Search results for ""officina libraria""

"The mention of Mongiardino still elicits instant reverence. With his alchemic blurring of eras, the sheer scope and commitment of his massive projects and insistence on valuing ambience above so-called authenticity, he attained mythic stature." - The New York Times Style Magazine Roomscapes is not only a beautiful testament to Mongiardino's imaginative creations, the magnificent rooms he re-shaped and decorated in ancient Italian and Parisian palaces, English houses, New York apartments, but it is an important text that analyses space, function, decoration and lighting of rooms. It is meant as a guide to conceive spaces that are inhabited through time and by time. Sketches, drawings, and models by Mongiardino, next to the images of the finished rooms, make the creative process clear and showcase his extraordinary ability and taste. Roomscapes was originally published in 1993 and has long been out of print. Contents: Preface by Giovanni Agosti; Introduction; Part one: The genesis of a room; Sketches; Chapter one: Space, measure, and models; Chapter two: The function of a room and its appearance; Chapter three: Decoration: ways to invent it, transform it, correct it; Chapter four: Decoration and the appeal of the exotic; Part two: Illusion: the eye deceived; Chapter five: Materials and the simulation of materials; Chapter two: The birth and development of perspective; Conclusion; Appendix: 16 unpublished sketches by Renzo Mongiardino.

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"Flicking through the book... you'll discover all manner of vintage cigarette holders, ranging from cheap promotional items given away by New York nightclubs to extravagant versions crafted by the likes of Tiffany, Fabergé, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels." South China Morning Post The book offers an unprecedented look at cigarette holders through a selection of approximately 125 pieces from the collection of Carolyn Hsu-Balcer. Its introductory essay is both a social history of that world-changing leaf, tobacco, and a design history of its accoutrements. It examines the history of smoking from its pre-Columbian roots in the Americas through to the present-day worldwide e-cigarette craze, taking the reader on a journey from tobacco smoking as a sacred ritual, through the controversies of its worldwide spread, and the machine-rolled cigarette's role in the world wars and as a tool for European and American women's equality. Following the illustrated essay is a luxurious catalogue of newly commissioned photography that makes these diminutive objects pop off the pages with brilliant colour and form. The collection includes cigarette holders in their simplest incarnations - the disposable promotional holders given away at trendy New York nightclubs - to their most exquisite - the work of Fabergé, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels and other renowned jewellers of the late nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. Contents: Foreword by Carolyn Hsu-Balcer; Introduction; Chapter 1: Tobacco's Journey from the New World to the Old: Medicine and Pleasure; Chapter 2: The Rise of Cigarette Culture: The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries; Chapter 3: Smoking, Sociability, and a New Modern Era: From the First World War to the Second; Chapter 4: The Cigarette Holder's Peak and Fall: A New Culture of Smoking; Catalog; Appendix: Materials Used in Cigarette Holders; Acknowledgments; Photo Credits.

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The book's mission is to document the legends of the Memphis soul music business. Photographer Thom Gilbert set up a photo studio at Royal Studios in Memphis, home of the famed Hi Records that launched the careers of Al Green, Ann Peebles, and dozens of others. The studio's "green room" was filled with soul music royalty: Bobby "Blue" Bland in his signature nautical cap, several of the Hodges brothers who make up the incomparable Hi Rhythm Section were on hand, Stax Records musicians Bobby Manuel, Lester Snell were there actually working on a recording, but pausing to have their portraits taken. Gilbert has captured images of what seems like every living person related to Memphis soul music. From Rev. Jesse Jackson, who recorded spoken word albums on Stax's Respect Records label, to Sam Moore of the indelible soul duo Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Steve Cropper, B.B. King, Bobby Rush, and many others, including the lesser known but equally vital session players, writers, engineers, publicists who contributed to what is now world renowned as The Memphis Sound.

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Since 1972, the Drawings and Prints Department of the Louvre has published the reportoire of the Italian drawings held in its collections. This volume, the tenth in the series, is dedicated to the Bolognese and Emilian artists of the 17th century. Seicento is considered by all as the golden age of Bolognese painting, which not only enriched the city with many masterpieces but saw many of its main artists going to Rome, the capital of Baroque, to decorate its churches and palaces (from the Galleria Farnese by Annibale Carracci to the many domes frescoed by Lanfranco). The volume includes close to 1000 drawings by artists such as Ludovico and Annibale Carracci, Bartolomeo Cesi, Bartolomeo Schedoni, Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco, Elisabetta Sirani, Giuseppe Maria Crespi e Donato Creti and it traces the evolution of draughtmanship in Bologna and Emilia, from the Accademia degli Incamminati to the spreading of classicism and baroque. Text in French. Contents: Preface by Henri Loyrette (President of the Louvre); Introduction; The Teaching of the Carraccis; Contemporary Artists of the Carraccis; The Influcence of Bologna; Baroque and Classiscism in Bologna and Emilia; Bibliography; Tables of Concordance; List of the Artists; Index of the Collectors Also available: Battista Franco ISBN 9788889854457 Baccio Bandinelli ISBN 9788889854631

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Everyone wakes up when the sun rises and everyone goes to bed when the sun goes down at the end of the day, well , nearly everyone... Howie, a wolf cub, is always the last to wake up, he dozes through school lessons and he is always looking to find a cozy place for a little nap. But when the sun sets he has trouble getting to sleep... and drives his family and all the animals of the forest crazy. Read this charming story to find out why, and see what tricks his dad will use to make him sleep.

