Pevsner calls it ‘marvellous’. Yet the reredos of the fifteenth-century chapel of All Souls College, Oxford, with its combination of medieval niches and statuary by George Gilbert Scott, has remained one of the unsung glories of both medieval perpendicular architecture and Victorian restoration. Informed by recent scientific investigation of its stonework and its surviving medieval polychromy, this volume traces for the first time the entire history of the reredos in its architectural and religious context – from the phases of its medieval and early Tudor construction, through its covering up with a succession of baroque and neoclassical decorative schemes, to its uncovering and restoration in the 1870s. The book provides a novel and revealing vantage point on the artistic, cultural and ecclesiological history of Britain across four centuries.

This substantial catalogue is the final of a three-volume set exploring a remarkable collection of leaves and miniatures from medieval manuscripts. Richly detailed with plentiful illustrations, this notable contribution to medieval scholarship describes French material from c. 1100 to the 15th century, with particular strength in the 13th and 14th centuries. The McCarthy collection is arguably the largest and most important private collection of illuminated cuttings, miniatures, and leaves in the world. Following the publication in 2018 of Italian and Byzantine Miniatures and in 2019 Spanish, English, Flemish and Central European Miniatures, the third volume covers illumination from France. Volume I (published 2018) has eighty Italian and eight Byzantine entries; Volume II (published 2019) is the smallest, with sixty-three entries, divided between eight Spanish (and perhaps Portuguese) entries, eleven English ones, ten from the southern Netherlands, and finally thirty-four from across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Bohemia; the present volume is the largest, with approximately ninety-five French entries. The fact that the French material is the largest group overall is partly a reflection of Robert McCarthy’s early interest in French Gothic art, inspired by youthful visits to Chartres and other Gothic cathedrals. In many cases the recto and verso of each item is reproduced, as the verso often provides vital textual, palaeographical or art historical clues to the date and place of origin, or traces of a later provenance and lists parent volumes, sister leaves and cuttings, some of which are also reproduced.

This richly illustrated publication reproduces and describes effectively every early modern German colour print held at the British Museum. It is one of the world’s most significant collections of these rare milestones of cultural heritage and technology. New photography reveals 150 impressions in jaw-dropping detail, most life-size. Some have never been seen in public or reproduced. It is the first major study of the first wave of German colour printing. It spans medieval printing in the late 1400s through the Renaissance and Reformation of the 1500s. Early Colour Printing features masterpieces by leading figures like Erhard Ratdolt, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien, and Hans Burgkmair, as well as unfairly overlooked entrepreneurs and innovators like Erasmus Loy (and his daughter Anna). Their breakthroughs reproduced artworks and simplified astronomical calculations. They created trends in interior design and signalled ‘red-letter days’. They helped musicians sight-read and they colour-coded metals for goldsmiths. These diverse new functions and markets might seem unrelated. But they are connected, and they cannot be understood in isolation. From artworks to missals, icons to wallpapers, this book breaks new ground by revealing the fascinating underlying technologies that enabled the production of these colour-printed objects.The many inventions of colour printing in the German-speaking lands began with medieval novel solutions. They were devised long before colour printing inks could be formulated. Then, colour printing techniques transformed how printed material could be used during the technological and cultural revolutions of the sixteenth century. Later designers and artists around Europe celebrated these techniques’ heritage for centuries, from the ‘Dürer Renaissance’ until chromolithography revolutionised the print market in the nineteenth century. Early Colour Printing captures this story in rich detail. It sets the stage for second wave of German colour woodcut, which was triggered by the Expressionist revival at the turn of the twentieth century. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, this collection guide will be a standard reference on German graphic art, early modern visual culture, and the history of printing itself. Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum offers significant new research, including previously unidentified examples of early modern colour-printing. Some are believed to be unique in the world; others were made decades before the landmark invention of colourful chiaroscuro woodcut in Italy in 1516. By modelling a printer- and technology-based approach to the history of printing, it contributes to scholarship by pinpointing attributions to printers—not just to artists or designers. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for a new understanding of the history of print, one that encompasses all forms of printed material. This publication derives from an exhibition at the British Museum curated by Elizabeth Savage.

