Discovering The Italian Baroque

TLS review 4/18/97, Distributed for National Gallery Publications, London, Exhibition catalog.

"Rudolf Wittkower touch no subject that he did not illuminate, but the architecture of the Italian Baroque was recognized as the particular domain which he ruled without a rival. His Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, became the standard work as soon as it was published. Regrettably, it was his last full-scale contribution, but his research continued, and the articles that he wrote during the last twelve years of his life extend and supplement that book in many respects. These are now collected for the first time, together with earlier writings which have stood the test of time and the probings of later scholarship. This volume extends from his youthful but still unsuperseded study of Carlo Rainaldi (1937) to his latest, unpublished, thoughts on the domes of Vittone (1970), an architect whom he discovered practically single-handed. In between come four essays relating to Bernini, as both architect and sculptor; a detailed examination of S. Maria della Salute in Venice; lengthy reconsiderations of Guarini and Borromini; a description of Filippo Juvarra's sketchbook at Chatsworth, including reproductions for the first time of all its pages; and three studies of Piranesi. With 357 illustrations." --

This anthology presents classic and recent scholarship on Italian art from 1600-1750, highlighting the key debates with which art historians continue to grapple. Explores themes including: style or the visuality of art; artistic practices and production; artistic communication as projected and experienced; and artists’ interactions with the ancient world and with the new sciences Examines the work of key painters, architects and sculptors from this period, including Caravaggio, Bernini, Guarini and Poussin Published in the expanding Blackwell Anthologies in Art History series

Delivered at the turn of the twentieth century, Riegl's groundbreaking lectures called for the Baroque period to be judged by its own rules and not merely as a period of decline.

Although Americans have shown interest in Italian Baroque art since the eighteenth century—Thomas Jefferson bought copies of works by Salvator Rosa and Guido Reni for his art gallery at Monticello, and the seventeenth-century Bolognese school was admired by painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley—a widespread appetite for it only took hold in the early to mid-twentieth century. Buying Baroque tells this history through the personalities involved and the culture of collecting in the United States. The distinguished contributors to this volume examine the dealers, auction houses, and commercial galleries that provided access to Baroque paintings, as well as the collectors, curators, and museum directors who acquired and shaped American perceptions about these works, including Charles Eliot Norton, John W. Ringling, A. Everett Austin Jr., and Samuel H. Kress. These essays explore aesthetic trends and influences to show why Americans developed an increasingly sophisticated taste for Baroque art between the late eighteenth century and the 1920s, and they trace the fervent peak of interest during the 1950s and 1960s. A wide-ranging, in-depth look at the collecting of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian paintings in America, this volume sheds new light on the cultural conditions that led collectors to value Baroque art and the significant effects of their efforts on America’s greatest museums and galleries. In addition to the editor, contributors include Andrea Bayer, Virginia Brilliant, Andria Derstine, Marco Grassi, Ian Kennedy, J. Patrice Marandel, Pablo Pérez d’Ors, Richard E. Spear, and Eric M. Zafran.

Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy examines how the seventeenth-century Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (better known as Il Guercino) instilled the political ideas of his patrons into his paintings. As it focuses on eight works showing religious scenes and scenes taken from Roman history, this volume bridges the gap between social and cultural history and the history of art, untangling the threads of art, politics, and religion during the time of the Thirty Years' War. A prolific painter, Guercino enjoyed the patronage of such luminaries as Pope Gregory XV, Cardinals Serra, Ludovisi, Spada, and Magalotti, and the French secretary of state La Vrilli?. While scholarly research has been devoted to Guercino's oeuvre, this book is the first to place his works squarely in the context of the political and social circumstances of seventeenth-century Italy, stressing the points of view and agendas of his powerful patrons. What were once meanings only apparent to the educated elite?or those familiar with the political affairs of the time?are now scrutinized and clarified for an audience far from the struggles of early modern Europe.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is the most up-to-date body of musical knowledge ever gathered together.