After first studying in Cologne, Hans von Aachen moved to Italy in 1574 to further his studies. He toured Rome and Florence, eventually settling in Venice. Combining Flemish traditions and Italian innovation he developed a style of his own. Returning to Germany, he lived in Cologne and Munich as a painter of the nobility. In 1592 he was appointed official painter of Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor in Prague, finally moving to Prague in 1601, where he painted commissions from Emperor Rudolph II and his successor, Matthias I. The elegance, humour, and sensuality of his mythological and allegoric paintings continue to be a fascination. His religious presentations are symbolic of the constant change in a turbulent world. The Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) numbers paintings from Hans von Aachen among its collection.

Kolb has produced a thoroughly researched essay on this painting, which is in the Getty Museum. The study focuses on Brueghel's depiction of nature, especially his exacting representation of identifiable species of animals and birds, the names of which are listed. Brueghel's collaboration with other painters, his and other painters' re-use of the same theme and composition, and the history and practice of natural history collection and representation are central themes. The volume, which is printed in a horizontal format (it's 11x8") and heavily illustrated, is written for a general audience, though art historians will also find much of interest.

"The relationship between artists and their patrons has always been a complex and fascinating one. In the case of the Habsburg rules of the sixteenth and seventh centuries, this is especially true, not only because those rulers are themselves of intrinsic interest, but because the artists whom they encouraged or employed - Durer, Titian, El Grego, Rubens - were among the greatest of all times. In Princes and Artists Professor Trevor-Roper explores the relationship between art and patronage through the careers of the Emperor Charles V (1500-58), his son Philip II of Spain (1527-98), the Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) and 'the arch-dukes" - Albert and Isabella - who ruled the southern Netherlands from 1598 to 1633. In the context of their personal lives, their several courts, their political activities, and the ideological conflicts of the era, art played an immensely important role - partly as propaganda, partly for the sheer aesthetic pleasure it gave. The author argues that the distinctive characteristics of patronage in this period, which spanned the transition from the High Renaissance to the Baroque in art, from the Reformation to the Counter-Reformation in ideology, are to be explained by the 'world picture' of the age: "Art symbolised a whole view of life, of which politics were a part, and which the court had a duty to advertise and sustain." -- Book jacket.

Contains seven essays. Three of them use only pictures. Examines the relationship between what we see and what we know.