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In 1542 Pope Paolo III Farnese, with the approval of Michelangelo, commissioned to Perino del Vaga (1501–1547) a tapestry basement for the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (Vatican). The Spalliera was never completed, but its model, painted on canvas, was later acquired by cardinal Bernardino Spada to be placed in his roman palace (now Galleria Spada), where it was used in radically different fashion as a frieze, completed with parts by other artists. The book is the first in-depth study of this work and of its significance in Perino’s artistic career, marked by an intense dialogue with Michelangelo’s art. It also explores the importance attributed by Michelangelo to decoration, apparently antithetical to the heroic dimension for which he is celebrated The reception of the Spalliera by different artists is studied through a group of drawings deriving from it and lasting until the baroque age, as attested by Rubens.

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The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are the first to examine the union of contemporary jewellery and the photographic image, demonstrating how each of these mediums is informed and enlarged by an engagement with the other. The works included, both historical pieces and recent creations by over eighty international art jewellers, suggest the richness of this encounter and the artistic strength embodied in this dynamic combination of object and image. The examples selected for the exhibition and catalogue traverse a remarkably wide range, from traditional and even sentimental formats (such as the locket) to entirely new formats. Drawing upon the abundance of imagery available today, from vintage daguerreotypes to analog and digital photographs, X-rays, and Internet jpegs, the artists whose work was selected for Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography express a stimulating range of ideas realised with a great diversity of materials and innovative jewellery-making approaches.

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Dutch landscape painter of the late 18th century, Barend Hendrik Thier has been almost completely forgotten. A recent discovery, the attribution of twelve still intact sketchbooks, has brought him back into the limelight, making him – by far – the 18th century Dutch artist for whom we have the greatest number of sketchbook. This fortunate discovery reveals a completely new side to his work, a more intimate and spontaneous approach to nature than his finished drawings for the market, and this sketchbook formerly in the Rothschild collection is perhaps the finest testimony to his art as a landscape painter, distinguished by his ability to capture and render the variations of light in the Dutch countryside. The 70 pages of the carnet in portrait format are also used horizontally, in double pages, to depict mainly the surroundings of Leiden, but there are also sketches of birds and natural landscapes. Text in French.

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Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634–1705) was one of Italy’s most celebrated Baroque painters when he travelled to Florence, where his art was already appreciated and collected. He received many commissions, but certainly the most prestigious was that for the decoration of the vault of the new wing of Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the ancient house of Lorenzo the Magnificent which was then owned by the Marquis Francesco Riccardi. The Riccardi family was strictly connected to the Medicis and the decorative program of the great hall, known as Gallery of Mirrors, was centred upon the Apotheosis of the Medicis and several mythological scenes which illustrate the progress of humanity. The exhibition and its catalogue document this masterpiece through the ten painted sketches by Giordano (exhibited under the very frescoes) and circa 30 other paintings from his Florentine period (1682–1685) by the aptly named Luca “fa presto” (fare presto = to be fast).

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The identical reproduction of the Meuricoffre album, acquired by the Louvre in 2018, is a good opportunity to leaf through one of the only two portrait books attributed to the French painter Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835). It is a testimony to Gros' activity as a portrait painter during his stay in Italy (1793-1800) and illustrates the privileged relationship that the painter had in Genoa with the family of the Franco-Swiss banker Jean-Georges Meuricoffre. The beautiful gallery of portraits, drawn in the intimacy of this family, restores the physiognomies of representatives of Franco-Swiss high society who were in contact with the Meuricoffre family at the time and, through them, with Gros. The study that accompanies the publication of the notebook reveals the hitherto unknown identity of these characters. A material description of the album, an essential scientific support for its understanding, completes the subject. Text in French.

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November 19, 1479: a dynastic alliance, two noble scions, a regal wedding, short-lived and with an unhappy ending. These pages reconstruct the story of the magnificent bas relief in the Acton Collection (Villa La Pietra, Florence), commissioned to celebrate the marriage between Antonio Basso Della Rovere, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, and Caterina Marzano d'Aragona, the niece of King Ferdinand I of Naples. The heraldic symbols of the three coats of arms leave no doubt about the identities of the characters and events surrounding its creation, and lead us to the original location of the work, born as the overdoor to the main portal of the Basso Della Rovere Palace in piazza della Maddalena in Savona. Through close examination of the Della Rovere in Rome, this study highlights some previously unknown facts about the family's origins and returns to Savona and its role as a political, cultural, and artistic protagonist in late 15th-century Italy.

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The masi are the equivalent of farms in the Alpine area of the Dolomites (Sudtirol/Alto Adige in northern Italy). Val Gardena, one of the valleys of Sudtirol, houses a great number of masi, some dating back to the thirteenth century. The historical importance of these farms resides in the richness and variety of their building techniques and the sheer beauty of their vernacular architecture perfectly integrated in the stunning landscape of the Dolomites. Recent socio-economic development and the difficulty to adapt the older masi to modern needs has endangered them. A movement to map and preserve these precious witnesses of the material culture of Val Gardena is taking place. Photographing and exhibiting the images of these buildings - shedding light on their cultural role, forms and the architectural elements - in the mountain villages and later in the Architecture Departments of universities in Italy and surrounding countries (Austria, Germany) is a way to increase awareness on the importance of preserving this distinctive vernacular architecture. Text in Ladin, German, Italian with short abstracts in English.

