The J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of European sculpture featured in this volume ranges in date from the late fifteenth century to the very early twentieth and includes a wide variety of media: marble, bronze, alabaster, terracotta, plaster, wood, ivory, and gold. The earliest sculpture represented is the mysterious Saint Cyricus by Francesco Laurana; the latest is a shield-like portrait of Medusa by the eccentric Italian sculptor Vincenzo Gemito. Among the more than forty works included in this handsomely illustrated volume are sculptures by Antico (Bust of a Young Man); Cellini (a Satyr designed for Fontainebleau); Giambologna (a Female Figure that may represent Venus); Bernini (Boy with a Dragon); and Carpeaux (Bust of Jean-Léon Gérôme). Well represented here is the Museum’s splendid collection of Mannerist and early Baroque bronzes, including such masterpieces as Johann Gregor van der Schardt’s Mercury and two superb works by Adriaen de Vries: Juggling Man and Rearing Horse. These works are indicative of the extraordinary quality of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of post-Classical European sculpture.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's paintings collection ranges from the fourteenth to the end of the nineteenth century. Among the finest examples of early Renaissance painting are the Madonna and Child by the Master of Saint Cecilia, Masaccio's Saint Andrew, and Gentile da Fabriano's richly painted Coronation of the Virgin. Typical of the High Renaissance are Andrea Mantegna's splendid Adoration of the Magi and Fra Bartolommeo's Rest on the Flight into Egypt. The art of the Netherlands in its Golden Age is represented by Jan Brueghel's much-loved painting The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark and by The Return from War, which he painted with Peter Paul Rubens, as well as a newly acquired and magnificent landscape by Hobbema, Rembrandt's Abduction of Europa, and Jan Steen's Drawing Lesson. Painting in France ranges from recently acquisitioned works by Poussin, Fragonard, and Lancret, through the Impressionism of Monet's seminal Sunrise and his Rouen Cathedral, while the modern age is exemplified by the Irises of Vincent van Gogh. Fernand Khnopff's Jeanne Kéfer, and Cézanne's Still Life with Apples.

This beautifully illustrated work brings together more than one hundred objects from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of European decorative arts. Included here is a generous selection of French and Italian furniture from the mid-sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Masterpieces by André-Charles Boulle, Bernard (II) van Risenburgh, and others reveal the virtuoso craftsmanship that makes these objects such compelling examples of the furniture maker’s art. Many of the Museum’s finest pieces of porcelain, glass, and tin-glazed earthenware are also represented. Tapestries from Gobelins and Beauvais, bronze firedogs from Fontainebleau, and a lathe-turned ivory goblet of astonishing complexity from Saxony are among the other highlights of this handsome volume.

The Getty Museum’s collection of postclassical European glass represents a well-defined chapter within the history of the medium. These objects—which range in date from the late Middle Ages to the late seventeenth century—originated in important Italian, German, Bohemian, Netherlandish, Silesian, and Austrian centers of production. The sixty-eight pieces presented in this catalogue include vessels made to resemble rock crystal or chalcedony; glass blown into unusually large or remarkably refined shapes; and glass decorated with ornament that is intricately applied, elegantly enameled, or gilded. Each object is described in detail, including provenance, bibliography, and relevant comparative examples. An introductory essay traces the history of European glass from classical times to the present.

This catalogue contains a reproduction and complete description of each of the more than four hundred European paintings in the collection of the Museum, including the important new acquisitions, among them Fra Bartolommeo’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Jan van de Capella’s Shipping in a Calm, and Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples. It also reflects the latest research regarding attribution and dating. An introduction by David Jaffé, curator of paintings at the Museum, explores the collecting activities and tastes of J. Paul Getty, who founded the Museum and was responsible for its earliest acquisitions.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the most common method of photography was the daguerreotype—Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre’s miraculous invention that captured in a camera visual images on a highly polished silver surface through exposure to light. In this book are presented nearly eighty masterpieces—many never previously published—from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s extensive daguerreotype collection.

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.