Enfilade

From Taschen:

Jan Christiaan Sepp, Marmora / The Book of Marble, edited by Geert-Jan Koot (Cologne: Taschen, 2023), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-3836594349 (English, French, and German), $125.

An exhaustive compendium of marble, Afbeelding der Marmor Soorten (A Representation of Marble Types) depicted 570 samples across 100 colour plates, accompanied by texts in five languages. Published in 1776 at the peak of the Enlightenment, it is regarded, rightly, as one of the finest illustrated scientific books of the era.

Over the course of the 18th century, beautiful books that categorised, annotated, and illuminated the Enlightenment pursuit of learning across Europe had become increasingly popular. Knowledge was everything and everywhere, and these books provided it for those not wealthy enough to build their own personal collections of rare and exotic objects. Marmor Soorten, one such edition, took the standards of both aesthetics and categorisation to a whole new level.

Jan Christiaan Sepp and his father Christian—himself a respected collector—had already earned a reputation for luxury publications on scientific themes, starting with Christian’s own Nederlandsche Insecten (Insects of the Netherlands). But it was his son who created the visual masterpiece Marmor Soorten, revising an existing German publication from 1775 by Adam Ludwig Wirsing. The result, published in 11 installments to a print run of around 100, was among the finest examples of its kind.

Featuring new photography to depict the intricate details of the marble samples, this edition brings an unknown treasure back to relevance. The plates, each meticulously hand-coloured and arranged with painstaking precision, have an abstract-art feel that gives this volume an almost modern slant. This edition reproduces the pages from two copies of Marmor Soorten held at the State and University Library in Dresden and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Reprinting the work in full for the first time, The Book of Marble brings that rare blend of beauty and encyclopedic knowledge to a wider audience.

Geert-Jan Koot holds an MA in Art History and Archaeology from the Radboud University, Nijmegen. From 1988, he was the head of the Rijksmuseum’s Research Library and curator of library collections, as well as chair of the Working Group for Specialist Academic Libraries (Werkgroep Speciale Wetenschappelijke Bibliotheken), until his retirement in 2021. Koot now works as a consultant for book collectors and auction houses. He has also spearheaded the WorldCat Art Discovery project, a new search tool for art libraries hosting over 250 million articles.

From Sandstone Press:

C. J. Schüler, The Wood that Built London: A Human History of the Great North Wood (Sheffield: Sandstone Press, 2021), 368 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1913207496 (hardcover) / ISBN: 978-1914518164 (paperback), £20.

It is hard to imagine that the busy townscape of South London was once a great wood, stretching almost seven miles from Croydon to Deptford or that, scattered through the suburbs, from Dulwich to Norwood, a number of oak woodlands have survived since before the Norman Conquest. These woods were intensively managed for a thousand years, providing timber for construction, furniture and shipbuilding, and charcoal for London’s blacksmiths, kilns, and bakeries. Now they afford important green space, a vital habitat for small mammals, birds, and insects. Drawing on a wealth of documents, historic maps, and environmental evidence, The Wood That Built London charts the fortunes of the North Wood from its earliest times: its ecology, ownership, management, and the gradual encroachment of the metropolis.

Chris Schüler is the author of three illustrated histories of cartography: Mapping the World, Mapping the City, and Mapping the Sea and Stars and co-author of the best-selling Traveller’s Atlas. His most recent book, Writers, Lovers, Soldiers, Spies: A History of the Authors’ Club of London, 1891–2016 was published in 2016. He has also written on literature, travel, and the arts for The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Tablet, The Financial Times, and New Statesman.

C O N T E N T S

Foreword by Rachel Licthenstein

Introduction
Measurements, Money, and Other Matters

1  Taming the Wildwood, ca. 8000 BC–1485
2  Surveys, Ships, and Statutes, 1485–1600
3  The World Turned Upside Down, 1600–1700
4  Faith or Science? 1700–1790
5  Industry and Enclosure, 1790–1850
6  The Palace and the Railway, 1850–1910
7  The Home Front, 1910–1945
8  A Design for Living, 1945–1970
9  Save the Woods! 1970–1997
10  A New Millennium, 1997–2021
11  A Tour of the Woods Today
12  Ways through the Woods, 2021–?

Acknowledgments
A Woodland Glossary
Notes
Bibliography

From Princeton UP:

Markus Friedrich, The Jesuits: A History, translated by John Noël Dillon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 872 pages, ISBN: 978-0691180120 (hardback), $40 / ISBN: 978-0691226200 (paperback), $28.

The most comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of one of the most important religious orders in the modern world.

Since its founding by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus—more commonly known as the Jesuits—has played a critical role in the events of modern history. From the Counter-Reformation to the ascent of Francis I as the first Jesuit pope, The Jesuits presents an intimate look at one of the most important religious orders not only in the Catholic Church, but also the world. Markus Friedrich describes an organization that has deftly walked a tightrope between sacred and secular involvement and experienced difficulties during changing times, all while shaping cultural developments from pastoral care and spirituality to art, education, and science.

Examining the Jesuits in the context of social, cultural, and world history, Friedrich sheds light on how the order shaped the culture of the Counter-Reformation and participated in the establishment of European empires, including missionary activity throughout Asia and in many parts of Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also explores the place of Jesuits in the New World and addresses the issue of Jesuit slaveholders. The Jesuits often tangled with the Roman Curia and the pope, resulting in their suppression in 1773, but the order returned in 1814 to rise again to a powerful position of influence. Friedrich demonstrates that the Jesuit fathers were not a monolithic group and he considers the distinctive spiritual legacy inherited by Pope Francis. With its global scope and meticulous attention to archival sources and previous scholarship, The Jesuits illustrates the heterogeneous, varied, and contradictory perspectives of this famed religious organization.

Markus Friedrich is professor of early modern history at the University of Hamburg. His books include The Birth of the Archive. He lives in Hamburg, Germany.

C O N T E N T S

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations

Prologue: Ignatius Loyola Founds an Order
1  The Inner Life and Structure of the Society
2  The Society, the Churches, and the Faithful
3  Saeculum and the Kingdom of God: The The Jesuits ‘in the World’
4  The Global Society
5  A World without the Society of Jesus: Hostility, Suppression, Revival
Epilogue: The Modern Society

Acknowledgments
Afterword to the English Edition
Translator’s Note
Notes
Works Cited
Names Index
Subject Index

From Harvard University Press:

David Bindman, Alejandro de la Fuente, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in Latin American and Caribbean Art, Book 1: From Colony to Nation (Cambridge, MA: Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, 2024), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-0674248861, £87 / €91 / $100.

The Image of the Black in Latin American and Caribbean Art is the first comprehensive survey of the visual representation of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, some twelve million of whom were forcibly imported into the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. This first volume spans four centuries, from the first Spanish occupation of Latin America and the Caribbean in the fifteenth century; through the establishment of slave colonies on the mainland and islands by the British, French, and Danish; to the revolutionary emergence of independence, first in Haiti in 1804, and then across Latin America. Essays by leading scholars and superb illustrations bring to light a remarkable range of imagery that provides vivid insights into the complex racial history of the period.

The two volumes complement the vision of Dominique and Jean de Menil, art patrons who, during the 1960s, founded an archive to collect images depicting the myriad ways that people of African descent have been represented in Western art from the ancient world to modern times. The Image of the Black in Latin American and Caribbean Art continues the de Menil family’s original mission and brings to the fore a renewed focus on a rich and understudied area.

David Bindman is Professor of the History of Art, Emeritus, at University College London.
Alejandro de la Fuente is Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, and Professor of African and African American Studies and History, at Harvard University.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the author of numerous books and has written extensively on the history of race and anti-Black racism in the Enlightenment. His most recent works include Stony the Road and The Black Church. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

From The Getty:

Florina Capistrano-Baker and Meha Priyadarshini, eds., Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translation, and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires, 1565–1898 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-6218028258 (hardback), $55 / ISBN: 978-6218028227 (paperback), $45.

