Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) lived and worked in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, where he created enigmatic paintings and drawings full of bizarre creatures, phantasmagoric monsters, and terrifying nightmares. He also depicted detailed landscapes and found inspiration in fundamental moral concepts: seduction, sin, and judgment. This beautiful book accompanies the largest exhibition ever held on Bosch's work, and will feature important new research on his 25 known paintings and 20 drawings. The book, divided into six sections, covers the entirety of the artist's career. It discusses in detail Bosch's Pilgrimage of Life, Bosch and the Life of Christ, his role as a draughtsman, his depictions of saints, and The Garden of Earthly Delights, among other topics, and is handsomely illustrated by new photography undertaken by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project Team.

Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St. Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities-a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1917 and Second World War history than with its recent past. In this beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly shows how creative engagement with the past has always been fundamental to St. Petersburg's residents. Weaving together oral history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts, journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now. Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city's glamorous center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and elusive place.

Denim is one of the world's favorite fabrics, and today it accounts for the largest segment of the clothing industry. The market for jeans alone is worth over 55 billion dollars. Experiments with denim by designers have helped to develop a vast vocabulary of denim styles beyond jeans that are now ingrained in fashion's lexicon. This handsome book explores the multifaceted history of denim and examines the continually evolving relationship between it and high fashion. Prized for its durability and strength, denim began as an ideal fabric for workwear, most famously in the clothing produced by Levi Strauss & Co. for fortune hunters during the 19th-century California gold rush. Over the past 160 years, however, film, television, and advertising have helped transform denim into a symbol of youth, rebellion, sex, and the ever-ephemeral quality of cool. The fashion industry has also played a large role in the expansion of denim into casual and couture clothing. The Denim Council, which formed in the U.S. in the 1950s, promoted denim to an ever-widening circle of customers through the framework of the fashion industry, most notably with presentations during New York fashion weeks. Featuring previously unpublished archival material from the Denim Council, an insightful text, and copious illustrations, this book offers a new perspective on denim's rapid rise from the 19th century to today.

In 1878, at age 25, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) arrived in the area of Belgium known as the Borinage to work as a Protestant evangelist in rural coal mining communities. He failed in that vocation, and after months of soul-searching, in August 1880, he decided to become an artist. This fascinating publication is the first to examine Van Gogh's time in the Borinage and his artistic development in the following years, when he created his first original works. Vivid essays tell the story of Van Gogh's life in the mining towns, and the effect this environment had on his way of thinking and seeing the world. Augmenting the text are excerpts from letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo from the Borinage, in which he describes his desire to sketch, and prints that he modeled after masterworks by artists such as Jean-Francois Millet. Other essays trace Van Gogh's development as an artist in subsequent years, including his move to Brussels to fully pursue life as an artist. Thought-provoking examinations of works that Van Gogh completed after leaving the Borinage demonstrate how motifs that he developed there-rustic dwellings, laborers, agriculture, nature-became themes that spanned his entire oeuvre.

The affinities between Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944) have long been noted, yet a formal comparative study of the two artists has never been made. Known for emotionally charged paintings, deeply personal and innovative styles, and dramatic lives of hardship, both Van Gogh and Munch fundamentally shaped the modern art movement in late-19th-century Europe. Munch: Van Gogh is the first publication to compare these two infamous and influential artists side by side, offering a groundbreaking critical examination of the parallels between their oeuvres and artistic ambitions. Gorgeously illustrated, the book offers a close examination of the artists' uses of color, stylization, brushwork, and unconventional compositions in both paintings and drawings. The authors also draw connections between Van Gogh's and Munch's evocative and poignant correspondence with family and friends, allowing readers to understand more profoundly the essence of their art.