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In 1778 Pierre Henri De Valenciennes, a young landscape painter from Toulouse, found himself in Rome with many other foreign artists intent on studying not only the ancient monuments and the works of the modern masters, but also to encounter Italy's light and landscape. Contrary to most of his companions, Valenciennes rarely copied ancient or modern works of art, but instead he chose to sketch views of Rome, 'a mix of antique and of modern, an assemblage of irregularity and symmetry'. The 96 pages of the sketchbook, reproduced in their actual size and accompanied by a commentary, guide us through Rome, from the river port of Ripa Grande to the basilica of St. John Lateran, from the Ponte Salario bridge to the Vatican, from Piazza Barberini to the Villa Borghese and along the banks of the river Tiber. An advocate of en plein air painting, Valenciennes' sketches use two or three tints of the same colour to trace the landscape of an ideal Rome, and to achieve this goal he did not hesitate to modify or move the surrounding architecture. Contents: Preface by Xavier Salmon, Director of the Prints and Drawings Department of the Louvre; Introduction; Travel to Italy and meeting with artists; Valenciennes' Italian Sketchbooks; Description of the organisation of Sketchbook RF 12966; Material Description; Provenance; List of Exhibitions, Bibliography. Text in French.

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This catalogue presents masterpieces of calligraphy, painting, sculpture, ceramics, lacquers, and textiles from two of America's greatest Japanese art collections, which are featured in a landmark exhibition at the Asia Society in New York, from February to April, 2020. Impermanence is a pervasive subject in Japanese philosophy and art, and recognising the role of ephemerality is key to appreciating much of Japan's artistic production. The dazzling range of art and objects in this beautifully photographed exhibition catalogue show the broad, yet nuanced, ways that the notion of the ephemeral manifests itself in the arts of Japan throughout history. Insightful contributions from noted scholars explore the aesthetics of impermanence in religion, literature, artefacts, the tea ceremony, and popular culture in objects dating from the late Jomon period (ca. 1000-300 B.C.E.) to the 20th century. Contents: The Art of the Ephemeral; Works in the Exhibition: I. Retrieving Lost Worlds; II. Buddhism: Perpetual Impermanence; III. Tea: Choreographed Ephemerality; IV. Transforming Impermanence into Art. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Asia Society Museum, New York, between 11 February and 26 April 2020.

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Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (Paris, 1724-1780) was never seen without a pencil in his hand, intent in sketching all that appeared in front of his eyes. His Livre de Croquis (sketchbook )is a veritable chronicle of Parisian life in the 18th century. Compiled between 1760 and 1778 it contains views of the streets and monuments of the ville lumière, scenes at the theatre or of a grand ball, portraits of young workers writing, sewing or playing an instrument. Saint-Aubin''s minute annotations are deciphered and explained in the commentary volume. The sketchbook, acquired from the heirs of Saint-Aubin, was guarded jealously in a private collection - and was, therefore, almost unknown - until 1941 when it was acquired by the Louvre. It has never before been reproduced in its entirety. Contents: Vol. 1: Reproduction (same size) of the Louvre''s album containing the drawings; Vol. 2, Commentary: Introduction: Across Paris accompanied by Gabriel de Saint-Au

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In 1964, inspired by both art history and by imagery found on printed postcards, Lichtenstein began to explore the genre of seascape, using both paint, plastic, enamel, drawings, collage, print and even film to realize his various works. Guild Hall will host an extraordinary gathering of these work beginning with his Pop-inspired explorations of setting suns along with a recreation of his since destroyed Super Sunset billboard commission (1967). Other works in the show will include his experimental optical collages and films from the mid to late 1960s to his gently calibrated brushstroke water views in paintings and prints of the 1980s culminating with his 1990s water lily series in homage to the Nympheas of Claude Monet. The publication will also include an interview between Avis Berman and Lichtenstein s assistant, James de Pasquale on his recollections of working with the artist in the 1970s on his landscapes in his studio in Southampton, New York. The catalogue will feature a biography and chronology with rarely seen photographs of the artist at work in his various studios.

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All Aboard with Johanna! begins by inviting young readers into the fantastical world of creating books by showing a black and white sketch of the artist's work table as she faces the blank page. The reader can then follow the interaction between the fictional character, the little pig Johanna, and the artist. A train and its numerous passengers become the setting for this beautifully illustrated narrative. As the story unfolds, Johanna has many requests to make to her creator: from her clothing (that she would prefer to be stripey), to catching up with another train to see who could possibly be inside it. By the end of this delightful story where the author even teases Joanna - drawing a a big bad wolf and a huge monster! - Johanna is finally content when she gets the right companion to spend the rest of the trip with.

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The catalogue of the first exhibition ever dedicated exclusively to Meroe, the legendary capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush (the land of the black pharaohs of the XXV dynasty) and famous for its necropolis of pyramids. This enigmatic and majestic civilisation flourished between 270 BC and 350 AD. A cultural heir of Egypt and its pharaohs, Meroe's empire developed in what is now Sudan, on the shores of the Nile. It was well connected to the commercial networks of the Eastern Mediterranean sea. Its religious pantheon, its political and cultural system, the writing, the cities and its art remind us of the richness of this African civilisation. Over 200 objects are illustrated in the catalogue: sculptures, ceramics, jewels, reliefs, etc. The texts are written by scholars and supply the most updated knowledge - enhanced by recent archaeological excavations carried out by the Louvre - on this fascinating Kingdom.

