Enfilade

From Brill:

Gitta Bertram, Nils Büttner, and Claus Zittel, eds., Gateways to the Book: Frontispieces and Title Pages in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 602 pages, ISBN: 978-9004459328, €166 / $199.

Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image–text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages on the one hand and texts on the other, in European books published between 1500 and 1800. Although interest in this broad field of research has increased in the past decades, many varieties of title pages and a great deal of printers and books remain as yet unstudied. The fifteen essays collected in this volume tackle this field with a great variety of academic approaches, asking how the images can be interpreted, how the texts and contexts shape their interpretation, and how they in turn shape the understanding of the text.

Gitta Bertram teaches art history at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. She has published a monograph, translations and articles on early modern title pages, including Peter Paul Rubens as a Designer of Title Pages (2018).

Nils Büttner teaches art history at the State Academy of Arts Stuttgart and specialises in the visual culture of Germany and the Netherlands from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. He has published monographs and articles on Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, as well as the history of landscape painting and the history of drawings and prints. He has also written numerous catalogue essays, and has served as a curator for several museum exhibitions.

Claus Zittel teaches German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart and Venice. He is Deputy Director of the Stuttgart Research Center for Text Studies and of the Bembo Laboratory at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and has published monographs, translations, and articles pertaining to early modern culture, including Theatrum Philosophicum: Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (Akademie 2009).

C O N T E N T S

List of Illustrations
Notes on the Editors
Notes on the Contributors

1  Gateways to the Books: Early Modern Frontispieces — Gitta Bertram, Nils Büttner, and Claus Zittel

Part 1: The Culture of the Frontispiece
2  Considerations on the History and the Analysis of Illustrated Title Pages — Gitta Bertram
3  Minerva in the Printshop: Publisher’s Advertising in Frontispieces and the Media Presence of Early Modern Printer-Publishers — Lea Hagedorn
4  The Frontispiece Portrait and Its Critics: Visual and Verbal Tactics for Undermining the Social Productivity of Printed Portraits in Early Modern Scholarly Culture — Hole Rößler

Part 2: The Frontispiece between Art and Science
5  The Poetological Frontispiece in 17th-Century German Poetry — Claus Zittel
6  Lady Music, Pythagoras, Apollo & Co.: Frontispieces and Title Woodcuts in Music Theory Prints and Musical Textbooks around 1500 — Fabian Kolb
7  Visualising the Constitution of Art: Frontispieces in ‘Kunstliteratur’ in the Early Modern Period — Constanze Keilholz
8  When Mars Meets Euclid: The Relationship between War and Mathematical Sciences in Frontispieces of Fortification Treatises — Delphine Schreuder
9  Travels towards Humankind’s Salvation, Travels through Nature Enlightened by Science: Frontispieces on Africa and the Levant, 17th–18th Centuries — Cornel Zwierlein

Part 3: Case Studies
10  A Moralistic Journey: The Tabula Cebes as an Architectural and Spatial Allegory in 16th-Century Basel — Miranda L. Elston
11  Rubens’s Legacy in Book Design — Nils Büttner
12  The Title Page of Jacob van der Gracht’s Anatomie and 17th-Century Dutch Artists’ Education in Anatomy — Alice Zamboni
13  The Role of Multiple Frontispieces in the Cultus Sancti Francisci Xaverii — Alison C. Fleming
14  Juan Ricci de Guevara’s Introduction of Wise Painting — Martijn van Beek
15  The Architectural Folios of Jeremias Wolff — Daniel Fulco
16  Monumental Elements in Early 18th-Century Book Illustration: Jacob Tonson the Younger, George Vertue, and the Illustrated Editions of the Works of Edmund Waller — Malcolm Baker

Index Nominum

From Routledge (and today priced at $105 for the hardcover). . .

Jessica Priebe, François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France (Routledge, 2021), 270 pages, ISBN: 978-1472435835 (hardcover), $150 / ISBN 978-1003224730 (ebook), $35.

While earlier studies have focused predominantly on artist François Boucher’s artistic style and identity, this book presents the first full-length interdisciplinary study of Boucher’s prolific collection of around 13,500 objects including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, porcelain, shells, minerals, and other imported curios. It discusses the types of objects he collected, the networks through which he acquired them, and their spectacular display in his custom-designed studio at the Louvre, where he lived and worked for nearly two decades. This book explores the role his collection played in the development of his art, his studio, his friendships, and the burgeoning market for luxury goods in mid-eighteenth-century France. In doing so, it sheds new light on the relationship between Boucher’s artistic and collecting practices, which attracted both praise and criticism from period observers.

Jessica Priebe is a Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Australia.

C O N T E N T S

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction: In Pursuit of Pleasure

Part 1: The Artist as Agent
1  Modernizing Watteau: Marketing Luxury in France and Sweden
2  Boucher and the Art of Conchyliomanie

Part 2: The Artist as Collector
3  Trading Places: Boucher as a Collector of Fine Art
4  The Business of Collecting

Part 3: The Collector as Artist
5  A New Address: Boucher at the Louvre
6  Boucher’s Cabinet of Natural History
7  The Artist Inspired: Representing Genius and the Art of Emulation

Bibliography
Index

Available from John Sandoe Books:

Cathryn Spence, Nature’s Favourite Child: Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden (Bradford-on-Avon: Stephen Morris, 2021), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1838472634, £40.

