In 1603, the beginning of the Stuart reign, painting was of minor importance at the English court, where the elaborately designed masques of Inigo Jones served as the prime medium of royal representation. Only two decades later, their most celebrated performer, George Villiers, the First Duke of Buckingham had assembled one of the largest and most significant collections of painting in early seventeenth-century Europe. His career as the personal and political favourite of two succeeding monarchs – James I and Charles I – coincides with the commission of a number of highly ambitious portraits from the hands of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck that displayed his body in spectacular manner. As the first comprehensive study of Buckingham’s patronage of the visual arts, this book is concerned with the question of how the painted image of the courtier transferred strategies of social distinction that had originated in the masque to the language of painting. Establishing a new grammar in the competing rhetorics of bodily self-fashioning, this recast notion of portraiture contributed to an epistemological change in perceptions of visual representation at the early modern English court, in the course of which painting advanced to the central art form in the aesthetics of kingship.

The Dutch-born English Baroque portrait painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) is chiefly known for his drowsy, sensual beauties and bewigged courtiers associated with the Restoration court of Charles II. He is often seen as merely successor or "imitator" of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), with a common resemblance in all his sitters and an inability to capture a true likeness, as well as an absence of any personal characterization or psychological interest. Alternately, this dissertation aims to reveal Lely's genius of superb draughtsmanship, fine color and lively composition, as well as to examine and reinstate the artist's impact and deep impress on British painting. Lely's early style owes much to his Dutch origin and training with the pioneers of Dutch classicism, and the distinctive qualities of his early work and the change in his traditions and techniques are examined. The development of Lely's portrait style is examined - from his arrival in England in the early 1640s through his years as leading aristocratic and society portraitist and Principal Painter to the King in the 1660s, to his mature work in the 1670s when his work is characterized by a restricted palette and cool restraint. And finally, Lely as collector is examined. He assembled one of the largest and most impressive private collections of art in seventeenth-century Europe, and his acquisitions and their influences, benefits and effects are considered. Upon Lely's death, his highly important collection was dispersed by auction in a series of four well-publicized sales in 1681, 1682, 1688 and 1694, respectively. These sales brought many important works to the London art market, and were some of the most important sales to date in England, as well as the most spectacular of the modern auction world. Although Lely initially emulated the style and techniques of Van Dyck, he juxtaposed his profound Dutch qualities of rich color, dramatic illumination and romantic landscapes, and ultimately imbued a sensuality, languor and luxurious negligence into the traditions and continuity of Van Dyck's grand Baroque style of English portraiture. Subsequently, together later with Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), Sir Peter Lely completely dominated British portraiture from the death of Van Dyck in 1641 until William Hogarth (1697-1764) challenged his style in the first half of the eighteenth century. Due to large file size, some images within this ebook do not appear in high resolution.

In this major reassessment of his subject, Richard Rowland restores Thomas Heywood-playwright, miscellanist and translator-to his rightful place in early modern theatre history. Rowland contextualizes and historicizes this important contemporary of Shakespeare, locating him on the geographic and cultural map of London through the business Heywood conducts in his writing. Arguing that Heywood's theatrical output deserves the same attention and study that has been directed towards Shakespeare, Jonson, and more recently Middleton, this book looks at three periods of Heywood's creativity: the end of the Elizabethan era and the beginning of the Jacobean, the mid 1620s, and the mid to late 1630s. By locating the works of those years precisely in the political and cultural conflicts to which they respond, Rowland initiates a major reassessment of the remarkable achievements of this playwright. Rowland also pays attention to Heywood in performance, seeing this writer as a jobbing playwright working in an industry that depended on making writing work. Finally, the author explores how Heywood participated in the civic life of London in his writings beyond the playhouse. Here Rowland examines pamphlets, translations, and the sequence of lord mayor's pageants that Heywood produced as the political crisis deepened. Offering close readings of Heywood that establish the range, quality and theatrical significance of the writing, Thomas Heywood's Theatre, 1599-1639 fits a fascinating piece into the emerging picture of the 'complete' early modern English theatre.

How did the classical tradition survive on the North Sea shores? This richly illustrated book explores the interplay between art and erudition in the seventeenth century. It analyses the sources, editions, and reception of Franciscus Junius’s writings to chart how ideas about Northern European painting, from Van Dyck to Rembrandt, developed as a counterweight to the Italian tradition. Thus the language of art in Junius’s The Painting of the Ancients appears to be related to his seminal work in the field of Germanic linguistics and his discovery of the shared pre-Christian civilization of Holland and England. Junius’s innovative pairing of scholarship to the painter’s practice illuminates the reception of antiquity and the creation of an Anglo-Dutch artistic Arcadia.