Through meticulously researched case studies, this book explores the materiality of terracotta sculpture in early modern Europe. Chapters present a broad geographical perspective showcasing examples of modelling, firing, painting, and gilding of clay in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The volume considers known artworks by celebrated artists, such as Luca della Robbia, Andrea del Verrocchio, Filipe Hodart, or Hans Reichle, in parallel with several lesser-studied terracotta sculptures and tin-glazed earthenware made by anonymous artisans. This book challenges arbitrary distinctions into the fine art and the applied arts, that obscured the image of artistic production in the early modern world. The centrality of clay in the creative processes of artists working with two- and three-dimensional artefacts comes to the fore. The role of terracotta figures in religious practices, as well as processes of material substitutions or mimesis, confirm the medium’s significance for European visual and material culture in general. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance studies, and material culture.

This study constructs a framework of narratology for art history and rewrites the development of twentieth-century Chinese art from a narratological perspective. Theoretically and methodologically oriented, this is a self-reflective meta-art history studying the art historical narratives while narrating the story of modern and contemporary Chinese art. Thus, this book explores the three layers of narrative within the narratological framework: the first-hand fabula, the secondary narration, and the tertiary narrativization. With this tertiary narrativization, the reader-author presents three types of narrative: the grand narrative of the central thesis of this book, the middle-range narrative of the chapter theses, and case analyses supporting these theses. The focus of this tertiary narrativization is the interaction between Western influence on Chinese art and the Chinese response to this influence. The central thesis is that this interaction conditioned and shaped the development of Chinese art at every historical turning point in the twentieth century. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, critical theory, Chinese studies, and cultural studies.

This is a study of the relation between the fine arts and philosophy in France, from the aftermath of the 1789 revolution to the end of the nineteenth century, when a philosophy of being called “Monism” emerged and became increasingly popular among intellectuals, artists and scientists. Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer traces the evolution and impact of this monist thought and its various permutations as a transformative force on certain aspects of French art and culture – from Romanticism to Impressionism – and as a theoretical backdrop that paved the way to as yet unexplored aspects of a modernist aesthetic. Chapters concentrate on three major artists, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and Claude Monet (1840–1926), and their particular approach to and interpretation of this unitarian concept. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, philosophy and cultural history.

This book explores the ways Robert Smithson’s art revealed and defamiliarized the constructs of rational reality in order to allow radically speculative alternatives to emerge. In this way, his art is conceived as a true fiction that eradicates a false reality. By tracing the web of correspondences between Smithson and science fictional, speculative and mystical modes of thought, Rory O’Dea explores the aesthetic encounters engendered by his art as a means to warp the contours of reality and loosen the boundaries of being human. Given the current and impending catastrophes of the Anthropocene, which represents the ever-expanding planetary shadow cast by humanism, the possibility of being other-than-human posited by Smithson’s art is a matter of urgent concern. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, American studies and environmental humanities.

Domestic devotion has become an increasingly important area of research in recent years, with the publication of a number of significant studies on the early modern period in particular. This Special Issue aims to build on these works and to expand their range, both geographically and chronologically. This collection focuses on lived religion and the devotional practices found in the domestic settings of late medieval and early modern Europe. More particularly, it investigates the degree to which the experience of personal or familial religious practice in the domestic realm intersected with the more public expression of faith in liturgical or communal settings. Its broad geographical range (spanning northern, southern, central and eastern Europe) includes practices related to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This Special Issue will be of interest to historians, art historians, medievalists, early modernists, historians of religion, anthropologists and theologians, as well as those interested in the history of material religious culture. It also offers important insights into research areas such as gender studies, histories of the emotions and histories of the senses.

This collection of essays explores hybridity in early modern art through two primary lenses: hybrid media and hybrid time. The varied approaches in the volume to theories of hybridity reflect the increased presence in art historical scholarship of interdisciplinary frameworks that extend art historical inquiry beyond the single time or material. The essays engage with what happens when an object is considered beyond the point of origin or as a legend of information, the implications of the juxtaposition of disparate media, how the meaning of an object alters over time, and what the conspicuous use of out-of-date styles means for the patron, artist, and/or viewer. Essays examine both canonical and lesser-known works produced by European artists in Italy, northern Europe, and colonial Peru, ca. 1400–1600. The book will be of interest to art historians, visual culture historians, and early modern historians.

This volume explores the late medieval and early modern periods from the perspective of objects. While the agency of things has been studied in anthropology and archaeology, it is an innovative approach for art historical investigations. Each contributor takes as a point of departure active things: objects that were collected, exchanged, held in hand, carried on a body, assembled, cared for or pawned. Through a series of case studies set in various geographic locations, this volume examines a rich variety of systems throughout Europe and beyond. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license