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Giovanni Battista Franco (before 1510 - 1561) was an Italian mannerist painter, draughtsman and engraver. Native of Venice, he spent the first part of his career in Rome, but by 1536 had settled in Florence. Back in Rome by 1542, he painted a fresco of the Capture of Saint John the Baptist for the Oratorio di San Giovanni Decollato. In 1545 he was summoned by Duke Guidobaldo II to Urbino, where he painted frescoes in the Duomo (destroyed). The last ten years of his career were spent in Venice, where among his significant works are a Baptism of Christ for San Francesco della Vigna and the ceiling decoration of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the Biblioteca Marciana. Franco is better known as a draughtsman and recent scholars such as A. E. Popham found much to praise in 'Franco's extraordinary skill, with his rather scratchy but effective line, and his combination of Michelangelesque and Raphaelesque forms.' Among his drawings there are numerous studies of antique subjects taken from Roman sarcophagi. Text in French.

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Santa Maria Assunta in Cremona, among the great Romanesque cathedrals of the Po Valley in northern Italy, is not only one of the most renowned for its artwork, but also one in which the slow stratification of time is most evident. The names of the greatest masters, in the first person or in the medieval sense of workshop, follow one another in quick succession: Wiligelmo, Antelami, the excellent Marco Romano, the Campionesi, enrich the façade with grandiose and superb sculptures, aristocratic and earthy. In the interior, the cycle of frescoes in the main nave with the Stories from the Life of the Virgin and Christ shows, as nowhere else, the symptoms of the pressing renewal taking place in early 16th century Italian painting, from the faultless classicism of Boccaccio Boccaccino to the eccentric Altobello Melone and Gianfrancesco Bembo, the Brescian Romanino and the Friulian Pordenone, who is given the grand finale with the resounding Crucifixion on the counter façade. Alon

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Frédéric Zaavy's brilliant career as a master jeweller shone like a meteor but flamed out far too soon. Zaavy considered himself heir to the legacy of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, gem dealer to Louis XIV, and was chosen as the exclusive jeweller for the 21st century revival of Fabergé. Zaavy's artistic genius lay in painting with precious stones and in engineering remarkable settings to hold those stones almost invisibly. His works achieved a preëminence in the thousand-year evolution of French jewellery. The influences on his life and work were myriad. Nature, quantum physics, art, music, spirituality, poetry, literature, and even science fiction all shaped his extraordinary world view and taste. He was a philosopher jeweller. Stardust encapsulates the last year of his life, from the moment he learned he would soon die, right through to the end, with his life still at full throttle. With a text by acclaimed French philosophical writer Gilles Hertzog and a stunning visual narrative by celebrated photographers John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler, Zaavy's work and life are presented in a portrait of what was and of what might have been. Text in English and Simplified Chinese.

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Everett Fahy’s writings are of fundamental importance to the study of Tuscan Renaissance painting from the late 14th to the 16th century. An endeavour that lasted 50 years, starting with his 1965 essay on Piero di Cosimo and ending with his contributions for the 2015 Florentine exhibition on the same artist. In between Fahy wrote on some of the most acclaimed and loved artists (from Beato Angelico to Botticelli, from Ghirlandaio to the young Michelangelo), but also on lesser known masters such as Lorenzo di Nicolò, Spinello Aretino, the Master of the Campana panels, the Master of the Fiesole Adoration of the Magi, etc., and through his pioneering studies rediscovered minor artistic schools, such as the Lucca school. Fahy reconstruction of Fra Bartolomeo’s early career is considered a classic of art historiography. The selected texts (vol. 1) are arranged in the order of appearance, while the plates (vol. 2), following chronological order, make up an atlas of two centuries of Tuscan painting. With texts in English (36), French (1), and Italian (10).

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From the late 15th to the mid-16th century, an impressive corpus of architecture, sculpture, and painting was created to embellish monastic sites affiliated with the Benedictine Cassinese Congregation of Italy. A religious order of humanistically trained monks, the Cassinese engaged with the most eminent artists and architects of the early modern period, supporting the production of imagery and architecture that was often highly experimental in nature: from Raphael's Sistine Madonna in Piacenza to Andrea Riccio's Moses/Zeus Ammon, from Andrea Palladio's church of San Giorgio Maggiore (Venice) to the superbly crafted choirstalls of San Severino and Sossio (Naples). Applying a network framework to the congregation's infrastructure of monasteries makes clear that the circulation of sophisticated Renaissance art and architecture constituted only a segment of the monks' investment in the arts. Monks also served as custodians of an antique monumental heritage and popular votive images, assuring the survival of ancient buildings and artifacts of limited aesthetic value that supplied opportunities for early modern masters to confront an array of artworks for the reinvention of reformed Christian art and architecture. Text in English, Italian and German.

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Hell has been embodied and portrayed in terrifying, bizarre, and occasionally humorous incarnations across religions and cultures for millennia. Whether considered as places of eternal or finite punishment, underworlds provide a rich setting for a potent cast of characters that have caught the imaginations of artists and patrons who have shaped the visual cultures of Asia’s systems of belief, particularly Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam. Through masterpieces from West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the diaspora, paired with essays from renowned scholars, this publication explores both differences and similarities in conceptions of the afterlife and artistic practices from religion to religion and culture to culture. This journey through judgment, punishment, and even the pro-mise of salvation sheds light on the fundamental questions of life, death, and existence.