This new edition publishes the letters adressed by Édouard Manet (1832–1883) to his friend, the artist Félix Bracquemond (1833–1914). The correspondence, for the most part unknown, surfaced at a sale in Paris in June 2016 and was acquired the next year by the Fondation Custodia with the generous help of Jean-Luc Baroni. It is edited here for the first time by Jean-Paul Bouillon, whose lifelong occupation with Bracquemond’s life and work has enabled him to situate the mostly undated letters accurately and discuss their contents in the context of both artist’s careers. The letters are presented in their original French language, accompanied by meticulous comments on their dating and subject matter, whereas illustrations reproduce most of the works alluded to in the texts. They are preceded by a comprehensive introduction on the friendship between the two men which highlights the principal subjects and themes around which the correspondence revolves over the years. Bracquemond and Manet probably met around 1860, at a time when Manet was beginning to take an interest in the potential of printmaking for disseminating his work. Both were among the founders of the ‘Société des Aquafortistes’ in 1862 and in these years Manet must have relied heavily on Bracquemond, the outstanding engraver of his generation, for his first attempts in the technique. The new interest in etching had a fierce supporter in Charles Baudelaire, who figures besides the two artists in Henri Fantin-Latour’s Homage to Delacroix of 1864, the year Bracquemond portrayed his friend in an important pastel which is here reproduced for the first time in its original form. Many of the letters attest to the frequent, at times almost daily, contacts between the two men, who met in Manet’s studio, at artist’s cafés like the café de Bade and the Guerbois, and at dinners with Manet, his wife and his mother. Others concern joint projects, such as the illustration of Émile Zola’s brochure issued at the occasion of Manet’s solo exhibition of 1867, or Manet’s ex-libris designed by Bracquemond in 1875. Their strong bond emerges perhaps most clearly from two longer letters in which Manet, writing from Arcachon – where, awaiting the end of the Commune, he tried to recover from the privations he suffered during the Siege of Paris in 1870 – poured his heart out to Bracquemond about the country’s political situation. Laconic in form as most of the letters are, the correspondence will certainly prove to be an important source for our knowledge of Manet’s life and dealings which, after more than a century of intense scholarship, still presents many a gap. This book is published by Ad Ilissum as the second volume in the series The Fondation Custodia Studies in the History of Art, which reflects and continues forward into the present the scholarly interests of the institution’s founder, Frits Lugt.

This stunning two-volume publication introduces readers to one of the largest private collections of architectural drawings in the world. Showcasing drawings and related models and artefacts dating from 1691 to the mid 20th century, this lavish tome includes both a catalogue and new texts by leading authorities and provides a fascinating look at these often very beautiful by-products of architectural training and practice. One of the largest private collections of architectural drawings in the world has been assembled over 30 years by investor and philanthropist Peter May. Comprising more than 600 sheets that have all been carefully preserved and handsomely framed, the drawings and related models and artefacts date from 1691 to the mid 20th century. This handsome two-volume publication will introduce amateurs and specialists alike to the largely unknown collection. The book includes a catalogue and innovative texts by leading authorities that present the raison-d’être for the production and preservation of these sometimes neglected by-products of architectural training and practice that have been collected off-and-on through history by individuals and institutions. The architectural sheets acquired for the collection are principally 19th- or early 20th-century competition or certification drawings by design students. Others are presentation drawings for public commissions, reconstruction studies or interior designs. The catalogue is arranged by category, to demonstrate May’s inclination towards specific building types such as commercial or cultural institutions, train stations and spas, landmarks and monuments, private and royal residences, and cast-iron architecture. Also included is a category for landscape designs and garden architecture, reflecting May’s experience as a gentleman farmer with a predilection for building.Peter May informs the reader about his history as a collector and builder. Maureen Cassidy-Geiger discusses the formation of the collection and with Basile Baudez introduces the French system of architectural education, from which some of the finest drawings come. Charles Hind offers a history of design training in Britain and writes about patterns of collecting and the market for architectural drawings. Matthew Wells’s subject is the history of architectural models.

