An innovative examination of encounters between humans and lions and representations of these charismatic animals in the visual culture of postrevolutionary France In artistic traditions that stretch back to antiquity, lions have been associated with strength and authority. The figure of the lion in nineteenth-century France stood at a crossroads between these historical meanings and contemporary developments that recast the animal's significance, such as the literal presence of lions in public menageries. In this highly original study, Katie Hornstein explores the relationships among animals, spectatorship, and visual production. She examines the fascinating encounters between artists, viewers, and lions that took place--in menageries and circuses, on canvases, and on the pages of books--and out of which, she argues, new perceptions of power, empire, and the natural world emerged. Myth and Menagerie considers a range of visual objects, bringing into dialogue photographs of circus animals, hunting manuals, and zoo guidebooks with sculptures, drawings, and paintings by artists such as Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, and Rosa Bonheur. Illuminating the lives of individual lions against the backdrop of societal change and colonial expansion, Hornstein constructs a fresh theoretical framework for thinking about animals as more than symbols or passive subjects and for acknowledging a history in which both humans and animals had a stake.

Old master drawings kept in storage, their access limited to a few, will now be made widely accessible in this new series which will eventually include all drawings in some 70 midwestern collections. The first volume introduces a corpus of the rarest of European drawings through the year 1500, a time when artists had just begun to value drawings as works of art. It presents 30 entries written by 12 scholars, each a specialist in the art of the period, and each with immediate access to the artwork itself. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR