Museum visitors today usually see pre-16th-century Italian painted altarpieces exhibited alone, as single paintings. Yet this beautiful catalogue shows that these works were once part of decorative, integrated schemes, and the original experience for...

"Afterall" is a journal of art, context, and inquiry that not only offers in-depth consideration of contemporary art from around the world, but also insightful contextualization of works from a diverse array of artists. Articles on art history and cr...

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was founded in 1876, after its home city hosted the Centennial, with the primary goal of acquiring important examples of contemporary design and decorative arts. "Collecting Modern" explores for the first time the devel...

In response to conquests in mid-18th-century wars, Britons developed a keen interest in how their colonies actually looked. Artistic representations of these faraway places, claiming topographic accuracy from being "drawn on the spot", became increas...

An American painter usually associated with the Precisionist movement, George Copeland Ault (1891-1948) created works that provide a unique window on to the uncertainty and despair of the Second World War. Despite early commercial success in the 1920...

With the creation of the dramatic Supper at Emmaus and a series of intimate oil sketches of Christ on oak panels, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) overturned the entire history of Christian art. Traditionally, when depicting Christ, artists had relied...

"Translating Truth" is a novel and compelling account of how illuminated vernacular manuscripts transformed conceptions of Christian excellence in the later Middle Ages. Following the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which legislated a broad pastoral o...

"Picasso and Braque" offers an intimate look at one of the most pivotal exchanges in the history of Western art: the culminating two years (1910-12) of Analytic Cubism. While the Cubist experiment has long been a requisite chapter in the history of m...

Today Renaissance-era prints are typically preserved behind glass or in solander boxes in museums, but these decorative objects were once a central part of everyday life. "Altered and Adorned" is a delightful, surprising look at how prints were used...

The National Gallery houses one of the most important collections of early Italian paintings outside Italy, including works by Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto and the di Cione brothers. Since these were last catalogued there have been four new acquisitions,...