This book features masterpieces of Italian Renaissance drawings from the British Museum, the Louvre and other French public collections in Lille, Rennes and Montpellier. Beginning with an examination of drawing as part of the creative process, showing how it reveals the artist’s mind at work, it explains the materials and techniques used in Renaissance drawings. It also considers how drawings were used, how they changed stylistically through the period and how they varied in different regions of Italy. It concludes with a brief look at connoisseurship and collecting. The main body of the book showcases 120 of the finest drawings by more than 40 Italian Renaissance masters, accompanied by a brief biography and introduction to the drawings of each artist.
Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) was a member of the elite group of Italian Renaissance masters which also included his prominent rivals Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Born in Urbino where his father was court artist, he moved to Florence as a young man and there established his reputation by painting a series of Virgin and Child compositions. Four years later he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II to decorate his private apartments in the Vatican. His meteoric rise at the papal court inflamed the jealousy of Michelangelo, whose style Raphael was able to adopt and then make his own. For the next eighteen years Raphael was indispensable to Julius and his successor Leo X - not only as a painter, but also as a designer of tapestries, architect of St Peter's and even procurer of antiquities, dominating the arts in Rome until his untimely death on his 37th birthday. Raphael had an exceptional artistic eye and a gift for absorbing the styles of other artists and adapting them to his own means and purposes. Draughtsmanship was the foundation of his immensely successful career, and the British Museum holds an excellent collection of his drawings. Beginning with an introduction to the life of the artist, this beautifully illustrated book presents a chronological selection of Raphael's drawings including early figure studies, demonstrating his astonishing mastery of naturalistic movement. It then explores his working methods and shows how he incorporated the influences of his famous peers into his own inimitable style. The development of Raphael's ideas through his drawings gives insight into the mind and method of a fascinating and much-admired artist.
The brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was unprecedented in his own lifetime and has never been exceeded. The universality of his genius is extraordinary: he was a painter, sculptor, musician, architect, engineer, inventor, scientist, anatomist and mathematician. Even today he is rarely out of the news, and fascination with this Renaissance master and his work has never been greater. Leonardo famously left behind only a very small number of completed projects, but his surviving drawings, sketches and notebooks give an extraordinary insight into the workings of his mind and the enormous scope of his interests. Through drawing Leonardo attempted to record and understand the world around him, transmitting knowledge more accurately and concisely with images than would be possible with words. Beginning with an introduction to the life of the artist, this beautifully illustrated gift book presents a chronological selection of priceless drawings by Leonardo along with other beautiful works thought to be by his students and other members of his circle. These demonstrate his astonishing mastery of technique and how he communicated this to the artists who followed him. Leonardo's working methods and his wide range of interests are also explored, leading credence to the notion that the true nature of Leonardo's intentions can only be known through his remarkable drawings.
Depressed and plagued by insomnia King Philippe V of Spain lies awake in his chamber. The queen desperate to find a cure hears of Farinelli a castrato with a voice so divine it has the power to captivate all who hear it. Even Philippe is astonished when Farinelli sings and he begs him to stay. But will Farinelli one of the greatest celebrities of his time choose a life of solitude over fame and fortune in the opera houses of Europe? And will his extraordinary talent prove to be a curse rather than a blessing?
Farinelli and the King is a "profoundly funny and haunting mediation on melancholy and the therapeutic powers of music" set in the Royal Spanish court in the 18th century. Depressed and plagued by insomnia, Kind Philippe V of Spain lies awake in his chamber. The Queen, desperate to find a cure, hears of Farinelli - a castrato with a voice so divine it has the power to captivate all who hear it.Philippe is capricious and difficult to please, but even he is astonished when Farinelli sings, and begs him to stay. But will Farinelli, one of the greatest celebrities of his time, choose a life of solitude over fame and fortune in the opera houses of Europe? And will his extraordinary talent prove to be a curse rather than a blessing? Described as "an enchanting, shimmering fairytale for grown-ups"(New York Times), Farinelli and the King starrred Mark Rylance and played to sold-out audiences at Shakespeare's Globe. It transferred with great success to London's West End and Broadway in 2017.