This engrossing book chronicles one of the most exciting, controversial, and over-the-top periods in the history of fashion: the extravagant reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 18th-century France. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell offers a carefully researched glimpse into the turbulent era's sophisticated and largely female-dominated fashion industry, which produced courtly finery as well as promoting a thriving second hand clothing market outside the royal circle. She discusses in depth the exceptionally imaginative and uninhibited styles of the period immediately before the French Revolution, and also explores fashion's surprising influence on the course of the Revolution itself. The absorbing narrative demonstrates fashion's crucial role as a visible and versatile medium for social commentary, and shows the glittering surface of 18th-century high society as well as its seedy underbelly. Fashion Victims presents a compelling anthology of trends, manners and personalities from the era, accompanied by gorgeous fashion plates, portraits and photographs of rare surviving garments. Drawing upon documentary evidence, never-before-seen archival sources, and new information about aristocrats, politicians and celebrities, this book is an unmatched study of French fashion in the late 18th century, providing astonishing insight, a gripping story, and stylish inspiration.

Painting in Latin America, 1550-1820: From Conquest to Independence surveys the diverse styles, subjects, and iconography of painting in Latin America between the 16th and 19th centuries. While European art forms were widely disseminated, copied, and adapted throughout Latin America, colonial painting is not a derivative extension of Europe. The ongoing debate over what to call it — mestizo, hybrid, creole, indo-hispanic, tequitqui — testifies to a fundamental yet unresolved question of identity. Comparing and contrasting the Viceroyalties of New Spain, with its center in modern-day Mexico, and Peru, the authors explore the very different ways the two regions responded to the influence of the Europeans and their art. A wide range of art and artists are considered, some for the first time. Rich with new photography and primary research, this book delivers a wealth of new insight into the history of images and the history of art.

In 1832, the Norwegian painter Peder Balke (1804 — 1887) travelled to the far north of Norway to the dramatic coastline of the North Cape. The experience was so profound that he built his career painting isolated Arctic Circle seascapes. His pictures were originally rooted in the nineteenth-century romanticism of artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and his compatriot, Johan Christian Dahl; later in his career Balke created improvised seascapes with roughly applied brushwork — sometimes using his hands, a technique that was prescient of early modern expressionism. His profile as an artist had fallen into obscurity outside of Norway, but now this book brings together a first-rate selection of Balke's pictures from collections in Europe and the United States, and introduces readers to a unique artist and personality.

Each year, millions of visitors travel to Florence to admire the architectural marvels of this famous Renaissance city. In this compact yet comprehensive volume, architect and architectural historian Richard J. Goy offers a convenient, accessible guide to the city's piazzas, palazzos, basilicas, and other architectural points of interest, as well as pertinent historical details regarding Florence's unique urban environment. Clearly laid out and fully illustrated, this handbook is designed around a series of expertly planned walking tours that encompass not only the city's most admired architectural sites, but also its lesser-known gems. Maps are tailored to each walking tour and provide additional references and insights, along with introductory chapters on the city's architectural history, urban design, and building materials and techniques. Featuring a complete bibliography, glossary of key terms, and other useful reference materials, Goy's guide will appeal both to travelers who desire a greater architectural context and analysis than that offered by a traditional guide and to return visitors looking to rediscover Florence's most enchanting sites.

From the fifteenth century onwards, as European explorers sailed forth on grand voyages of discovery, their encounters with exotic plants and animals fanned intense scientific interest. Scholars began to examine nature with fresh eyes, and pioneering artists transformed the way nature was seen and understood. In Amazing Rare Things, renowned naturalist and documentary-maker David Attenborough joins with expert colleagues to explore how artists portrayed the natural world during this era of burgeoning scientific interest. The book focuses on an exquisite selection of natural history drawings and watercolors by Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Mark Catesby, and from the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo — works all held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Attenborough and his coauthors offer lucid commentary on topics ranging from the 30,000-year history of human drawings of the natural world, to Leonardo's fascination with natural processes, to Catesby's groundbreaking studies that introduced Europeans to the plants and animals of North America. With 160 full color illustrations, this beautiful book will appeal to readers with interests that extend from art and science to history and nature.

