Search results for ""author rembrandt""

Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe discusses the cultural and artistic interaction between the Byzantine east and western Europe, from the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 to the flourishing of post-Byzantine artistic workshops on Venetian Crete during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the formation of icon collections in Renaissance Italy. The contributors examine the routes by which artistic interaction may have taken place, and explore the reception of Byzantine art in western Europe, analysing why artists and patrons were interested in ideas from the other side of the cultural and religious divide. In the first chapter, Lyn Rodley outlines the development of Byzantine art in the Palaiologan era and its relations with western culture. Hans Bloemsma then re-assesses the influence of Byzantine art on early Italian painting from the point of view of changing demands regarding religious images in Italy. In the first of two chapters on Venetian Crete, Angeliki Lymberopoulou evaluates the impact of the Venetian presence on the production of fresco decorations in regional Byzantine churches on the island. The next chapter, by Diana Newall, continues the exploration of Cretan art manufactured under the Venetians, shifting the focus to the bi-cultural society of the Cretan capital Candia and the rise of the post-Byzantine icon. Kim Woods then addresses the reception of Byzantine icons in western Europe in the late Middle Ages and their role as devotional objects in the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, Rembrandt Duits examines the status of Byzantine icons as collectors’ items in early Renaissance Italy. The inventories of the Medici family and other collectors reveal an appreciation for icons among Italian patrons, which suggests that received notions of Renaissance tastes may be in need of revision. The book thus offers new perspectives and insights and re-positions late and post-Byzantine art in a broader European cultural context.

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Silk fabrics woven with gold thread, predominantly produced in Italy, were depicted frequently in Renaissance painting, both in costumes and as backdrops for important figures. These painted textiles carried an economic and social significance that a contemporary audience would have recognised as part of the message conveyed by the picture. Gold brocade and Renaissance painting focuses on examples from Italy and the southern Netherlands , dating from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Setting aside traditional notions of the hierarchy of the major and minor arts, the book treats gold brocade and painting equally as exponents of the special segment of Renaissance material culture that was art. The fabrics rendered in painting reflected the tradition of actual weaving, but only to an extent, as many gold brocades were painted from imagination. Gold brocades were much more expensive than paintings; hence the two media functioned in different contexts. Gold brocade was an important element in the display of wealth and status at grand courts, while painting often formed the only affordable substitute for courtly splendour for the socially ambitious but less affluent urban upper-middle class. Their value and cultural role also meant that gold-brocaded textiles could be included in paintings both in praise of luxury and as a condemnation of it - sometimes in one and the same work. Gold brocade and Renaissance painting examines the skills artists developed for representing these lavish textiles. It uses a wide range of documents (from inventories and account books to letters, poems, educational treatises and sermons) to compare the economic value of gold brocade and painting, clarify the conditions of their use, and interpret the different messages given by brocades in different pictures. Primarily, however, the book deals with the distinction between fact and fiction, imagination and reality in the world shown in Renaissance paintings.

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A beautiful clothbound volume situating Rembrandt among the Dutch Golden Age’s most celebrated portraitists 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.

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Rembrandt Duits completed his PhD at the University of Utrecht , and works at the Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute, where he also teaches Renaissance material culture. His thesis, Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting, won the Karel van Mander Prijs for the best publication on art between 1500 and 1800. Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting discusses the representation of Italian Renaissance patterned silks in paintings from Italy and the Southern Netherlands , from the 14th to the 16th century. It is the first study to approach this subject from the perspective of material culture, attempting to answer such questions as why the subject of luxury textiles gained so great a popularity in Renaissance painting, how artists catered for an audience that desired to have gold brocades depicted but did not always possess the financial means to own the actual fabrics, and what the skills artists developed in this field contributed to the rising social status of the medium of painting. The material culture of the grand courts at which real gold brocade played an essential role in the display of wealth and status is compared to that of the socially ambitious but less affluent middle class for whom paintings were often the only affordable substitute for courtly splendour. Thus, the book also addresses the problem of the distinction between fact and fiction, imagination and reality in the account of contemporary social history presented in paintings.

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Though oil prices have been on a downward trajectory in recent months, that doesn't obscure the fact that fossil fuels are finite, and we will eventually have to grapple with the end of their dominance. At the same time, however, skepticism about the alternatives remains: we've never quite achieved the promised 'too cheap to meter' power of the future, be it nuclear, solar, or wind. And hydrogen and bio-based fuels are thus far a disappointment. So what does the future of energy look like? The Tesla Revolution has the answers. In clear, unsensational style, Willem Middelkoop and Rembrandt Koppelaar offer a layman's tour of the energy landscape, now and to come. They show how rapid technological advances in batteries and solar technologies are already driving large-scale transformations in power supply, while economic and geopolitical changes, combined with a growing political awareness that there are alternatives to fossil fuels will combine in the coming years to bring an energy revolution ever closer. Within in our lifetimes, the authors argue, we will see changes that will reshape economics, the balance of political power, and even the most mundane aspects of our daily lives. Determinedly forward-looking and optimistic, though never straying from hard facts, The Tesla Revolution paints a striking picture of our global energy future.

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