The magnificent Burke Collection of Italian miniatures, which is housed in Special Collections in the the Stanford University Libraries, has been built over more than twenty years and includes manuscript leaves, cuttings, and codices by many of the greatest Italian artists of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Works in the collection range in date from the 12th through the 16th centuries, and in them we see masterfully painted initials, borders, and miniatures that enhance our appreciation of the great skill that John Ruskin called “writing made beautiful.” Comprised of over 40 miniatures from 35 different artists representing 13 different regions of Italy, the collection is characterized by its astonishingly high quality. It includes works produced by the most renowned Italian illuminators, who are often also documented as painters. Artists from Florence and Siena are certainly the best represented in the Burke collection. These include masterpieces by Don Simone Camaldolese, Lorenzo Monaco, Beato Angelico of Florence, and Giovanni di Paolo and Pellegrino di Mariano of Siena. The collection equally underlines the range of styles achieved by Italian illuminators active in Emilia-Romana, where great interpreters of Giotto were active, such as Neri da Rimini, Tommaso da Modena, and Nicolò di Giacomo, as well as masterpieces of the Venetian school, such as works by Cristoforo Cortese and the Master of the Murano Gradual. Lombardy is represented by one of the notable specialists of late Gothic painting, the Olivetan Master. Among the many highlights, there is the incomparable and world-class Crucifixion of the Master of Saint Francis of Assisi. Edited by Sandra Hindman (Professor Emerita of Art History at Northwestern University and Owner of Les Enluminures) and Federica Toniolo (Professor History of Illuminated Manuscripts and Medieval Art, University of Padova), with an introduction by Christopher de Hamel, this catalogue presents essays written by an international team of authors from England, Italy, Switzerland and the United States,each a specialist in their fields.

Henry Moore's humanist sculpture changed the course of art in the twentieth-century and raised the status of British sculpture internationally. Friendships and Legacies explores Moore's relationships with collectors Robert and Lisa Sainsbury and photographer John Hedgecoe and how they had impact on the public presentation of Moore and his work, who became one of the most prominent sculptors of the twentieth century. Moore became friends with Robert and Lisa Sainsbury after their first purchase of his work in 1933. They formed a close friendship and went on to acquire 22 important works by the artist. The Sainsburys gifted their personal collection to the University of East Anglia where Moore's works now form a key part of the displays both inside and outside the Sainsbury Centre. Henry Moore and John Hedgecoe had a close friendship spanning almost forty years. Hedgecoe took many photographs of Moore, producing four books about the artist and his work. Many of these photographs have become iconic, contributing to the public perception of Moore. Friendships and Legacies also includes 24 extended catalogue texts about each of the works by Moore in the Sainsbury Centre collection. The book is richly illustrated with archive images and new photography.

Nathaniel Silver, William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection, tells the acquisition story behind The Rape of Europa (1562), one of the most infl uential and iconic Renaissance paintings in America. The purchase of Titian’s masterpiece from an English aristocrat marked the beginning of a new phase in Gardner’s business relationship with scholar and art dealer Bernard Berenson and made her the envy of every art collector in the United States. While Henry James nicknamed Isabella "daughter of Titian" and all of Boston fell at her feet, European contemporaries took note of their rapidly disappearing national patrimony. The same celebrity that would make Europa the crown jewel of Boston's newest museum fueled the widely publicized debate over England’s artistic heritage. "American despoilers" became the rallying cry of British museum directors, curators, and scholars who cast their country as the victim of New World rapacity, and Isabella its most brilliant villain. This volume further explores Europa in Titian’s own time. Here the legendary painter laid claim to the power of poetic invention, creating the last of the six mythological canvases to reach Philip II in three years between 1559 and 1562. Described by the artist as poesie (literally "painted poetries"), these celebrated pictures reimagined stories from antiquity and explored the epic consequences of encountersbetween gods and mortals. Titian’s staggeringly original interpretations solicited comparisons with Ovid’s poetry and ancient art. Completed over more than a decade, they fulfi lled part of a larger agreement to furnish the king with paintings both secular – and highly sensual in character – as well as altarpieces of religious subjects. Published here for the first time, dramatically enlarged details of the composition demonstrate Titian’s deft touch and dazzlingly technical accomplishment. These bravura passages recently revealed by the painting’s comprehensive cleaning – the first since its arrival in America – are accompanied by commentary from the conservator,Gianfranco Pocobene, who returned Europa to its original glory.

15th century Italian painting mastered the art of painting light in the world. As Leon Battista Alberti wrote in On Painting (1435), "light has the power to vary colour", hence a rich palette of pigments and how to mix colours was necessary to capture every nuance. Countless recipes are provided by the anonymous author of "Secrets for Colours" (c. 1450), called the Bolognese Manuscript, intended for use in fresco and in oil on panel, accompanied by instructions on how to make varnishes for paintings.

Ben Nicholson: Distant Planes provides a succinct and insightful introduction to a little-known period of the artist's career: his years in Switzerland. Nicholson is one of the great British modernists of the twentieth century and this publication includes contributions from the leading specialists in the field, with original essays by Dr Lee Beard, director of the Ben Nicholson catalogue raisonné project, Peter Khoroche, author of Ben Nicholson: Drawings and Painted Reliefs (2002), and Chris Stephens, Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath. In 1958, at the height of his creative powers and buoyed by recent accolades at the Venice Biennale and elsewhere, Nicholson left behind the coastal wilds of Cornwall for the serene beauty of Lake Maggiore. With a seemingly inexhaustible index of formal ideas, in Switzerland he returned with renewed vigour to the carved relief. Piano Nobile's publication is richly illustrated and includes several major reliefs which are presented alongside landscape drawings, both of which explore a poetic sense of place that was crucial to Nicholson's work during the period. It also includes previously unpublished material relating to Nicholson and his Swiss period.

The Chipstone Foundation’s annual American Furniture and its sister publication Ceramics in America are the most influential publications to have emerged in the decorative arts field during the last twenty-five years. These journals continue to set new standards for cutting edge research, photography, and graphic design while forging links between academia, museums, craftspeople, and the collecting world.Acknowledged as the journal of record in its field, American Furniture presents new research on furniture design, use, production, and appreciation. Begun in 1993, this award-winning annual provides a comprehensive forum on furniture history, technology, connoisseurship, and conservation by the foremost scholars in the field. It is the only interdisciplinary journal devoted exclusively to furniture made or used in the Americas from the seventeenth century to the present.

Elijah Pierce (1892–1984) was born the youngest son of a former slave on a Mississippi farm. He began carving at an early age when his father gave him his first pocketknife. Pierce became known for his wood carvings nationally and then internationally for the first time in the 1970s. Accompanying a major exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, this publication seeks to revisit the art of Elijah Pierce and see it in its own right, not simply as ‘naive’. Elijah Pierce made his living as a barber; he was also a qualified preacher. Just as his barber shop was a place for gossip and meeting, so his art reflects his own and his community's concerns, but also universal themes. Through his carvings Pierce told his own life story and chronicled the African-American experience. His subjects ranged from politics to religious stories but he seldom distinguished the race of his figures – he thought of them as everyman. His secular carvings show his love of baseball, boxing, comics and the movies, and also reflect his appreciation for American heroes who fought for justice and liberty. In 1932, Pierce completed ‘the Book of Wood’, which he considered his best work. Originally carved as individual scenes, the completed ‘Book’ tells the story of Jesus carved in bas-relief. He and his wife Cornelia held “sacred art demonstrations” to explain the meaning of the Book of Wood. Pierce’s work was first appreciated in the art world thanks to a fellow sculptor, Boris Gruenwald, who saw the expressive power of his work. As a later critic wrote, “There are 500 woodcarvers working today in the United States who are technically as proficient as Pierce, but none can equal the power of Pierce’s personal vision”. Pierce became known primarily in circles promoting ‘naive’ art, winning first prize at the International Meeting of Naive Art in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1973. The vast majority of his work is now held in Columbus, Ohio, which had become his home town. This book revisits Pierce’s art seeking to see it in its own right, and not simply as ‘naive’. Another critic wrote: “He reduces what he wants to say to the simplest forms and compositions. They are decorative, direct, bold and amusing. He uses glitter and all kinds of devices to make his message clear. It gives his work an immediacy that’s very appealing” – an appeal arising from a sophisticated art with its own particular voice.

