The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists


Book Description

Covering Western art from the ancient Greeks to the present day, this best-selling and authoritative dictionary is more wide-ranging than any comparable reference work. It contains over 2,500 clear and concise entries on styles and movements, materials and techniques, and museums and galleries. It also includes biographical entries for artists, critics, collectors, dealers, and patrons, with places and full dates of birth and death (in many instances correcting misinformation that has found its way into other sources). For this new edition, entries have been thoroughly revised and updated, and more than fifty new entries have been added, for example Tracey Emin and Jack Vettriano. Browsers and readers with an interest in a particular area will benefit from the classified list of all the entries in the book - an invaluable innovation that makes it easy to see immediately which collectors, for example, or 18th-century French artists, or printmaking terms, are included in the dictionary. Written in an engaging manner with many entries enlivened by quotations from artists and critics, this dictionary is a pleasure to browse, whilst its A-Z structure and classified list makes it perfect for quick reference. Previously entitled The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, this major new edition is essential for students and teachers of art, design, art theory, and art history, and it is ideal for artists, visitors to art exhibitions and galleries, and anyone with an interest in art.







Exuberant Apotheoses: Italian Frescoes in the Holy Roman Empire


Book Description

From the late seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries, large-scale Italian frescoes soared in popularity as nobles in the German principalities of the Holy Roman Empire constructed new palaces at an unprecedented rate. They competed with one another to produce lavish decorative schemes that expressed their claim to princely power and political authority. Whereas previous art historians have primarily focused on iconographic and stylistic issues and generally treated these programs as individual commissions of regional courts, this book places the works of art within their broad cultural and historical contexts during the Enlightenment. This monograph explains how rulers gradually shifted from emphasizing military heroism to stressing their cultivation of the arts and sciences, and addresses how expressing membership in a specifically European civilization emerged as an integral visual theme and a key ambition of the German nobility.




At Least I Lived Longer


Book Description

Whom did you outlive today? Cleopatra? Einstein? Hitler? AT LEAST I LIVED LONGER puts a new twist on biography with 3675 thumbnail profiles arranged by lifespans, down to the day, youngest to oldest, including historical figures and modern celebrities, women and men. Learning about famous people is fascinating, but surpassing them in some way is even better! As for me ... I may not have conquered the world like Alexander the Great, but AT LEAST I LIVED LONGER!