Im Zuge der Etablierung europèaischer Kunstakademien bildeten sich Aufnahmezeremonien aus, die von den zukèunftigen Mitgliedern ein Probestèuck zum Beweis ihrer Fèahigkeiten forderten. Erstmalig wird in diesem Band ein vergleichender Blick auf die Aufnahmeprozeduren der wichtigsten europèaischen Akademien und auf diese faszinierenden, zumeist kleinformatigen Werke geworfen, die eine eigene Gattung der Bildhauerei darstellen. An keinen konkreten Verwendungszweck gebunden und unbeeinflusst durch Auftraggeberwèunsche, ermèoglichten sie ihren Schèopfern nicht nur eine selbstbewusste Zurschaustellung ihrer Fèahigkeiten, sondern luden auch zur Gattungsreflektion ein. Die virtuosen Schaustèucke fèuhren damit vor Augen, was die Bildhauer der Zeit als Aufgaben und Ziele ihrer Kunst ansahen.

For the first time, a critical selection of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture’s highly influential conférences is available in English. Between 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Académie’s conférences, foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embody guided artistic practice and art theory in France and throughout Europe for two centuries. In the 1800s, the Académie’s influence waned, and few of the 388 Académie lectures were translated into English. Eminent scholars Christian Michel and Jacqueline Lichtenstein have selected and annotated forty-two of the most representative lectures, creating the first authoritative collection of the conférences for readers of English. Essential to understanding French art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these lectures reveal what leading French artists looked for in a painting or sculpture, the problems they sought to resolve in their works, and how they viewed their own and others’ artistic practice.

This is a comprehensive treatment of the most consequential work of art ever to be executed in Russia - the equestrian monument to Peter the Great. Schenker deals with the cultural setting that prepared the ground for the monument and provides life stories of those who were involved in its creation.

This book offers a cross-disciplinary approach to pain and suffering in the early modern period, based on research in the fields of literary studies, art history, theatre studies, cultural history and the study of emotions. The volume’s two-fold approach to the hurt body, defining ‘hurt’ from the perspectives of both victim and beholder - as well as their combined creation of a gaze - is unique. It establishes a double perspective about the riddle of ‘cruel’ viewing by tracking the shifting cultural meanings of victims’ bodies and confronting them with the values of audiences, religious and popular institutional settings and practices of punishment. It encompasses both the victim’s presence as an image or performed event of pain and the conundrum of the look – the transmitted ‘pain’ experienced by the watching audience.

One of the most imaginative and fascinating artists of eighteenth-century France, Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) was instrumental in the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism and in the artistic rediscovery of classical antiquity. Much celebrated in his time, Bouchardon created some of the most iconic images of the age of Louis XV. His oeuvre demonstrates a remarkable variety of themes (from copies after the antique to subjects of history and mythology, portraiture, anatomical studies, ornament, fountains and tombs), media (drawings, sculptures, medals, prints), and techniques (chalk, plaster, wax, terracotta, marble, bronze). With five essays by experts on Bouchardon's sculpture and graphic arts, more than 140 catalogue entries, and a detailed chronology, this book aims to demonstrate the originality of Bouchardon's art within the cultural and social context of the period, while suggesting the subtle relationship between, as well as the relative autonomy of, the artist's two careers as a sculptor and a draftsman. This lavishly illustrated publication represents an unprecedented and thorough survey on this major and unique artist from the Age of Enlightenment, offering indepth scholarship based on unpublished material.

This book includes some 200 complete entries from the award-winning Dictionary of Women Artists, as well as a selection of introductory essays from the main volume.

Puskin's poetry, prose and drama frequently draw upon myths of classical antiquity, myths of modern European culture - grand narratives such as the Don Juan legend and Dante's Inferno - as well as uniquely Russian myths. The contributors to this volume explore these myths from a variety of critical viewpoints and highlight the specific ways in which Pushkin uses myth - among these his recurrent emphasis on the symbolism of monuments and statuary.