Spanning six centuries and seven countries, the Middeldorf Collection--assembled by the late eminent art historian Ulrich Middeldorf--provides an extraordinary overview of major personalities and of political, social, cultural, and religious events as depicted in more than 350 medals and plaquettes. Illustrated in full color and accompanied by extensive documentation are commemorations of kings, queens, emperors, poets, composers, physicians, artists, inventors, popes, cardinals, and bishops. Papal annual and jubilee medals and delightful French reliefs from the Belle Époque complement medals from the eras of Louis XIV and XV, Napoleon, and the Risorgimento. Highlights of the collection are Italian medals from the 17th century and later--periods that until recently have received little scholarly attention.

First developed in the princely courts of Renaissance Italy in the 1430s, in the 16th century medals were transformed into a recognisably modern form, in the messages they conveyed, the techinques employed in their manufacture, and the uses to which they were put. Contributing to this change were influential patrons including the Medici and the popes, as well as celebrated artists such as Leone Leoni and Benvenuto Cellini. This catalogue takes up the story where Sir George Hill's classic Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellni published in 1930, leaves off. This major catalogue includes over 1200 medals from the British Museum and the other major British collections, many published here for the first time. The catalogue entries provide detailed historical and iconographical information on the medals, many of which are published for the first time. The introductory essays discuss the centres of production, artists and subjects of the medals; the reasons they were made; their design, production and functions; the diffusion of the Italian medal throughout Europe in the 16th century and the history of collecting 16th-century Italian medals in Britain.

The seventeenth-century Valencian artist Jusepe de Ribera spent most of his career in Spanish Viceregal Naples, where he was known as “Lo Spagnoletto,” or “the Little Spaniard.” Working under the patronage of Spanish viceroys, Ribera held a special position bridging two worlds. In Ribera’s Repetitions, art historian Todd P. Olson sheds new light on the complexity of Ribera’s artwork and artistic methods and their connections to the Spanish imperial project. Drawing from a diverse range of sources, including poetry, literature, natural history, philosophy, and political history, Olson presents Ribera’s work in a broad context. He examines how Ribera’s techniques, including rotation, material decay (through etching), and repetition, influenced the artist’s drawings and paintings. Many of Ribera’s works featured scenes of physical suffering—from Saint Jerome’s corroded skin and the flayed bodies of Saint Bartholomew and Marsyas to the ragged beggar-philosophers and the eviscerated Tityus. But far from being the result of an individual sadistic predilection, Olson argues, Ribera’s art was inflected by the legacies of the Reconquest of Spain and Neapolitan coloniality. Ribera’s material processes and themes were not hermetically sealed in the studio; rather, they were engaged in the global Spanish Empire. Pathbreaking and deeply interdisciplinary, this copiously illustrated book offers art history students and scholars a means to see Ribera’s art anew.

The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts covers thousands of years of decorative arts production throughout western and non-western culture. With over 1,000 entries, as well as hundreds drawn from the 34-volume Dictionary of Art, this topical collection is a valuable resource for those interested in the history, practice, and mechanics of the decorative arts. Accompanied by almost 100 color and more than 500 black and white illustrations, the 1,290 pages of this title include hundreds of entries on artists and craftsmen, the qualities and historic uses of materials, as well as concise definitions on art forms and style. Explore the works of Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, and the Wiener Wekstatte, or delve into the history of Navajo blankets and wing chairs in thousands of entries on artists, craftsmen, designers, workshops, and decorative art forms.

This book gives the necessary background for the study and appreciation of Italian painting and sculpture from about 1250 to 1550. It tells how the artists learned their craft, the organization of their workshops, and the guilds they belonged to; how their customers or patrons treated them and where their work was displayed?churches, civic buildings, or private homes. The book discusses how art was made?tempera, oil, panel, canvas, fresco; it surveys the characteristic types of Renaissance art?altarpieces, portraits, tombs, busts, doors fountains, medals, etc.