The seventeenth century was an era of absolute monarchs, the Habsburgs of Spain and Louis XIV of France, whose patronage of the arts helped furnish their opulent palaces. But it was also the beginning of a new era of commercialism, in which artists i...

This latest volume in the acclaimed "Art through the Centuries Series" explores the most important and influential artists and artistic concepts of the eighteenth century. While the Baroque style had dominated the previous century, a new sensibility...

Originally published in conjunction with a 2003 exhibition organized by the Anchorage Museum of History and Art and co-curated by Suzi Jones and Walter Van Horn, "Eskimo Drawings" marks the first time that Alaska Eskimo artwork has been the exclusive...

Never particularly keen on exhibiting his work, British artist Euan Uglow (1932-2000) maintained a lower profile than other artists of his generation and kept many of his paintings out of the public view. Even so, his name is increasingly well known,...

In the fourteenth century, Europe was a place ravaged by the effects of war and famine and then devastated by the Black Death. These multiple crises lead to a widespread mystical religiosity, which emphasised both ecstatic joy and extreme suffering....

In the sixteenth century, the humanist values and admiration for classical antiquity that marked the early Renaissance spread from Italy throughout the rest of the continent, resulting in the development of a number of local artistic styles in other...

The work of Eva Hesse (1936-1970) has been the focus of growing attention over the past few decades. With recent major exhibitions in San Francisco, London, and Wiesbaden, Hesse's tremendous contribution to the art world of the 1960s and 70s is now r...

Degas's pastel Waiting (L'Attente) is an extraordinary object in its craftsmanship and color, as well as in the emotional pull it exerts upon the viewer. But in addition to these, which we expect from a great work of art, Waiting also has an aura of...

This is a translation of the 1802 introduction to studio practices for sculpture students by Francesco Carradori (1747-1824), a sculptor, restorer, and instructor of sculpture at the Accademia in Florence from 1786 to 1821. Carradori's instructions a...

Influenced by a revival of interest in Greco-Roman ideals and sponsored by a newly prosperous merchant class, fifteenth-century artists produced works of astonishingly innovative content and technique. The International Gothic style of painting, stil...