This book recounts the exciting rediscovery of Giorgio Vasari’s painting Allegory of Patience, painted in 1551–52 for the Bishop of Arezzo, Vasari’s hometown. The painting was conceived in Rome with the aid of Michelangelo, as many surviving letters reveal. The work will be on view to the public at the National Gallery, London, through 2023. The monumental figure of a woman, life-sized, with arms crossed, watches time run down. The passing of time is symbolized in the drops that fall from an antique water clock beside her, gradually wearing away the stone on which she rests her foot. The Bishop of Arezzo regarded patience as the key to his career and achievements, and wished it to be represented in a picture. Vasari consulted his contemporaries and fellow humanists as well as the great sculptor Michelangelo when deciding what form it should take. The image represents more exactly the Latin tag ‘diuturna tolerantia’ (daily tolerance). The painting quickly became famous in its time and numerous copies were made of it - but not until now has the original emerged. Thanks to letters between those involved, the painting and the process of its creation are richly documented, and in particular provide insights and quotations about picture-making from Michelangelo. The book carries full documentation of the work and its known copies, some of which can be traced to leading patrons in Renaissance Italy. It also examines Vasari’s own autograph technique and artistic aims.

Peter Brandes is one of the most significant Danish visual artists alive today. He is represented in the collections of leading museums worldwide, including the Louvre, and is featured in the most important Danish museums. Peter Brandes’ monumental sculptures and jars can be seen throughout Denmark, and he has decorated a number of Danish churches along with churches in Norway and the United States. In Jerusalem, Brandes’ Isaac Vase, approximately five meters tall, stands at the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. Peter Brandes’ oeuvre is gigantic. It spans more than fifty years, and includes such varied forms of artistic expression as painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic art, ceramics, and not least photography and stained glass, for which he has developed new techniques. Dialogue with tradition—particularly the Jewish, Greek, and Christian traditions—runs throughout his work, marking Brandes as one of Denmark’s foremost practitioners of cultural migration. Peter Brandes: Meridian of Art is the first monograph on the art of Peter Brandes. The book pursues a series of central themes that cut across Brandes’ artistic production, connecting and traversing these with lines that the book’s author, Ettore Rocca, calls the “meridian of art.” The expression “meridian” is borrowed from the German poet Paul Celan, the author with whom Brandes has felt the greatest kinship throughout his career. For Celan, a meridian designates the indestructible, invisible line in a poetic conversation. Correspondingly, in the cultural migration that weaves throughout Brandes' art, Rocca finds a meridian that at once appears impossible and indestructible.

This book recounts the exciting rediscovery of Giorgio Vasari’s painting Allegory of Patience, painted in 1551–52 for the Bishop of Arezzo, Vasari’s hometown. The painting was conceived in Rome with the aid of Michelangelo, as many surviving letters reveal. The work will be on view to the public at the National Gallery, London, through 2023. The monumental figure of a woman, life-sized, with arms crossed, watches time run down. The passing of time is symbolized in the drops that fall from an antique water clock beside her, gradually wearing away the stone on which she rests her foot. The Bishop of Arezzo regarded patience as the key to his career and achievements, and wished it to be represented in a picture. Vasari consulted his contemporaries and fellow humanists as well as the great sculptor Michelangelo when deciding what form it should take. The image represents more exactly the Latin tag ‘diuturna tolerantia’ (daily tolerance). The painting quickly became famous in its time and numerous copies were made of it – but not until now has the original emerged. Thanks to letters between those involved, the painting and the process of its creation are richly documented, and in particular provide insights and quotations about picture-making from Michelangelo. The book carries full documentation of the work and its known copies, some of which can be traced to leading patrons in Renaissance Italy. It also examines Vasari’s own autograph technique and artistic aims.

Drawn to Paper: Degas to Rego is a publication showcasing works on paper by some of the leading figures of European modernism. The selection is built around a group of works from a private collection and have not been seen in public since they were acquired in the 1970s and early ‘80s. At the heart of the collection is a group of works made by leading artists on the mid-twentieth-century Paris art scene, including the American Alexander Calder and Spaniards Picasso, Dalí and Miró, as well as the French artists Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger. The publication is fully-illustrated with a prefatory essay and catalogue entries.