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Niu Guozheng hails from Henan, a province of inland China. Employed in the law enforcement agency of the Pingdingshan prefecture, whose economy is largely based on mining - an activity he has portrayed in two distinct photographic series - Niu witnessed situations that his own sense of justice considered as unjustifiable. He documented living conditions in centres for custody and interrogation (in Chinese 'shoushensuo'), thinking that the treatment of the prisoners was not worthy of his country's ethics. His activity as a camera-carrying policeman, accepted or tolerated by his colleagues and by the inmates, was motivated by his belief that only knowledge of facts can bring about the solution of problems. The centres for custody and interrogation were shut in 1997 thanks to a reform of the criminal justice process. Exhibited at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing for a short time, Niu Guozheng's reportage has not been published to date. His images, stark and disturbing in some cases, tenderly poetic in others, characterise an eye that merges the documentary intent with a very strong aesthetic sensibility which reminds us of the classic masters of photography. Text in English, Chinese, and Italian.

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The remarkable career of the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is largely due to an extraordinary moment of prosperity in the Veneto mainland, both in the city and in the countryside: a boom due in large measure to a little-studied revolution in manufacturing. This book brings to light for the first time the architecture of these early industries, especially the production of textiles (wool, silk), mining and metalworking, paper manufacture, ceramics, sawmilling and leather-tanning. The huge surge in patent applications to the Venetian Senate in the period highlights the parallel technological improvements in both efficiency and quality. Former proto-industrial buildings across the Veneto, studied at first-hand, reveal the efficiency of hydraulic power and smooth-running mechanical processes. Water-power, a clean, renewable energy source, and structures made of natural, traditional materials, have much to teach today’s civilisation.

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Nicknamed ''the French Borromini'', Gilles Marie Oppenord (1672-1742) was born in Paris, the son of a royal cabinet maker. He was a royal pensioneer at the Academie de France in Rome. There he devoted much of his studies to Mannerist and Baroque architecture and ornament and the Louvre''s carnet (acquired in 1972) is a testament to this period of intense study. Only three sketchbooks of this period survive. When he returned to Paris he was trained as an architect by Jules-Hardouin Mansart and he soon became the architect of Philippe II Duke of Orleans, later Regent of France, for whom he decorated and designed the interiors of the Palais Royal. For the reception of the King in 1723, he was entrusted with the restoration and decoration of the Château de Villers Cotterets. Oppenord also carried out important church commissions, among them the completion of the church of Saint Sulpice in Paris. A talented draughtsman, he published two books of his engraved designs. Text in French.

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500 years ago in Venice, the first ghetto was born. It was the first of many 'Jewish enclosures' ordained by political powers, such as the Venetian senate. A place to confine, it soon became an important cosmopolitan and commercial centre of the Republic. The architectural structure of its housing, which became extraordinarily high to accommodate the increasing number of inhabitants, is strictly interlaced with Venetian history, economy and culture. As one of the main Jewish centres in Italy and the Mediterranean, Venice played a crucial role in the Jewish world. The Venetian word 'geto' (from 'gettare', to throw away) originated from the sector of Venice where scrap metal accumulated from foundries. This was the area assigned to the Jews. Thus the word, over the course of time, has become a synonym for segregation. "Venice, the Jews, and Europe" exhibition runs in Venice until November 13 2016. Dontatella Calabi will be promoting his book at the 'Beyond the Ghetto' symposium in New York, hosted by the Center for Jewish History, on 18-19 September 2016.

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Giovanni Morelli changed the way we look at art. Before Morelli (1816-1891), the attribution of a painting to a particular artist or school was often based on overall impression, hearsay, even gut feeling. But Morelli, having trained as a medical doctor to look closely at anatomical detail, applied scientific rigor to understanding the works of masters such as Titian, Leonardo, and Raphael, and of other Renaissance and Baroque painters. By closely scrutinising, analysing and comparing details overlooked by most other collectors, critics, and curators, his radical 'Morellian method' became the basis of modern art connoisseurship. A proud Italian of Swiss Protestant heritage, Morelli was also a staunch patriot. He risked his life in the Italian Wars of Independence, and was elected four times to the parliament of the newly unified nation. In 1873 he was nominated senator for life. As a statesman he fought for his homeland's cultural patrimony: at a time when many of Italy's great art collections were being snapped up by foreign collectors and museums, he introduced some of the world's first legislation to prevent their loss to the nation. The Life of Giovanni Morelli in Risorgimento Italy is the first full biography of this important figure, including his romantic friendships with remarkable women such as Clementina Frizzoni, Laura Acton Minghetti (wife of the Italian prime minister), and Princess Victoria (daughter of Queen Victoria and subsequently empress of Germany). At his death he bequeathed his art collection to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the birthplace of his mother, a city he loved.

