Susanna Caviglia, History, Painting, and the Seriousness of pleasure in the age of Louis XV (Oxford: Liverpool University Press on behalf of Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, 2020). 330 pages, 87 illustrations (63 black and white, 24 colorplates) In this fascinating and important book, Susanna Caviglia invites us to reconsider new contexts and…
The Palace of Versailles remains a subject of interest and fascination for scholars and curators alike. Recent exhibitions and publications reveal that there are still new angles to explore of this already much-studied seat and symbol of power. The Versailles Effect: Objects, Lives, and Afterlives of the Domaine (New York:…
In a 1994 interview with Jerome Brooks for The Paris Review, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe reflected on his impetus to write: There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until…
On March 1, 1720, the London theater entrepreneur and critic Richard Steele wrote of an opera rehearsal in an essay for his journal The Theatre: “At the Rehearsal on Friday last, Signor Nihilini Beneditti rose half a Note above his Pitch formerly known. Opera Stock [climbed] from 83 and a…
Marking Time: Objects, People, and Their Lives, 1500-1800, ed. by Edward Town and Angela McShane (New Haven and London: Yale University Press and the Yale Center for British Art, 2020). 512 pages, 460 color + b-w illus., $65. With essays by Glenn Adamson, Justin M. Brown, Edward S. Cooke Jr.,…
Exotic? Switzerland Looking Outward in the Age of Enlightenment, Palais de Rumine, Lausanne, September 24, 2020 – February 28, 2021. Curated by Noémie Etienne, Claire Brizon, and Chonja Lee in collaboration with Etienne Wismer and Sara Petrella. Scenography: Atelier Frédéric Dedelley in collaboration with Jocelyne Fracheboud. Interactive visit of the…
Emily Engel, Pictured Politics: Visualizing Colonial History in South American Portrait Collections, Austin, TX, University of Texas Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-4773-2059-4 Portraiture has provided intellectual fodder for art historical inquiry since the discipline’s inception and has bridged different geographic, material, and temporal fields. Dedicated to paintings by Renaissance titans, like…
Jason Nguyen The National Maritime Museum in London houses thousands of artifacts from British nautical history. Among these items is a small handheld globe from 1719 by the British cartographer Herman Moll (Fig. 1). These popular commodities, made of papier-mâché and plaster and wrapped in printed and hand-colored paper, functioned…
Camille Mathieu In a famous 1720 portrait of Scottish financier John Law, founder of France’s first bank (1716) and the Company of the West (1717), he stands in courtly dress in front of a well-manicured, formal French lawn (Fig. 1).[1] His dignified attire matches that of the orderly garden; his…
William N. Goetzmann and Darius A. Spieth In an influential study of the mechanisms of absolutist power, Louis Marin compared the icon of Jansenism, Philippe de Champaigne’s Christ on the Cross (Fig. 1), to the Sun King’s official state portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud (Fig. 2): Compare two figures of the…