Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy examines how the seventeenth-century Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (better known as Il Guercino) instilled the political ideas of his patrons into his paintings. As it focuses on eight works showing religious scenes and scenes taken from Roman history, this volume bridges the gap between social and cultural history and the history of art, untangling the threads of art, politics, and religion during the time of the Thirty Years' War. A prolific painter, Guercino enjoyed the patronage of such luminaries as Pope Gregory XV, Cardinals Serra, Ludovisi, Spada, and Magalotti, and the French secretary of state La Vrilli?. While scholarly research has been devoted to Guercino's oeuvre, this book is the first to place his works squarely in the context of the political and social circumstances of seventeenth-century Italy, stressing the points of view and agendas of his powerful patrons. What were once meanings only apparent to the educated elite?or those familiar with the political affairs of the time?are now scrutinized and clarified for an audience far from the struggles of early modern Europe.

Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy examines how the seventeenth-century painter Guercino instilled the political ideas of his powerful patrons-including Pope Gregory XV, Cardinal Spada, and La Vrillière-into his paintings. Bridging the gap between social history and art history, the book untangles the threads of art, politics, and religion during the time of the Thirty Years' War as it interprets eight paintings of religious and Roman historical scenes.

Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy examines how the seventeenth-century Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (better known as Il Guercino) instilled the political ideas of his patrons into his paintings. As it focuses on eight works showing religious scenes and scenes taken from Roman history, this volume bridges the gap between social and cultural history and the history of art, untangling the threads of art, politics, and religion during the time of the Thirty Years' War. A prolific painter, Guercino enjoyed the patronage of such luminaries as Pope Gregory XV, Cardinals Serra, Ludovisi, Spada, and Magalotti, and the French secretary of state La Vrilli?. While scholarly research has been devoted to Guercino's oeuvre, this book is the first to place his works squarely in the context of the political and social circumstances of seventeenth-century Italy, stressing the points of view and agendas of his powerful patrons. What were once meanings only apparent to the educated elite?or those familiar with the political affairs of the time?are now scrutinized and clarified for an audience far from the struggles of early modern Europe.

Why is a cross-eyed man from the small town of Cento in northern Italy now regarded as one of the greatest draftsmen of the seventeenth century? Featuring important Guercino drawings from the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, this volume looks deeply into the nature of the artist’s extraordinary talent for drawing.

Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), a major figure of postwar European art, blurred numerous boundaries in his life and his work. Moving beyond the slashed canvases for which he is renowned, this book takes a fresh look at Fontana’s innovations in painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, and installation art. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} Fontana was an important figure in both Italy and his native Argentina, where he pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between mediums. Archival images of environments, public commissions, installations, and now-destroyed pieces accompany lavish illustrations of his work from 1930 to the late 1960s, providing a new approach to an artist who helped define the political, cultural, and technological thresholds of the mid-twentieth century.

The modern world can get messy. Fortunately, Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli is a man of obsessive order, as he demonstrates with eye-catching surprise in The Art of Clean Up. Already a bestseller in Germany, this compulsive title has sold more than 100,000 copies in less than a year, and the fastidiously arranged images have garnered blog love from NPR, Brain Pickings, swissmiss, and more. Tapping into the desire for organization and the insanity of über-order, Wehrli humorously categorizes everyday objects and situations by color, size, and shape. He arranges alphabet soup into alphabetical order, sorts the night sky by star size, and aligns sunbathers' accoutrements—all captured in bright photographs sure to astonish even the pickiest of neat freaks.

Try your hands at these historically and culturally important methods, and create some beautiful paintings of your own. Chinese painting is an ancient art that has evolved and become refined over many centuries. Artists brush ink and color pigments onto silk or paper using a variety of techniques, with two main approaches: gongbi a traditional and realistic style based on line drawing, and xieyi style, a freehand method that uses fewer strokes to suggest objects in a less literal way. Painting themes generally fall into three categories: figure, landscaping, and bird-and-flower. Chinese brush painting is mainly presented in lines, shades and white space to express the feelings about nature, social phenomena, and the very essence of the universe. The framework for this expression is often traditional: certain subjects carry cultural connotations that are well-known and imbue the painting with a layer of meaning beyond face value of objects shown. The traditional subjects such as mandarin ducks, butterflies, and the 'Four Gentlemen' (plum blossoms, orchids, bamboos, and chrysanthemum) are examples that contain this rich cultural meaning. Readers will learn first about the tools and materials, then painting techniques. Early pages explore the very basic painting methods and subjects—perfect for beginning painters—but continue to build skills for painting plants and animals of increasing complexity. Chinese Brush Painting illustrates several Chinese brush painting techniques with the use of different tools, brushwork and color mixing. With the step-by-step projects, you can first follow the introductory lessons to learn the necessary skills of brushwork, usage of paper, and characteristics of water, ink and colors; then follow the advanced lessons to learn the compositions and more complicated color applications.