Thomas Robins the Elder (1716–1770) recorded the country estates of the Georgian gentry—their orchards, Rococo gardens, and potagers—like no other, with both topographical accuracy and delightful artistry, often bordering his gouaches with entrancing tendrils, shells, leaves, and birds. His skill was honed by the delicacy required for his early career as a fan painter and is shown too in his exquisite paintings of butterflies, flowers, and birds. This ravishing and scholarly study emerges from many years’ research by Dr Cathryn Spence, the curator and archivist at Bowood House who has also worked for the V&A, the American Museum, the Bath Preservation Trust, and the National Trust. This is the first full study of Thomas Robins since John Harris’s Gardens of Delight, published in two volumes in 1978; Harris, in fact, made over all his research notes to Spence in 2005 when she embarked on her work. Chinoiserie is everywhere—a wooden bridge over the Thames, delicious kiosks in a garden, a view of Bath with sampans, and Chinese fishermen on the river. There are also fascinating views of Sudeley Castle and other great houses that incorporated more or less ruined monastic structures, destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Spence has tracked down many previously unknown paintings by Robins and sets his elusive life and work in the framework of his patrons.

From Boydell & Brewer (with 50% off most print books until 10 December; use code BB050) . . .

Gareth Williams, The Country Houses of Shropshire (London: Boydell Press, 2021), 760 pages, ISBN: 978-1783275397, £95 / $150.

A gazetteer of the many fine Shropshire country houses, covering the architecture, the owners’ family history, and the social and economic circumstances that affected them.

Shropshire is the largest English inland county and has a wide variety of important landed country houses, with owners from diverse social groups, with links to trade in Liverpool, Manchester, and London as well as the local gentry. This book is not simply about the houses they built, but also about the people who lived in them and the context in which the houses are set. The architecture is, of course, fully covered. What is distinctive about the author’s approach is that he treats the histories of the families, their artistic tastes, and their estates, as an integral part of the character of each house. Country houses can serve as a barometer of national tastes and of the social and economic times in which they were built. The work includes reference to the important sporting associations, fine, and decorative art collections, and to important guests and social networks. Unlike most architectural guides, this aims at a wider readership, and will be an important resource for social historians, genealogists, and local historians. The Country Houses of Shropshire considers the history of 347 identified houses of varying importance; those with a significant or influential history are given a main entry of up to 6000 words whilst lesser houses are treated with an entry of less than 1000 words. All houses have footnoted entries, enabling the reader to refer directly to source and to undertake further research themselves.

Gareth Williams has been a regional director of Sotheby’s and a curator for the National Trust at Nostell Park. He is now Curator & Head of Learning at Weston Park, one of the major British country house collections, and coordinates residential cultural tours based at the historic house.

From Four Courts Press:

Alison FitzGerald, ed., Studies in Irish Georgian Silver (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1846827990, €50.

Irish silver, for long renowned among collectors and connoisseurs, is increasingly being considered as an aspect of the material world of the past. Its making, acquisition and use tells much about past attitudes and behaviour. At the same time, careful examination of surviving articles not only adds to appreciation of the design and craftsmanship but also to Ireland’s participation in international fashions. This volume, with new research by established and emerging scholars from Ireland and the UK, advances the study across a broad range. The contributions examine the circumstances in which silver objects were made, sold, valued, and dispersed in Georgian Ireland. It considers specialized branches of the trade including the production of freedom boxes and jewellery, the sourcing of metals and materials, the value of inventories as evidence, and regional patterns and preferences. This book builds on recent literature on the history of silver, second-hand markets, guilds, and luxury goods, to recover and reconsider Ireland’s silversmithing.

Alison FitzGerald is associate professor in history, Maynooth University. She has published widely on the history of Irish silver, including a monograph, Silver in Georgian Dublin: Making, Selling, Consuming (London, 2016), and an essay in the catalogue Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840 (New Haven, 2015).

C O N T E N T S

• Toby Barnard, Silver: Mined and in Mind
• Damian Collins, The Production and Supply of Gold and Silver Boxes in Late Stuart and Georgian Dublin
• Tessa Murdoch, Elite Gift Exchange: A Royal Christening Gift for Lady Emily Lennox in the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection and Christening Gifts in the V&A Collections
• Thomas Sinsteden, The Dukes of Ormondes’ Silver Inventories, 1674–1715
• Jessica Cunningham, ‘Taken or Destroy’d’: The Silver at Castlecomer House and the Irish Rebellion of 1798
• Breda Scott, Jewellery in Georgian Dublin, 1770 to 1830
• Zara Power, Jewellery in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: From the Staple to the Sublime to the Sentimental
• John R. Bowen, Irish Provincial Silver in the Georgian Period
• Alison FitzGerald, Plate, Plated Wares, Plotting, and Proposals: Matthew Boulton’s Irish Correspondence

From Cambridge UP:

Stephanie O’Rourke, Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 205 pages, ISBN: 978-1316519028, £75 / $100. Part of the Cambridge Studies in Romanticism series.

Can we really trust the things our bodies tell us about the world? This work reveals how deeply intertwined cultural practices of art and science questioned the authority of the human body in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Henry Fuseli, Anne-Louis Girodet, and Philippe de Loutherbourg, it argues that romantic artworks participated in a widespread crisis concerning the body as a source of reliable scientific knowledge. Rarely discussed sources and new archival material illuminate how artists drew upon contemporary sciences and inverted them, undermining their founding empiricist principles. The result is an alternative history of romantic visual culture that is deeply embroiled in controversies around electricity, mesmerism, physiognomy, and other popular sciences. This volume reorients conventional accounts of romanticism and some of its most important artworks, while also putting forward a new model for the kinds of questions that we can ask about them.

Stephanie O’Rourke is a lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews.

C O N T E N T S

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Bodies of Knowledge
1  De Loutherbourg’s Mesmeric Effects
2  Fuseli’s Physiognomic Impressions
3  Girodet’s Electric Shocks
4  Self Evidence on the Scaffold

Notes
Bibliography
Index