History is usually thought of as a tale of time, a string of events flowing in a particular chronological order. But as Karl Schlögel shows in this groundbreaking book, the where of history is just as important as the when. Schlögel relishes space the way a writer relishes a good story: on a quest for a type of history that takes full account of place, he explores everything from landscapes to cities, maps to railway timetables. Do you know the origin of the name “Everest...

A painter of the Impressionist movement, Alfred Sisley was born on October 30th 1839 in Paris but was of British origin. He died on January 29th 1899 in Moret-sur-Loing. Growing up in a musical family, he chose to pursue painting rather than the field of business. In 1862 he enrolled in Gleyre’s studio where he encountered Renoir, Monet, and Bazille. The four friends left their master’s studio in March 1863 to work outdoors, setting their easels to paint the forest scenes of Fontainebleau....

Spanish architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was an important and influential figure in the history of contemporary Spanish art. His use of colour, application of a range of materials and the introduction of organic forms into his constructions were an innovation in the realm of architecture. In his journal, Gaudí freely expressed his own feelings on art, “the colours used in architecture have to be intense, logical and fertile.” His completed works (the Casa Batlló, 1905-1907 ...

Painter of languid, elegant, Edwardian beauties and sharply dressed gentlemen, John Singer Sargent was the ultimate society painter. He knew everyone who was anyone and was on personal terms with many of them, including Edward VII and the U.S. presidents Roosevelt and Wilson. This social standing was justified. Sargent was one of the greatest portrait painters ever, able to convey the personality and style of his sitters—comparable to the great Velázquez himself, of whom he was a great adm...

Famed poet and critic Cosmo Monkhouse discusses the works of Edward Burne-Jones, artist in oil and stained glass who is closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola also known as Parmigianino ("the little one from Parma") was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma. His work is characterized by elongation of form and includes Vision of Saint Jerome (1527) and the Madonna with the Long Neck (1534). Parmigianino was also an early Italian etcher, a technique that was pioneered in Italy by Marcantonio Raimondi, but which appealed to draughtsmen: though the...

The discovery of a previously unknown painting by an Italian Renaissance master, and how it went from media sensation to career-ending scandal.On the eve of its centennial celebrations in December 1969, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts announced the acquisition of an unknown and uncatalogued painting attributed to Raphael. Boston's coup made headlines around the world. Soon afterward, an Italian art sleuth began investigating the details of the painting's export from ...

Paul Cézanne forms the connection linking late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new contour of Cubism. Matisse and Picasso together recognize that "Cezanne is the father of all us," so that his contribution to modern art just can not be rejected.Cézanne, who exhibited paintings rarely and lived progressively more in creative isolation, is considered nowadays as one of the greatest pioneers of modern art and painting, equally for the method that he evolved of p...

Although Dürer lived five hundred years ago, today we are happy that many of his works have survived. While he was alive, Dürer has published several hundred engravings on which are appeared his initials. It is impossible today to know how many of his works are lost, but those that have survived, give us a relatively complete view of the range of his work. Dürer as rule spent much of his time as a printmaker. Finally, there are a thousand of his drawings and watercolors. The range and vari...

If, as the famous saying goes, you really are what you eat, then Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) was a consummate painter of the human soul. This artist was a master draftsman whose finely wrought canvases captured the imagination of his generation. In this fascinating book, Liana De Girolami Cheney takes a closer look at the critical history of Arcimboldo’s work, from his initial popularity and the tragic obscurity that followed his death, to the ventual triumphant revival of his work and...

At the turn of the fifteenth century, Rome was in the midst of a dramatic transformation from what the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch had termed a "crumbling city" populated by "broken ruins" into a prosperous Christian capital. Scholars, artists, architects, and engineers fascinated by Rome were spurred to develop new graphic modes for depicting the city—and the genre known as the city portrait exploded.In Rome Measured and Imagined, Jessica Maier explores the history of...

Entrepreneurial science is not new; business interests have strongly influenced science since the Scientific Revolution. In Commercial Visions, Dániel Margócsy illustrates that product marketing, patent litigation, and even ghostwriting pervaded natural history and medicine—the "big sciences" of the early modern era—and argues that the growth of global trade during the Dutch Golden Age gave rise to an entrepreneurial network of transnational science.Margócsy introduces a n...