Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures


Book Description

Issued in connection with an exhibition held Oct. 5, 2010-Jan. 17, 2011, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Feb. 23-May 30, 2011, National Gallery, London (selected paintings only).







Jan Gossart


Book Description

For the catalogue of the 1965 monographic exhibition in Rotterdam and Bruges on Jan Gossart (ca. 1472-1532) a compilation was made of 68 documentary references pertaining to the artist's life and works. Now, forty-five years later, there has been a reassessment of Gossart and his oeuvre which has resulted in a new catalogue raisonne, Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart's Renaissance. The present text, Jan Gossart: The Documentary Evidence accompanies this volume. This tome covers more than 130 documents, including inventories, accounts, biographies, descriptions and other records about Gossart's life and works, up until the mid-18th century. These mainly archival records have been re-examined and transcribed anew, and subsequently discovered documents have been added. Each transcription is accompanied by a short description and comment as well as published references. The book includes photographs of original records. Additionally, two of Gossart's works for which most of our knowledge is based on documentary evidence are discussed: the so-called Salamanca Triptych and the famous, now lost, Middelburg Altarpiece.




The Renaissance Nude


Book Description

A gloriously illustrated examination of the origins and development of the nude as an artistic subject in Renaissance Europe Reflecting an era when Europe looked to both the classical past and a global future, this volume explores the emergence and acceptance of the nude as an artistic subject. It engages with the numerous and complex connotations of the human body in more than 250 artworks by the greatest masters of the Renaissance. Paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, and book illustrations reveal private, sometimes shocking, preoccupations as well as surprising public beliefs—the Age of Humanism from an entirely new perspective. This book presents works by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Martin Schongauer in the north and Donatello, Raphael, and Giorgione in the south; it also introduces names that deserve to be known better. A publication this rich in scholarship could only be produced by a variety of expert scholars; the sixteen contributors are preeminent in their fields and wide-ranging in their knowledge and curiosity. The structure of the volume—essays alternating with shorter texts on individual artworks—permits studies both broad and granular. From the religious to the magical and the poetic to the erotic, encompassing male and female, infancy, youth, and old age, The Renaissance Nude examines in a profound way what it is to be human.




The Art Of Seduction


Book Description

Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.




Sexual Personae


Book Description

From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.




Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity


Book Description

This is the first in-depth historical study of Jan Gossart (ca. 1478–1532), one of the most important painters of the Renaissance in northern Europe. Providing a richly illustrated narrative of the Netherlandish artist's life and art, Marisa Anne Bass shows how Gossart’s paintings were part of a larger cultural effort in the Netherlands to assert the region’s ancient heritage as distinct from the antiquity and presumed cultural hegemony of Rome. Focusing on Gossart’s vibrant, monumental mythological nudes, the book challenges previous interpretations by arguing that Gossart and his patrons did not slavishly imitate Italian Renaissance models but instead sought to contest the idea that the Roman past gave the Italians a monopoly on antiquity. Drawing on many previously unused primary sources in Latin, Dutch, and French, Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity offers a fascinating new understanding of both the painter and the history of northern European art at large.




Hypnerotomachia Poliphili


Book Description

Francesco Colonna's weird, erotic, allegorical antiquarian tale, "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili", together with all of its 174 original woodcut illustrations, has been called the first "stream of consciousness" novel and was one of the most important documents of Renaissance imagination and fantasy. The author -- presumed to be a friar of dubious reputation -- was obsessed by architecture, landscape and costume (it is not going too far to say sexually obsessed) and its woodcuts are a primary source for Renaissance ideas.




Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads


Book Description

The nine papers collected in this publication- which comprises the third and latest edition to the symposium volumes by the Metropolitan Museum of Art - were first presented in conjunction with the Museum's exhibition of Early Netherlandish painting culled from its own holdings in 1998. The essays, by an international roster of leading specialists, together uncover the circumstances underlying the creation of works of art and shed new light on their meaning, in the context of the growing interdisciplinary activity and burgeoning scholarship in the field. The importance of archival research into the socio-economic factors that existed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is emphasized- especially, the impact of art markets on the production of paintings as well as sculpture. Much new material has surfaced as a result of advances in the technical investigation of works of art, underscoring the premise that the clues to the meaning of a work are often found not only in its method of manufacture but also in the specific audience for which it was intended and in the function that it originally served for that audience. -- Publisher description.




Workshop Practice in Early Netherlandish Painting


Book Description

Recent technical examinations of Early Netherlandish art have propelled in-depth studies of key works far beyond traditional connoisseurship methods. Ingenious new applications, as well as a prodigious amount of comparative technical documentation, have changed our views of standard workshop practices, including issues of materials and techniques, and details about the precise nature of collaboration. The studies presented in this book illustrate the variety of approaches and findings in what can be called the new connoisseurship. Here the reader will find alternative methods of evaluating Jan van Eyck's Saint Barbara and Ghent Altarpiece, Dirk Bouts's canvas paintings, Jacb Cornelisz van Oostsanen's Berlin Sketchbook, the Evora Altarpiece and the Saint Anne Altarpiece from Gerard David's workshop, Jan Gossart's Malvagna Triptych, and a triptych by Pieter I Claeissens. These individual studies will be of interest not only to aficionados of Early Netherlandish painting, but also to students who are keen to learn about the pivotal role of technical studies for this period of art history.