Von der Schulenburg's evocative photographs detail the decoration and furnishings of 20 houses and apartments, including royal residences, manors and mansions. Groth traces the evolution of the Neoclassical style in Sweden and explores each of the buildings and its history. Plans and original drawings are included. With 388 illustrations, 204 in color. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In the arts, Neoclassicism is a historical tradition or aesthetic attitude based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. The movement started around the 18th-century, age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th-century The general credo associated with the aesthetic attitude of Classicism was that art had to be rational and therefore morally better. Neoclassicists also believed that art should be cerebral, not sensual and therefore characterised by clarity of form, sober colours and shallow space. It was a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and a desire to return to the perceived ""purity"" of the arts of Rome. The important artists of the movement include the sculptors Antonio Canova,Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and the painters J.A.D. Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Anton Raphael Mengs.

In this lavishly illustrated volume, editor Rolf Toman has brought together carefully selected articles written by eleven renowned authors that vividly illustrate and elucidate the complexities Neoclassicism and Romanticism from the perspectives of architecture and art history.