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Giotto (c.1267-1337) is the foremost renovator of Western painting after classical Antiquity. The Tuscan artist was celebrated by his contemporaries, including Dante, and is universally considered one of the greatest artists of all times. The three Louvre altarpieces are the starting point of the exhibit: the large St. Francis receiving the stigmata, a signed work from Giotto's early years and originally in Pisa, the momumental painted cross, often overlooked because of conservation problems but newly restored, and the noteworthy Crucifixion, key to understand the activity of Giotto and his workshop in Naples around 1330. The latter work had profound iconographic and stylistic influence in France due to the close links between Naple's sovereigns of the time, the Anjou, and their French cousins. Additional works from French and foreign collections - including drawings, manuscripts and panel paintings - will help shed light on Giotto, his workshop and the liturgical role of his altarpieces. Text in French. Contents: Introduction by Dominque Thiébaut; Giotto and the Franciscans by Donald Cooper; Giotto's revolution through the development of new painted crosses and altarpieces by Andrea De Marchi; Catalogue: I. Early career by Dominque Thiébaut; II. Maturity 1300-1335; Padua 1303-1305 by Dominque Thiébaut; Early echoes of Giotto in Florence by Dominque Thiébaut; The years 1315-1325 by Dominque Thiébaut; III. Giotto and his workshop in Naples (1328-1332) by Dominque Thiébaut; Appendix by Elisabeth Ravaud; Bibliography.

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From medieval manuscript to Japanese prints, from Steinlen's splendid drawings to 17th century prints, the author introduces the reader to the hundreds of books and manuscripts (belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris) in which the lovely feline is represented. The cat has been the main character of many tales, but also the inhabitant of the most diverse books: from natural histories to household manuals, from medieval prayer books to famous writers' manuscripts. A wonderful selection for all who love cats and books! Contents: Preface by Pierre Rosenberg Chapter I, A History of the Cat Chapter II, Tales of Cats Chapter III, What a Lovely Cat! Chapter IV, Cats and the Feminine Chapter V, The Cat as a Muse

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Martha Bibescu (Bucharest, 1886 - Paris, 1973) was one of the greatest and most representative protagonists of the extraordinary world of the Belle Époque, of which Paris, which became her adopted city, was the capital. Linked to the most important political and intellectual personalities of the time, from the kings of Romania to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, from Charles de Gaulle to Winston Churchill and Marcel Proust, Martha intertwined her life with that of the sculptor and architect Domenico Rupolo (Caneva, 1861-1945), the creator of the radical modernisation, lasting almost twenty-five years, of the Bibescu palace in Mogo?oaia. To crown the profound association that bound him to Martha, Rupolo executed the hitherto unpublished marble portrait of her in 1933, on which this volume focuses. This face emerging enigmatically from the marble, a paradigm of the art and culture of an entire era, is a remarkable and unexpected addition to the portraiture of one of the most popular women

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"This exhibition and its substantial catalogue, comprising ten essays in addition to the entries for the works on display, represent an almost heroic attempt to embrace this multifaceted topic in its rich complexity." — The Burlington Magazine During the 16th and 17th century, the discussion on the durability of artworks had become part of the debate on comparison of the arts, opposing the merits of sculpture to those of painting. The sculptors used coloured marbles and painters paint on stone (slate, lapis lazuli, paesina stone, etc.), while metals and precious woods contribute to the creation of extraordinary objects, such as small altars, cabinets, and clocks, with complex architectural shapes and adorned with sculptures, reliefs and paintings. Painting on stone was particularly popular in Rome: the technique, developed by Sebastiano del Piombo, was used to paint large altarpieces but also for smaller works, avidly collected by contemporary patrons, among whom Scipione Borghese stands out. The painting exploited the natural features of the stones for backgrounds, buildings, skies and the result were amazing objects appreciated for their preciousness.

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The charming painter of Endymion's Sleep, Atala's Funeral and Chateaubriand's Portrait was also a poet. Thanks to his classical education, Girodet (1767-1824) was the author of free translations of ancient Greek and Latin poets. In 1808 he tried the to imitate and at the same time illustrate the Odes of Anacreon, whose edition was published posthumously. The Musée du Louvre holds the precious manuscript of this intense and complex work, in which the poetic research and graphic invention — compositions or vignettes — intertwine with the text. Only a facsimile could restore this organic whole in its integrity. This book reconstructs the history of the manuscript, the various stages of the project and the posthumous versions, and analyses the artist's aesthetic sources. Girodet's handwriting is sometimes difficult to decode, but the complete transcription allows the reader to appreciate all the refinements and to rediscover the charm of Anacreontic poetry. Text in French.

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This exhibition, being held at the musée du Louvre in Paris, and its catalogue follow those dedicated to Florentine sculpture in the early Renaissance, 1400-1460, that took place in 2013-14 (Le Printemps de la Renaissance). The period scrutinised is 1460-1520 but the geographical coordinates are widened to include Northern Italy (Venice, Milan, Pavia, Padua, Bologna) and Rome as the artistic landscape of Italy becomes more complex. Some of the great sculptors, in fact, travelled and their style and their ideas influenced pre-existing local tradition. These new artistic languages share a common characteristic: the relationship to Greco-Roman Antiquity, especially in the representation of grace and passion: the expression of pathos and the theatrical quality of religious works, the symbolic richness of profane works and finally the development of a new and refined style which will find its highest expression in Roman classicism and in the work of Michelangelo. The catalogue includes the works of, among others, Donatello, Antonio Pollaiolo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Giovanfrancesco Rustici, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Guido Mazzoni, Bartolomeo Bellano, Cristoforo Solari, Tullio Lombardo, Andrea Riccio, and Bambaia, Sansovino, and Michelangelo. Text in Italian.

