You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Allan Braham's comprehensive treatment of this brilliant and complex period introduces the reader to the major buildings, architects, and architectural patrons of the day. At the same time, it explores the broader determinants of architectural production: the rapid economic expansion of Paris and the main provincial centers and the increasing demand for improved public amenities--theaters, schools, markets, and hospitals. This generously illustrated book provides a vivid commentary on society and manners in pre-Revolutionary France.
This volume brings together the papers presented at a conference entitled 'Experiencing the Garden in the Eighteenth Century', held at the Institute of Romance Studies, Senate House, University of London on 13 March 2004. Speakers came from Europe, the United States and New Zealand, and each gave a very different perspective on the eighteenth-century landscape garden in England, France and elsewhere in Europe. The papers focused on the theme of experience, an especially important aspect of eighteenth-century garden design. Landscape gardens were created for visitors to move through on a journey from one place to the next: the garden would not be seen all at once, but would be experienced as a story unfolding. The visitor would follow a circuit around the garden, moving from light to shade, being given suggestive prompts with statues, temples and viewpoints, as if on a sensory, emotional and intellectual journey.
Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.
In this timely and provocative study, Hubert Robert's paintings of urban ruins are interpreted as manifestations of a new consciousness of time, one shaped by the uncertainties of an economy characterized by the dread-inducing expansion of credit, frenzied speculation on the stock exchange, and bold ventures in real estate. As the favored artist of an enterprising Parisian elite, Robert is a prophetic case study of the intersections between aesthetics and modernity's dawning business culture. At the center of this lively narrative lie Robert's depictions of the ruins of Paris--macabre and spectacular paintings of fires and demolitions created on the eve of the French Revolution. Drawing on a vast range of materials, Futures & Ruins understands these artworks as harbingers of a modern appetite for destruction. The paintings are examined as expressions of the pleasures and perils of a risk economy. This captivating account--lavishly illustrated with rarely reproduced objects--recovers the critical significance of the eighteenth-century cult of ruins and of Robert's art for our times.
Focusing on the meaning of space for the French and the connection between the nation's history and its geography, this is the second volume in the translation of Nora's "Les Lieux de memoire". The essays gathered here cover essential approaches to French space: external and internal boundaries, the base unit of local space, and more.
Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century Wend von Kalnein French architecture of the eighteenth century - which exhibited great technical ability and refined taste - influenced architectural style throughout Europe. This handsome book is a survey of the French architecture of the period. It begins with the origins of the 'style moderne' under the last years of Louis XIV, discusses the end of Rococo and the return to antiquity, and concludes with the Revolutionary architecture and the house of Madame Récamier. Kalnein describes the development of palace and hôtel architecture by the two great architects de Cotte and Boffrand, discussing such large urban projects as the reconstructio...
Throughout history rulers have used clothes as a form of legitimization and propaganda. While palaces, pictures, and jewels might reflect the choice of a monarch’s predecessors or advisers, clothes reflected the preferences of the monarch himself. Being both personal and visible, the right costume at the right time could transform and define a monarch’s reputation. Many royal leaders have known this, from Louis XIV to Catherine the Great and from Napoleon I to Princess Diana. This intriguing book explores how rulers have sought to control their image through their appearance. Mansel shows how individual styles of dress throw light on the personalities of particular monarchs, on their court system, and on their ambitions. The book looks also at the economics of the costume industry, at patronage, at the etiquette involved in mourning dress, and at the act of dressing itself. Fascinating glimpses into the lives of European monarchs and contemporary potentates reveal the intimate connection between power and the way it is packaged.