th century that an x-ray examination uncovered the beautiful painting underneath, an undisputed work by the great master himself. The painstaking restoration process, begun in 1983, took 20 years. Notable art historians and conservators have contributed essays that offer an in-depth examination of this exceptional and mysterious painting.
Written by Jaynie Anderson, Larry Keith, Irina Artemieva159 pages
Published by Cannibal Publishing, 2020
Hardcover
9.2 x 11.5 inches
Titian's Vision of Women
$45.00
How the culture of Renaissance Venice shaped Titian’s timeless paintings of women?
A new ideal of feminine beauty arose in 16th-century Venice, as women acquired new rights of inheritance and more social power. As a result, through the writings of poets and humanists, the construction of the desired, beloved woman began to acquire civic significance. The crucial impetus for the visual realization of this ideal came from Venice’s greatest artist: Titian. For him, artistic beauty was identical with female beauty. He was less interested in the canon of exterior beauty than in a woman’s character, in femininity as such. Titian elevates every depiction of a woman into a celebration of womanhood.
This book illustrates the Venetian representation of women in the 16th century, using comparisons between Titian and other painters of his time, such as Sebastiano del Piombo, Lotto, Palma il Vecchio, Paris Bordone, Veronese and Tintoretto. It surveys the various aspects of Late Renaissance female idealization: from realistic portraits to increasingly poetic variations, where female representation reaches its zenith as history, myth and allegory.
This richly illustrated volume also looks at the clothes and coiffures sported by sitters in both real and ideal portraits, and discusses contemporary fashion with its predilection for sumptuous fabrics and costly jewels and pearls.
By Sylvia Ferino-Pagden
368 pages
Published by Skira, 2022
Hardcover
Titian: Vanitas
$55.00
Beginning with the analysis of two works by Titian (ca. 1488–1576) preserved in the Czech Republic―the so-called “Vanitas” belonging to the Prague Castle Collections, a portrait of a beautiful young woman usually interpreted as an allegory of vanity, and the gruesome “Flaying of Marsyas” housed in the Archbishop’s Palace in Kromeriz―Titian: Vanitas deals with the artistic and existential life of the Cadore-born painter and presents the two paintings in the context of Titian’s broader production. This volume, edited by Lionello Puppi and Serena Baccaglini and including texts from Giorgio Reolon, Barbara Putova, Silvia Miscellaneo and Antonio Genova, delves into the Renaissance artist’s process and self-presentation, from the preparation of models and the production of replicas to the success of the artist and the intention and manipulations of his self-portraits.
Edited by Lionello Puppi and Serena Baccaglini192 pages
Published by Silvana Editoriale, 2017
Paperback
9 x 11 inches
Truth Bomb: Inspiration from the Mouths and Minds of Women Artists
$34.95
If anyone can teach readers how to pursue the life and work of an artist, it is the twenty-two amazing artists included in Truth Bomb.
This colorful compilation of pioneering and established women artists from around the world motivates and empowers. Their stories and artworks in this volume challenge readers to find solace in the shared human experiences of birth, death, love, anger, joy, and sadness. Truth Bomb offers the best commentary and insight into the incredible formation of diverse women artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Miranda July, Mickalene Thomas, and the Guerrilla Girls while uncovering the power of taking a chance, pushing the envelope, and ultimately not being afraid of making a mark. Each artist tells a story of resilience, tenacity, sacrifice, and steely determination. The result is a magical visual mash-up of images, memories, historic moments, interviews, and inspirational beginnings as told by artists themselves. Truth Bomb is an ode to art and artists and an attempt to decipher the mystery of creativity.
By Abigail Crompton
208 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2020
Measures 9.3 x 1 x 11.3 inches
Hardcover
© 2024 Gift at the Gardner.
