European Clocks in the J. Paul Getty Museum


Book Description

Among the finest examples of European craftsmanship are the clocks produced for the luxury trade in the eighteenth century. The J. Paul Getty Museum is fortunate to have in its decorative arts collection twenty clocks dating from around 1680 to 1798: eighteen produced in France and two in Germany. They demonstrate the extraordinary workmanship that went into both the design and execution of the cases and the intricate movements by which the clocks operated. In this handsome volume, each clock is pictured and discussed in detail, and each movement diagrammed and described. In addition, biographies of the clockmakers and enamelers are included, as are indexes of the names of the makers, previous owners, and locations.







Seeing Like a State


Book Description

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University













Summary Catalogue of European Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum


Book Description

J. Paul Getty had a passion for the exquisitely made furniture and decorative objects of eighteenth-century France, which he began collecting in the 1930s. Gillian Wilson, curator of decorative arts since 1971, has broadened and strengthened the collection, adding Boulle furniture, mounted oriental porcelain, tapestries, clocks, ceramics, and more. In the 1980s and 1990s the Museum continued to enlarge its decorative arts holdings, creating a European sculpture department in 1984 and adding glass, maiolica, goldsmiths’ work, pietre dure, and furniture from Italy and Northern Europe. This book is a revised and expanded edition of Decorative Arts: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (1993). In addition to more than forty recent acquisitions—among these four wall sconces from Versailles that once belonged to Marie Antoinette and an elaborate upholstered bed from the collection of Karl Lagerfeld—it includes the results of years of research. Designed for scholars, students, and devotees of the decorative arts, this volume provides a comprehensive look at the Getty's fine collection.




Moroni


Book Description

Giovanni Battista Moroni is considered one of the great portraitists of sixteenth-century Italy. Published with The Frick Collection to accompany the first major exhibition devoted to the artist in the United States, this sumptuous volume celebrates the painter's eye for exquisite detail in depicting his sitters' interior and material worlds. New scholarship includes in-depth studies of individual portraits, as well as essays on the artist in the context of portrait painting in northern Italy in the later cinquecento. Contents: Director's Foreword; Preface and Acknowledgements; Moroni's Eyes; Moroni between Likeness and Presence; Catalogue of the Exhibition; Bibliography; Index. The publication is linked to an exhibition running at The Frick Collection from February to June 2019. AUTHORS: Aimee Ng is an Associate Curator at The Frick Collection, New York. Arturo Galansino is the Director of the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. Simone Facchinetti is a Curator at the Museo Adriano Bernareggi, Bergamo. SELLING POINTS: * The only substantial treatment of this renowned Old Master's portraiture in print * Accompanies the major exhibition at The Frick Collection from February to June 2019 * Offers new insights by experts in the field with accessibly written text 90 colour images