Around 1400 a new official position was created for artists in several major centers in the southern Netherlands, i.e. Antwerp, Louvain, Malines. Appointed by the municipal government, these city painters (called stadsmeester schilders) were paid an annual salary and provided with the benefits and title of civic office. Their primary responsibility was to organize and decorate an annual procession known as the ommegang. While this role continued uninterruptedly for the next one hundred years, for at least two painters -- Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels and Dieric Bouts in Louvain - the position was altered to encompass different and apparently more ambitious artistic goals. Drawing on extensive firsthand documentation from municipal accounts and records, this book reconstructs the origins and development of the official city painter over the course of the fifteenth century. At the same time, it addresses the changing status of artists during this period and examines civic patronage as an impetus for generating new artistic goals in the Burgundian Netherlands.

Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.

The Arch of Titus: From Jerusalem to Rome—and Back explores the shifting meanings and significance of the Arch of Titus from the Jewish War of 66–74 CE to the present—for Romans, Christians and especially for Jews.

From the early Renaissance through Baroque and Romanticism to Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop, these canonical works of Western Art span eight centuries and a vast range of subjects. Here are the sacred and the scandalous, the minimalist and the opulent, the groundbreaking and the conventional. There are paintings that captured the feeling of an era and those that signaled the beginning of a new one. Works of art that were immediately recognised for their genius, and others that were at first met with resistance. All have stood the test of time and in their own ways contribute to the dialectic on what makes a painting great, how notions of art have changed, to what degree art reflects reality, and to what degree it alters it. Brought together, these great works illuminate the changing preoccupations and insights of our ancestors, and give us pause to consider which paintings from our own era will ultimately join the canon.

This title concerns a patronage in whose service painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths could exercise their talents to the full.

In Worthy Efforts Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly offer an innovative approach to the history of perceptions and representations of work in Europe throughout Classical Antiquity and the medieval and early modern periods.