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"In this radiant biography, the painter Anne Eisner springs to life as a figure of formidable originality... Christie McDonald’s heroic, feminist work restores Eisner as artist and as a key anthropological observer of her time." - Rosanna Warren, author of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters. This biography traces Anne Eisner's life and art between cultures: from her early years and artistic career in New York, through living at the edge of the Ituri Forest in the ex-Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), to her return to New York. Eisner came of age in the 1930s and 1940s, with the struggle among artists and intellectuals to combat fascism and create a better world. Leaving behind a successful career as a painter, Anne followed anthropologist Patrick Putnam, with whom she fell in love, to the multi-cultural community of Epulu. As an American woman and painter, her focus on cultural and aesthetic values, her belief in freedom and equality, brought an eccentric perspective to the colonial context. Unanticipated challenges forced her to think about who she was, as she agreed to marry under unfamiliar conditions, became one of the mothers, hosted researchers and tourists, and attempted to care for Putnam in his tragic decline. That her art sustained her throughout as a discipline (sketching, drawing, painting) reveals to what extent Anne was able to express joy in creativity; the beauty of her art testifies to its transformative power.

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Luigi Valadier, son of the French-born Andrea, obtained his silversmith license in 1760 and became one of the most celebrated artists in Europe, working for the noble families of Rome (Borghese, Odescalchi, Chigi, Orsini), cardinals and popes and a broad international clientele which included the Duke of Northumberland, Madame du Barry, the Balì of Malta, Jacques-Laure Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the King of Sweden, Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, the Count of the North, heir to the Russian throne, etc. His workshop situated near Piazza di Spagna employed dozens of craftsmen and produced not only silverware but also bronze statues, often copies of ancient sculptures, magnificent clocks, vases in precious marbles, lamps, huge candelabras, furniture, desers, reliquaries and liturgical vessels, and much more. In 1785 while completing commissions for the Borghese prince and working on the cast of the enormous bell of St Peter's, he committed suicide by drowning in the Tiber river, possibly due to the severe economic challenges from which his extraordinary workshop was suffering.

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Angry, outrageous, defiant, and courageous are some of the words that describe the American Abstract Expressionist artist Lee Krasner (1908-1984) - the subject of this very personal memoir inspired by Ruth Appelhof's 1974 summer with her in East Hampton, Long Island. Best remembered by many as Jackson Pollock's widow, she is regarded more by 'art-world insiders' as the producer of a major body of work that influenced the evolution of contemporary art - in particular, that made by women in the 20th and 21st centuries. As a scholar and a friend, Appelhof re-examines Krasner's contributions in light of the intellectual and emotional experiences that she so candidly shared with her in weeks of interviews. In addition, Appelhof explores Lee Krasner's relationships with others - friends, art-world luminaries, artists, and other 'summer sitters' allowed into her private sanctuary - through interviews. Those recollections will offer a window into the artist's intense and idiosyncratic personal life as well as into her contributions through the groundbreaking work she produced over the course of more than six decades. Contents: Prefaces by Helen Harrison, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and Barbara Rose, Art Historian and Critic; Chapter 1: Driving Ms. Krasner; Chapter 2: The Tapes: Fact or Fiction; Chapter 3: Cards on the Table; Chapter 4: Swing of the Pendulum; Chapter 5: Summer Sitters; Chapter 6: In Spite of Herself. Published to accompany the Lee Krasner Retrospective at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, fromThursday 30 May-Sunday 1 September 2019, and at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, from Thursday 10 October 2019-Sunday 12 January 2020, and at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, from Friday 7 February-Sunday 10 May 2020, and at the Guggenheim Bilbao, from Friday 29 May-Sunday 6 September 2020.

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Raphael arrived in Rome in 1508 and remained there until his death in 1520, working as painter and architect for popes Julius II and Leo X and for the most prestigious patrons. Here the artist changed his painting style several times, looking at the works of Michelangelo, Sebastiano del Piombo and the vast repertoire of ancient painting and sculpture. In the Eternal City Raphael practised architecture for the first time, designing buildings that reflected the models of Antiquity such as the Pantheon, the descriptions deriving from written sources such as Vitruvius' treaty on architecture, and the examples of modern architects like Donato Bramante. This guide supplies essential and up to date information on all the civil or religious buildings designed or built by Raphael in Rome, and the frescoes and paintings, housed in churches or museums, whether executed in the city or arrived there at a later stage.

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Assembly of the Exalted presents some 50 pieces from the remarkable collection of Alice S. Kandell. The works, dating from the late 13th century to the early 20th, include great masterpieces and emblematic examples of Tibetan Buddhist art. They are all presented here as the constituents of a Tibetan Buddhist shrine. Shrines, both modest and grand, are the primary sites of Tibetan Buddhist practice, whether it be reciting scriptures, performing rituals, saying prayers, or engaging in meditation. The introductory essays thus focus on the Tibetan Buddhist shrine, describing its evolution over the history of Buddhism, its special role in Tibet, and how the pieces in the Kandell Collection came to be assembled and displayed in shrines at institutions across America. Illustrated with vivid photography, forty short essays, each centered on a single work or set of objects, describe the pieces in terms of their importance for the practice of Buddhism, highlighting the many essential functions of Tibetan Buddhist art within the space of a shrine.

