A Royal Passion

In January 1839, photography was announced to the world. Two years prior, a young Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland. These two events, while seemingly unrelated, marked the beginnings of a relationship that continued throughout the nineteenth century and helped construct the image of an entire age. A Royal Passion explores the connections between photography and the monarchy through Victoria’s embrace of the new medium and her portrayal through the lens. Together with Prince Albert, her beloved husband, the Queen amassed one of the earliest collections of photographs, including works by renowned photographers such as Roger Fenton, Gustave Le Gray, and Julia Margaret Cameron. Victoria was also the first British monarch to have her life recorded by the camera: images of her as wife, mother, widow, and empress proliferated around the world at a time when the British Empire spanned the globe. The featured essays consider Victoria’s role in shaping the history of photography as well as photography’s role in shaping the image of the Queen. Including more than 150 color images—several rarely seen before—drawn from the Royal Collection and the J. Paul Getty Museum, this volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 4 to June 20, 2014.

From quarrels, passion, treason to execution, discover one of the great overlooked love stories of history. King Charles I was a Protestant. Henrietta Maria, a 15-year-old French princess, was a Catholic. Arranged for political gain, their marriage was a dangerous experiment, yet against the odds they fell in love. However Henrietta's Catholicism fuelled rumours of improper influence over a supposedly helpless king. Unable to trust his Parliament, Charles's fear for the queen's safety plummeted the country into civil war and forced her to flee abroad, never to see her husband again. They kept up a poignant correspondence but in 1649, the king was condemned as a traitor and publicly executed, thus ending an extraordinary partnership that influenced the course of history.

Amid the colour and music of a gypsy camp in the foothills of France, Mara Delacroix of Louisiana and Roderic, Prince of Ruthenia, met for the first time. He did not know however, that Mara was deliberately trying to seduce him in order to pay back a family debt to the ruthless Nicholas de Landes.

A royal marriage, based on romantic passion and ferocious, unbridgeable religious differences, ends in tragedy—a history worthy of Shakespeare. It was, from the start, a dangerous experiment. Charles I of England was a Protestant, the fifteen-year-old French princess a Catholic. The marriage was arranged for political purposes, and it seemed a mismatch of personalities. But against the odds, the reserved king and his naively vivacious bride fell passionately in love, and for ten years England enjoyed an era of peace and prosperity. When Charles became involved in war with Puritan Scotland, popular hatred of Henrietta’s Catholicism roused Parliament to fury. As the opposition party embraced new values of liberty and republicanism—the blueprint for the American War of Independence and the French Revolution—Charles’s fears for his wife’s safety drove him into a civil war that would cost him his crown and his head. Rejecting centuries of hostile historical tradition, prize-winning biographer Katie Whitaker uses a host of original sources—including many unpublished manuscripts and letters—to create an intimate portrait of a remarkable marriage.

"Hall’s consummate history is not just the story of the evolution of one of the world’s great collections... The book is also a through-the-keyhole insight into the shifting tastes, good or bad, of 1,000 years of monarchs." - The Times The Royal Collection is the last great collection formed by the European monarchies to have survived into the twenty-first century. Containing over a million artworks and objects, it covers all aspects of the fine and decorative arts, from paintings by Rembrandt and Michelangelo to grand sculpture, Fabergé eggs and some of the most exquisite furniture ever made. The Royal Collection also offers a revealing insight into the history of the British monarchy from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth II, recording the tastes and obsessions of kings and queens over the past 500 years. With unprecedented access to the royal residences of St James' Palace, Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, Art, Passion & Power traces the history of this national institution from the Middle Ages to the present day, exploring how royalty used the arts to strengthen their position as rulers by divine right and celebrating treasures from the Crown Jewels to the "Abraham" tapestries in Hampton Court Palace. Author Michael Hall examines the monarchy's response to changing attitudes to the arts and sciences during the Enlightenment and celebrates the British monarchy's role in the democratisation of art in the modern world. Packed with glimpses of rarely seen artworks, Art, Passion & Power is a visual treat for all art enthusiasts. Accompanying the BBC television series and a major exhibition at the Royal Academy, Art, Passion & Power is the definitive statement on the British monarchy's treasures of the art world.

From acclaimed bestselling author James Runcie, a meditation on grief and music, told through the story of Bach's writing of the St. Matthew Passion. In 1727, Stefan Silbermann is a grief-stricken thirteen-year-old, struggling with the death of his mother and his removal to a school in distant Leipzig. Despite his father's insistence that he try not to think of his mother too much, Stefan is haunted by her absence, and, to make matters worse, he's bullied by his new classmates. But when the school's cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, takes notice of his new pupil's beautiful singing voice and draws him from the choir to be a soloist, Stefan's life is permanently changed. Over the course of the next several months, and under Bach's careful tutelage, Stefan's musical skill progresses, and he is allowed to work as a copyist for Bach's many musical works. But mainly, drawn into Bach's family life and away from the cruelty in the dorms and the lonely hours of his mourning, Stefan begins to feel at home. When another tragedy strikes, this time in the Bach family, Stefan bears witness to the depths of grief, the horrors of death, the solace of religion, and the beauty that can spring from even the most profound losses. Joyous, revelatory, and deeply moving, The Great Passion is an imaginative tour de force that tells the story of what it was like to sing, play, and hear Bach's music for the very first time.

Just who is Lily Wrightington—cynical fashion photographer or studious art historian? Prince Marco di Lucchesi can't hide his haughty disdain for this Englishwoman—or his strong attraction to her! As they tour the captivating palazzos of northern Italy together for Lily's work project, the atmosphere between them sizzles with dislike and sensual promise…until shadows from Lily's past turn up to taunt her. But if Marco drops his guard and offers the protection Lily is seeking, the passion he's trying to keep firmly under wraps might just unleash itself, too….

A Royal Passion is the first in-depth study of the Sun King as a patron of architecture. Surveying such monuments as the Louvre, Versailles, the Invalides, and other buildings that are closely identified with Louis XIV, Robert W. Berger demonstrates why these buildings, gardens, urban spaces, and their decorations were so important to him. Serving as functional necessities, objects of aesthetic delight, and as political statements, his architectural enterprises collectively underscored his absolutist authority. Moreover, by adopting the guise of 'builder-prince', Louis XIV reasserted his kinship with the Roman emperors, whose grandeur he sought both to emulate and to surpass.