Wolf Burchard, The Sovereign Artist: Charles Le Brun and the Image of Louis XIV (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016), 287pp. This impressive new study of Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) argues that the artist was not only responsible for the elaboration of the image of Louis XIV as the absolute monarch,…
The Golconda Coverlet, produced in the dyeing and painting workshops of the Coromandel Coast of southeastern India during the seventeenth century, presents a glimpse into the unique cosmopolitan world of the early modern Deccan (Fig. 1).[1] The term Deccan indicates the plateau in South India surrounded by the Malabar Coast…
Revolution confronted the visitor in “Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015,” an exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that was on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum from June 25 to September 17, 2017 (Fig. 1). In the first gallery, a mannequin holding the French…
Displaying historical works in contemporary art museums is a risky – yet potentially rewarding – business. Case in point: Dioramas, an exhibition curated by Claire Garnier, Laurent Le Bon, and Florence Ostende that just closed at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and will have a second venue starting…
In the summer of 1815, Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s older brother and dethroned king of Spain, fled Europe and arrived in New York under the assumed name of the comte de Survilliers. He brought with him a veritable art museum, far beyond anything that had been seen before in the Americas.…
Combine lime and gypsum with water, then add stone dust or sand and animal hair to strengthen it: this modest, somewhat dubious-sounding recipe produces stucco. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stucco was used to create massive illusionistic interior architecture, to frame paintings with anything from gambolling cherubs to modest…
As the site of productive and often intriguing interactions between art and science, nature and artifice, the garden is an alluring subject, all the more so given the pervasive cross-disciplinary thinking in our current academic climate. Yet as historians of art, landscape architecture, and science know all too well, the…
Two exhibitions. Two catalogues. One theme: “Artist and Empire.” The two exhibitions were held at Tate Britain in London (November 25, 2015—April 10, 2016) and at the National Gallery of Singapore (October 6, 2016—March 26, 2017) respectively. We are now increasingly accustomed to travelling exhibitions, especially for blockbuster shows whose…
A surprisingly optimistic portrait of European unity graced newspapers earlier this month: a beaming Angela Merkel shaking hands with the newly elected Emmanuel Macron. The French, German, and European Union flags behind them signaled clearly that their embrace represented not only a bilateral partnership but the basis of continental stability.…
Hair as Communication and Commemoration In 1780 an almanach de mode bearing Marie-Antoinette’s personal coat of arms in gold on the front and back covers was published in Paris by the Esnauts et Rapilly publication house. Smaller than an average woman’s hand (Fig. 1) and therefore easily slipped into a…