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This stunning book documents a collection of 66 extraordinary pieces of petrified wood, mainly from Western United States (Arizona, Oregon, Washington). Specially photographed they are shown in their entirety and in magnificent details. Petrified wood is formed from fallen trees that in the absence of oxygen and microbes, and with water containing minerals, through a replacement process called permineralization, slowly transform into visually spectacular fossils. But Nature often uses a paintbrush in its preservation magic, splashing the wooden canvas with an array of colours and hues before fixing it in a matrix of hard durable quartz, thereby creating splendid works of art. Petrified wood has been found throughout the world, but actual petrified forests are truly noteworthy in the United States, the most famous being the Chinle Formation forest of Arizona.

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Since Antiquity humanity has masked itself. The mask hides the face, but this very act reveals the presence of a double. The mask gives birth to mystery: it belongs, at the same time, to the sacred and the profane, to truth and vanity, to reality and fiction. This exhibition catalogue presents a vast array of works of art: from the mask of Dyonisus (5th century BC) to Man Ray's photos, but also Mantegna's and Callot's etchings, the watercolours for Louis XIV's court theatre, the death masks of the Italian and French Renaissance, the Mannerist Gorgon heads sculpted on the parade shields to imitate the petrifying head of the Gorgon on Athena's shield. The catalogue examines the religious role of the mask in Greek theatre, its expressive, playful and at times diabolical force in feasts, balls and the Italian Commedia, its role in funerary contexts (death mask) and its apotropaic function in burials. It also investigates its uses as ornamental element (large, grotesque masks).

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Baccio Bandinelli (Florence, 1493-1560) was one of the sculptors that worked for the house of Medici during the first half of the XVI century. A pupil of Giovan Francesco Rustici, he was strongly influenced by Michelangelo. One of his main works, Hercules and Cacus, is visible in the Piazza della Signoria and seen by millions of tourists each year. He also worked in Rome where he had been called by pope Clement VII. But, while his talent for sculpture was put in doubt by critics and rivals (Benvenuto Cellini, for instance), Bandinelli''s extraordinary drawing skills were universally appreciated - Vasari declared him unrivalled in this domain. Over two hundred drawings held in the Louvre are analysed in this scholarly publication: they include autograph drawings, those by his workshop and those rejected. Text in French.

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In 1922, Léon Bonnat bequeathed to the Louvre a wonderful album of almost forty drawings by one of the most famous painters of the Florentine Renaissance: Baccio della Porta, known as Fra Bartolommeo (1469-1517). The collection traces the career of the artist, who trained in Florence around 1485 with Cosimo Rosselli, but above all in the shadow of the most brilliant workshop of the period, that of Andrea del Verrocchio. Sensitive to the prodigious innovations coming out of this extraordinary environment, which had produced such geniuses as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Leonardo da Vinci in the previous decade, Baccio, as he was then known, studied above all with Lorenzo di Credi, to whom Verrocchio had entrusted the running of the workshop when he left Florence for Venice. Baccio also closely followed all the great Florentine painters of the last decade of the fifteenth century, in particular the works of foreigners who had been in Florence for several years, especially Pietro Perugin

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The Galleria Borghese brings together an extraordinary collection of ancient and modern sculpture within a beautifully decorated villa. This volume, dedicated to modern sculpture (Late Renaissance to Baroque to Neoclassical), marks the start of a new general catalogue of the collection. The introduction narrates the history of the collection, from its creation by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 17th century to its sale to the Italian Republic at the end of the 19th century. The entries are full of chronological details, new attributions, information on restorations and account for the different historical settings thanks to an accurate study of the inventory records of the villa. They include world-famous masterpieces by Algardi, Bernini and Canova among others. The sale to Napoleon of many of its Antique works of art (now in the Louvre) was key to the Borghese's commission works of ancient inspiration, the analysis of which animates the pages of another section, based on the concepts of copy and remake. The catalogue closes with a section on restoration, that gives an account of the fundamental role of 16- to 18th-century sculptors in the maintenance and transformation of the archaeological collection in relation to the villa's display requirements. Text in Italian.

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Canvas as a pictorial support was only reluctantly adopted in Rome and even in the 17th century it was not universally employed. From 1530 until the first decade of the 17th century many altarpieces in Rome were instead painted on stone, especially on slate. The invention of the technique is due to Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547) who employed it in his monumental Nativity of the Virgin for the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. This book presents a selection of the most significant stone altarpieces in Rome: San Marcello al Corso (Federico Zuccari), S. Maria della Vallicella (Rubens), S. Caterina dei Funari (Girolamo Muziano), San Silvestro al Quirinale (Scipione Pulzone), Santa Maria della Pace (Lavinia Fontana), Santa Maria Maggiore (Girolamo Siciolante) are among the churches included in this guide.

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The French city of Limoges was world famous for the production of champlevé enamels during the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance a revival of Limoges enamels took place, but the technique employed was that of painted enamel. Triptychs with a sacred subject, conceived as a painting but shining like jewellery and built with durable materials, became popular. The three works held at the Bargello National Museum in Florence are attributable to Nardon Pénicaud (1470–1542), a primary artist with an active workshop. The three enamel paintings came from the famous collection of Louis Carrand, a Lyon antiquarian, who donated them to the Bargello in the 19th century. Their story is told in Ilaria Ciseri’s essay. Paola Venturelli analyses the historical and artistic aspects of the works and places them in the context of contemporary enamel production. The final contributions from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure address the conservation of the three delicate enamels and analyses materials and pigments.

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