Jan Cox (1919-1980) was born in The Hague and spent his youth in Amsterdam. Shortly before World War II, he moved to Antwerp with his parents and his brother, the composer Harry Cox, and studied History of Art at the State University of Ghent. After the war he settled down in Brussels to become a co-founder of the Jeune Peinture Belge (Young Belgian Painting). He had contacts with the members of Cobra and became close friends with Hugo Claus and Pierre Alechinsky. In 1956 Jan Cox left for the USA where he was appointed Head of the Painting Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1974 he returned to Belgium and found a new home in the circle of the Gallery De Zwarte Panter (The Black Panther) in Antwerp.Jan Cox thought of his artistic calling as an artistic and a humanist project. His painting has a strong surreal and magical bias but he also created imposing expressionist images. He liked classical themes: the myth of Orpheus, Homer's Iliad, Judith and Holofernes, the Calvary. Jan Cox managed to merge autobiographical elements with the universal problems of human existence. His paintings invite the beholder to reflect on the human condition, hope and the terrors of the modern world.
Chinese art's journey from mass-produced propaganda in the Mao era to market darling mirrors China's own momentous changes like few other disciplines. Today, in both art and Chinese society, commerce and politics coexist in a delicate balance, which some call sensible and others, say is selling out. By travelling to the studios of China's art world superstars, hearing their rags-to-riches tales and interviewing the critics, curators and collectors that have been around since its idealistic beginnings, author Claire van den Heever paints a picture of Chinese art's bumpy path to commercial and critical success, and uncovers the secrets it tried to keep along the way.
A German twist on an Anglophone tradition, Science Fiktion provides a disturbing vision of the future from the other side of the Berlin Wall. When a young reader once asked Franz Fühmann if he considered his work to be science fiction, he was quick to deny it: he wanted nothing to do with the genre. As he began writing the stories that make up this volume, however, he found himself coming around to the idea of a hybrid genre—what he calls in German Saiäns-Fiktschen, "science fiktion" with a k. In seven interlocking stories, Science Fiktion offers a steampunk takedown of the logic of the Cold War. In this imagined future, two nations compete for global dominance: Uniterr, an exaggeration of the Eastern Bloc, in which personal freedom is curtailed and life regulated with cartoonish strictness; and Libroterr, in which the decadence of the West has been pushed beyond all reason. The stories follow three young citizens of Uniterr: Jirro, a young neutrinologist whose life is forever changed by a year spent abroad in Libroterr; Janno, a causologist condemned to a life of mediocrity in Uniterr’s bureaucracy for the briefest of impure thoughts; and Pavlo, an inventor and a drunkard, whose mind pushes against the limits of what his world allows. Through these three lives, Fühmann gradually unfolds the contours of their bizarre world in a master class of understated world-making. As the reader is swept up in the madness of Libroterr’s predator ads (which grab you on the street) and Uniterr’s mandatory mind readings, Fühmann’s dark comedy from the last century comes to seem all the more prescient in ours.
Camper Van Cooking offers 70 recipes and meal solutions that will make the road trip a breeze.Life on wheels doesn't have to mean eating out of cans and packets: from the romance of fireside cooking, to cooking on one burner, through easy lunches, greedy brunches and leisurely picnics, and simple sweets and treats, there are so many inspiring options.Chefs Claire Thomson and Matt Williamson have all the advice, tips and tricks you will need to plan the food for your trip, from essential equipment to basic store cupboard staples. The fabulous recipes include spinach and paneer curry, egg-fried rice, frying pan toad-in-the-hole, Spanish tortilla sandwiches, Bloody Mary prawn subs, toasted waffles with grated chocolate, one-pan fry-up, cherry chocolate mess, and raspberry ripple rice pudding.Make your camper van feasts special with Camper Van Cooking and enjoy life on the wild side!
Discover the master of the modern minimalist, Mies van der Rohe, one of the defining and most hotly debated tastemakers of the twentieth century. In pursuit of elemental truth, van der Rohe crafted an â??almost nothingâ? architecture, criticized by some as bland, extolled by others as the paradigm of purity.