This book is a revised and fully updated guide to major objects in the collections at the Getty. This gorgeous new edition of The J Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Collection features over 350 of the museum's most beloved objects. Updated to include numerous exciting new acquisitions-from the Gillion manuscript to Gauguin's Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), from J M W Turner's Modern Rome to Robert Mapplethorpe's famous Self Portrait-the handbook presents an overview of the Getty's world-renowned collections and provides a history of the museum and its famous founder. From treasures of the ancient world and medieval manuscripts to Renaissance drawings, French furniture, Impressionist paintings, iconic American photographs, and much more, the handbook offers an indispensable look at both the magnificently reimagined Getty Villa in Malibu and the dazzling Getty Center on a hilltop in Brentwood. Whether a regular visitor to the two sites or someone who hasn't yet made the trip, this richly illustrated and beautifully redesigned volume is a must-have for any art lover.

Eugene Delacroix (1789-1863), a dominant figure in 19th-century French art, was a complex and contradictory painter whose legacy is deep and enduring. This important, beautifully illustrated book considers Delacroix in his own time, alongside contemporaries such as Courbet, Fromentin, and the poet Charles Baudelaire, as well as his significant influence on successive generations of artists. Delacroix's paintings and his posthumously published Journals laid crucial groundwork for immediate successors including Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, and Renoir. Later admirers including Seurat, Gauguin, Moreau, Redon, Van Gogh, and Matisse renewed the obsession with his work. Through essays and catalogue entries, the authors demonstrate how Delacroix became mentor and archetype to younger generations who sought direction for their own creative experiments, and found inspiration in Delacroix's brilliant use of color, audacious technique, and rebellious nature.

This groundbreaking publication centers on a previously unknown variation of Eugene Delacroix's (1798-1863) dramatic masterpiece The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, published here for the first time. This book offers a compelling reassessment of the relationship of the artist, widely consider a primary exemplar of Romanticism, to Neoclassical themes, as demonstrated by his life-long fascination with the death of Marcus Aurelius. Through this investigation, the authors reinterpret Delacroix's lineage to such fellow artists as Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) and Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). Playing on the various interpretations of the word finish, the book also offers a fascinating account of Delacroix's famously troubled collaboration with his studio assistants, his conflicted feelings about pedagogy, and his preoccupation with the fate of civilizations.

The National Gallery, London is home to a world-renowned collection of Dutch paintings that includes masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Cuyp and Ruisdael, among many others. Still lifes painted with painstaking attention to detail, sublime landscapes, vividly human portraits and intimate interiors: these beloved pictures tell the story of the Dutch Golden Age, when art, science and trade thrived. Now the National Gallery's popular 2007 guide to the collection has been revised, featuring an elegant new design and an extended introduction that examines why painting flourished in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, and why it is so enduringly popular today. Striking image details enhance the book, and updated, informative texts accompany each work. Accessible and illuminating, this guide is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Dutch painting.

Although originally published separately, Patrick Modiano's three novellas form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Modiano draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of others, to present a kind of autobiography, but one that is also the biography of a place. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers — all appear in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists. In this superb English-language translation of Suspended Sentences, and Flowers of Ruin, Mark Polizzotti captures not only Modiano's distinctive narrative voice but also the matchless grace and spare beauty of his prose. Shadowed by the dark period of the Nazi Occupation of France, these novellas reveal Modiano's fascination with the lost, obscure, or mysterious: a young person's confusion over adult behavior; the repercussions of a chance encounter; the search for a missing father; the aftershock of a fatal affair. To read Modiano's trilogy is to enter his world of uncertainties and the almost accidental way in which people find their fates.

The aftereffects of the February 2014 Uprising in Ukraine are still reverberating around the world. The consequences of the popular rebellion and Russian President Putin's attempt to strangle it remain uncertain. In this book, Andrew Wilson combines a spellbinding, on-the-scene account of the Kiev Uprising with a deeply informed analysis of what precipitated the events, what has developed in subsequent months, and why the story is far from over. Wilson situates Ukraine's February insurgence within Russia's expansionist ambitions throughout the previous decade. He reveals how President Putin's extravagant spending to develop soft power in all parts of Europe was aided by wishful thinking in the EU and American diplomatic inattention, and how Putin's agenda continues to be widely misunderstood in the West. The author then examines events in the wake of the Uprising-the military coup in Crimea, the election of President Petro Poroshenko, the Malaysia Airlines tragedy, rising tensions among all of Russia's neighbors, both friend and foe, and more. Ukraine Crisis provides an important, accurate record of events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. It also rings a clear warning that the unresolved problems of the region have implications well beyond Ukrainian borders.

