Collecting is an obsession that goes back to the mists of history. While spare time and spare cash seem an absolute necessity for this kind of activity, every collector has his or her own approach to the formation of a collection. The way in which one’s treasures are displayed is another important instance in which one collector differs from another. Glass cases, niches, trays, cupboards, or drawers have been adopted; sometimes cards offer information on the subject, its age and provenance; an overall theme may have prompted the choice of the actual objects displayed together; security reasons suggest one room over another. While some collectors keep their treasures as close as possible—in their bedroom, throughout their living quarters, or in a locked up closet nearby—others may find that they want to be able to show off their collection without being disturbed by visitors in the rooms in which they actually spend most of their time. Certainly, our notions of private and public have changed considerably over the centuries and this has had an impact on questions of display and on the separation of particular parts of the house from other less accessible ones, in particular in great houses that allow for the establishment of a museum. The museum, in such cases, is quite separate from the living quarters, for example situated on the ground floor off the main hall. Not all displays were so defined; there were many forms of exhibition just as there were many forms of collections. The aims and ambitions of the collector are often discussed in terms of the display of their collections; in part because we believe that analysing how a collection was shown and how it was received are key contributors to our understanding the role and purpose of the collection. In lieu of any other documentation, inventories, sales catalogues and wills remain essential tools for the historian of collecting, both in terms of what was owned and where it was housed. This volume, the second in a series of four, presents ten articles that explore the connection between collections and their display in, near, or separate from the princely apartment within a time frame that runs from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth and within a geographical area that includes courts on the Italian peninsula, in England, France, The Netherlands and Germany.

In this fascinating new book, Malcolm Vale sets out to recapture the splendour of the court culture of western Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Exploring the century or so between the death of St Louis and the rise of Burgundian power in the Low Countries, he illuminates a period in the history of princes and court life previously overshadowed by that of the courts of the dukes of Burgundy. Taking in subjects as diverse as art patronage and gambling, hunting anddevotional religion, Malcolm Vale rediscovers a richness and abundance of artistic, literary, and musical life. He shows how, despite the pressures of political fragmentation, unrest, and a nascent awareness of national identity, a common culture emerged in English, French, and Dutch courtsocieties at this time. The result is a ground-breaking re-evaluation of the nature and role of the court in European history and a celebration of a forgotten age.

The essays in this volume discuss princely courts north of the Alps and Pyrenees between 1450-1650 as focal points for products of medieval and renaissance culture such as literature, music, political ideology, social and governmental structures, the fine arts and devotional practice.

This book contains thirteen essays on European princes and princely culture between 1450 and 1650. Many products of medieval and renaissance culture – literature, music, political ideology, social and governmental structures, the fine arts, and even forms of devotional practice – found their best expression in the context of the courts of greater and lesser princes. This volume, the first of two concentrating on the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, has essays on selected courts north of the Alps and the Pyrenees: the court of Burgundy under the Valois dukes, that of France under Catherine de Médicis and of Henry IV, that of Scotland under Jameses III, IV, V, VI and of Mary, Queen of Scots, that of Margaret of Austria at Mechelen, of Scandinavia, of Heidelberg under Frederick the Victorious and Philip the Upright, and that of Maximilian I. Contributors include: Gayle K. Brunelle, Dagmar Eichberger, Annette Finley-Croswhite, Martin Gosman, Margriet Hoogvliet, Michael Lynch, Alasdair A. MacDonald, Olaf Mörke, Jan-Dirk Müller, Rita Schlusemann, Alan Swanson, Arjo Vanderjagt, and Janet Hadley Williams.

Hwo did the rise of metropolitan art institutions influence modernism and the modernisation of art in England? This volume explores the artist as creator, notions of class and taste, and the power of institutions to affect creativity and artistic expression. Topics discussed include the radicalism of engravers and how their claim to be artists is an important and negkected aspect of the nineteenth-century art world; and how the aesthetic dispute over the Chantrey Bequest epitomized conflicts of taste, cultural independence, and interdependence between opposed art institutions and the Treasury.

This volume brings together a fascinating selection of studies exploring the soft power tools used by heirs to the throne in order to enhance the communication of monarchies with their audiences during the nineteenth-century. How we perceive royals and their dynasties today – as families, as celebrities, as charitable figureheads of society or as superfluous relics of a bygone age – has deep roots in the monarchical cultures of nineteenth-century Europe. By focusing on the role played by heirs to the throne, this volume offers an original perspective on the ability of monarchies to persuade sceptical audiences, nourish positive emotions and thereby strengthen the position of each dynasty within its respective nation. Using examples from Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Norway and Prussia, an international team of experts analyzes and explains the development of the very soft power tools which are still being used by Ruling Houses today.

Romanticism and the Museum argues that museums were integral to Britain's understanding of itself as a nation in the wake of the French Revolution. It features Wordsworth, Scott, Edgeworth, and literary periodicals featuring Byron and Horace Smith.