This wide-ranging collection of scholarly essays explores the hybrid cultures, intellectual clashes, and dynamic exchanges of the transpacific region in the age of imperialism.

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, competing European empires vied for commercial and political control of oceanic routes between Asia and the Americas. Transpacific Engagements addresses the resulting cultural and artistic exchanges with an emphasis on the Spanish and American enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region. This volume explores artistic expressions of imperial aspirations and imaginaries in the Philippines, Spain, Japan, and Hawaii; the transformations of texts, images, and culinary practices as they moved from one cultural context to another; and the movement of objects and people across the transpacific, with particular attention to the Manila Galleon trade that flourished from 1565 to 1815. Featuring contributions by art historians, anthropologists, historians, and cultural studies scholars, Transpacific Engagements gathers groundbreaking investigations of objects and histories to illustrate the role of East, South, and Southeast Asian polities and dynasties in these multilateral exchanges.

Published by the Ayala Foundation, Inc. in association with the Getty Research Institute and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut).

Florina H. Capistrano-Baker is the former director of the Ayala Museum and its current consulting curator and project consultant for international operations. Meha Priyadarshini is assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Edinburgh.

From Reaktion Books and The University of Chicago Press:

Jane Hamlett and Julie-Marie Strange, Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life (London: Reaktion Books, 2023), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1789146868, £20 / $35.

Pet Revolution tracks the British love affair with pets over the last two centuries, showing how the kinds of pets we keep, as well as how we relate to and care for them, has changed radically. The book describes the growth of pet foods and medicines, the rise of pet shops, and the development of veterinary care, creating the pet economy. Most importantly, pets have played a powerful emotional role in families across all social classes, creating new kinds of relationships and home lives. For the first time, through a history of companion animals and the humans who lived with them, this book puts the story of the ‘pet revolution’ alongside other revolutions—industrial, agricultural, political—to highlight how animals contributed to modern British life.

Jane Hamlett is professor of modern British history at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her books include Material Relations: Middle-Class Families and Domestic Interiors in England, 1850–1910.
Julie-Marie Strange is professor of modern British History at Durham University. Her books include The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain.

Coming this fall from Thames & Hudson:

Martin Gayford, Venice: City of Pictures (London: Thames & Hudson, 2023), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0500022665, $40.

A visual journey through five centuries of the city known for centuries as, ‘La Serenissima’—a unique and compelling story for both lovers of Venice and lovers of its art.

Enchanting, captivating, precious—Venice is one of the most cherished cities in the world. For centuries it was the heart of a global maritime power and a crossroads for diverse cultures. Today the city attracts millions of visitors each year, enticed by its irresistible beauty. Art lovers are drawn here by the paintings, prints, drawings, and films made by generations of artists who have captured its magical allure. It is through images—both of the city and the art created there—that Venice’s identity has been forged and spread so powerfully. Venice was a major center of art in the Renaissance: the city where the medium of oil on canvas became the norm. The achievements of the Bellini brothers, Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese are a key part of this story. Nowhere else has been depicted by so many great painters in so many diverse styles and moods. Venetian views were a specialty of native artists such as Canaletto and Francesco Guardi, but the city has also been represented by outsiders: William Turner, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Howard Hodgkin, and many more. Then there are those who came to look at and write about art. The reactions of Henry James, George Eliot, Richard Wagner, and others enrich this tale. Nor is the story over. Since the advent of the Venice Biennale in the 1890s, the city has become a shop window for the contemporary art of the whole world. In this elegant volume, Martin Gayford takes us on a visual journey through the past five centuries of the city known as “La Serenissima,” the ‘Most Serene’.

Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf; Modernists and Mavericks; Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, with David Hockney; A History of Pictures, with David Hockney; Shaping the World, with Antony Gormley; and Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939–1954, with David Dawson.