Description
Book SynopsisA prominent scholar of Baroque painting, Richard Spear has explored a wide range of cultural, iconographic, connoisseurial, and conservation problems in his publications, many of which arose from two of his earliest research projects: organization of an international loan-exhibition, Caravaggio and His Followers, and his dissertation on the Bolognese painter, Domenichino, which resulted in a two-volume monograph with catalogue raisonné. His directorship of the Oberlin College museum strengthened his view that the work of art is the essential fact of inquiry, regardless of the approaches he has taken to interpreting the art of Domenichino, Guido Reni, Guercino, Artemisia Gentileschi, Georges de La Tour, and Poussin, among other 17th-century artists.
As Editor-in-Chief of the Art Bulletin (1985-88) he commissioned essays on "the state of research" in Western art history, whose varied methodologies and interdisciplinarity underpin his recent writings, notably The "Divine" Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni.
This volume brings together more than thirty of Richard Spear's most important articles and selected chapters from his main books, organized in three sections, Caravaggio and Caravaggism, Italy and France, and Bolognese Painters. The author provides important addenda and retrospective critical reflections on each of the essays.
Table of ContentsCaravaggio and Caravaggism: Caravaggio and His Followers
Caravaggisti at the Palazzo Pitti
'The International Caravaggesque Movement' by Benedict Nicolson
Stocktaking in Caravaggio Studies
The Critical Fortune of a Realist Painter
Leonardo, Raphael, and Caravaggio
Artemisia Gentileschi: Ten Years of Fact and Fiction
Caravaggio's 'Death of the Virgin' by Pamela Askew
Saints and Sinners
Italy and France: Baciccio's Pendant Paintings of 'Venus and Adonis'
Baciccio's 'Venus and Adonis': A Postscript
Studies in Conservation and Connoisseurship: Problematic Paintings by Manfredi, Saraceni and Guercino
Johann Liss Reconsidered
Princeton: Italian Baroque Paintings
Notes on Naples in the Seicento
The Literary Sources of Poussin's 'Realm of Flora'
On the Relationship between Subject and Decorative Modes in Baroque Fresco Cycles
A New Book on La Tour
'The French Painters of the Seventeenth Century' by Christopher Wright
Reni contre Dominiquin dans la littérature d'art française du XVIIe siècle
Bolognese Painters: Domenichino and the Farnese 'Loggia del Giardino'
Preparatory Drawings by Domenichino
The Cappella della Strada Cupa: a Forgotten Domenichino Chapel
Bolognese Paintings in Florence
A Forgotten Landscape Painter: Giovanni Battista Viola
Domenichino's Artistic Personality
Plagiary or Reinterpretation
Domenichino Addenda
Re-viewing the 'Divine Guido'
Guercino's 'Prix-fixe': Observations on Studio Practices and Art Marketing in Emilia
"Martyr", "Mary Magdalene" and "Di sua mano" from 'The "Divine" Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni'
Guido's Grace
Additional Notes
Index
