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…
This crowdsourced timeline chronicles the representation and regulation of black bodies in Europe, circa 1600-1800. As a tool for research and teaching, it allows users to cross-reference artworks and historical events in spatial and visual relation to one another. For an introduction to the timeline, the collaborative project behind it,…
This essay discusses the interactive timeline exploring Blackness, Immobility, & Visibility in Europe (1600-1800) launched on Journal18 in September 2020. With most of his figure cut out of the painting sometime after its completion, only the outstretched right arm of an unnamed black attendant remains on the lower left of…
William Breazeale and Anke Fröhlich-Schauseil, The Splendor of Germany: Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2020) Only those fortunate enough to live in or visit Sacramento, California, will have had the pleasure of browsing the collection of the Crocker Art Museum—a cultural hub of the…