This book tells the story of Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca (1411/13-1492) by focusing on four paintings he created over the span of his career. It also provides the first study of his small-scale devotional paintings, including the exquisite Saint Jerome and a Donor. One of today's most prominent scholars narrates the painting's mysterious history and uncovers new insights gleaned during its recent study and restoration. The authors explore the relationship between this painting and other works made by Piero for private devotion, including one of his last and most striking paintings, the magnificent Madonna di Senigallia. New research describes the complex relationships between Piero and his patrons and other contemporaries. This book brims with revelatory details about Piero's work that will intrigue both casual readers and devoted fans of the artist, and will form a gateway to a larger analysis of Piero's overall body of work.

Cezanne and the Modern showcases fifty masterworks of late 19th-to mid-20th-century avant-garde European art from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, one of the most distinguished private collections of modern art in the United States. Among the iconic images represented are Paul Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire (ca. 1902), Vincent van Gogh's Tarascon Stagecoach (1888), and Amedeo Modigliani's portrait of Jean Cocteau (1916-17), as well as an outstanding suite of sixteen watercolors by Cezanne. The volume opens with Henry Pearlman's Reminiscences of a Collector, a fascinating first-person narrative, newly annotated to identify key individuals and dates mentioned in the text. An essay by art historian Rachael Z. DeLue places Pearlman in the context of mid-20th-century American collecting, and a detailed chronology illuminates Pearlman's collecting practices in relation to noteworthy events in the art world. A series of fifteen brief essays by leading scholars focuses on each of the represented artists and their works, richly illustrated with sumptuous color plates, select details, and numerous comparative images.

Renowned throughout Renaissance Europe, Pieter Coecke (1502-1550) produced works for the wealthiest and most important patrons of the time, including Emperor Charles V, Francois I of France, Henry VIII of England, the Hapsburgs, and Cosimo de Medici. While he is best known for his magnificent tapestries, he was also a consummate artist in other media, and the output from his workshop ranged from painted altarpieces to designs and cartoons for stained glass. This lavish publication, the first monograph specifically devoted to this Renaissance genius, introduces Pieter Coecke to a contemporary audience and restores his place among the great artists of the 16th century. New photographs, including fine details, reunite some of the finest surviving drawings and panel paintings with twenty of the splendid Renaissance tapestries made to his designs, while texts by thirty prominent scholars explore Coecke's art and world. Both a feast for the eyes and an important art historical reappraisal of a great Renaissance master, this important study will stand as the comprehensive volume on a major artist of the Northern Renaissance.

Lingerie is a subject of enduring fascination. As the final barrier to the fully nude body, it is simultaneously modest and erotic. This compelling and eye-catching publication surveys lingerie from the mid-18th century to the present, covering a broad range of foundation garments, intimate apparel, and lounging clothes — from bras and corsets to slips, peignoirs, and tea gowns. All pieces are gorgeously illustrated in color. Stunning historical garments from well-known fashion houses such as Christian Dior are included, as is risque contemporary lingerie by labels such as Agent Provocateur. When viewed as a whole, these pieces illustrate important developments in fashion over time, such as changes in silhouette, shifting ideals of propriety, and advancements in technology. While a number of the pieces featured in the book were worn hundreds of years ago, the majority date from the 20th century. It was at that time that lingerie started to become as beautiful and alluring as it was functional. Authors Colleen Hill and Valerie Steele show that the decorative, highly feminine styles from the early 1900s set a new precedent for the importance of lingerie in women's private lives — a concept that remains important to many women today.