One of the most distinctive features of Islamic design is the evolution of an increasingly abstract and repetitive repertoire of motifs, which are shared among all media – metalwork, woodwork, ceramics, tilework and textiles. In textiles the main themes are based on angular and geometric shapes – vertical and horizontal striped bands; hexagons and octagons, which can be linked and infinitely extended; stylized and rhythmic scrolls of foliage and flowers; and Arabic calligraphy, of which the letters can be formed into continuous borders, panels and medallions. These motifs can be used separately or combined into complex patterns, of which the repetitive and two-dimensional features are ideal for textile production, especially where varying lengths are required – for hangings, curtains, robes and shawls. Valued for their role in the subtleties of court ceremonial and fashion, these textiles were also much admired beyond the Islamic lands.The exceptional collection published here ranges widely in region, material and technique. There are textiles and garments from North Africa, Syria, Arabia, Iran, Turkey and the Indian subcontinent linked by a shared vocabulary of ornament – evidence of the international nature of Islamic design. Materials represented are silk – the most prestigious of fibres, requiring highly respected weavers – wool, cotton and linen. Decoration is based on variations of weave and colour and embellishment through embroidery, printing and appliqué and illustrates the work of both professional and domestic workers.The strengths of the collection are concentrated in the textile production of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which, thanks to the basically conservative nature of textile technique and design, preserve and continue the traditions established in the medieval Islamic world. They are important in an assessment of Islamic textiles both for their quality and as illustrations of survival and adaptation in a major industry. Their heritage reaches back well over a thousand years, even though their very high perishability means that for the earlier part of the tradition our knowledge is reliant very largely on written sources. These, however, attest to the superb quality and quantity of textiles at the courts of the period.

The exceptional bronzes presented here have been carefully selected, over the course of many years, to represent the Tomasso Bothers’ passion for this most fascinating material, and they range from the dawn of Italian humanism in the early 15th century to the high point of the Italian late Baroque. Highlights include a remarkable and rare relief depicting the Triumph of Caesar over King Juba by Italian artist Filarete (c. 1433), an exceptional and commanding Mars by Giambologna, Florence’s most prominent sculptor of the late Renaissance, and an exquisite and newly published autograph version of the Abduction of Proserpina by François Girardon, King Louis XIV’s court sculptor. These are accompanied by further testimonies of the extraordinary development of European sculpture in bronze, such as a unique pair of allegorical statuettes by Francesco da Sangallo, a student and contemporary of Michelangelo, a rare Cristo Benedicente by Northern Italian master Giulio del Moro, and sacred and secular subjects by the most gifted heirs to Giambologna’s tradition, Antonio and Gianfrancesco Susini in Florence and, further North, Hans Reichle in Germany. The catalogue accompanies the exhibition Important European Bronzes, which was on display at Carlton Hobbs LLC in New York, 21–30 January 2016. Following on from the Tomassos’ three successful Scultura exhibitions in the United States, this is the company’s first major retrospective dedicated exclusively to sculpture in bronze.

Anyone writing about a work of art needs to establish at the outset how much it has changed since it was first made. This simple, informative and pracrical book, full of fascinating and revelatory photography, will take the reader through both the techniques and media of art and the techniques and media of its investigation and restoration.

The first Europeans to follow the explorers of the eighteenth century into the South Pacific were missionaries. They were sent by an Evangelical Christian organization called The London Missionary Society, whose aim was to bring the word of the Bible to all peoples – “to illume a dark and sinful world”. Their first target was Tahiti, an island of extravagant beauty, inhabited by a people of astonishing sophistication. The missionaries settled down, learned the language and stayed for decades. Although their aim was to Christianize the islanders and eradicate the traditional religion along with its pagan idols, they ended up recording a good deal about Polynesian culture and even saving a large number of the very idols they came 12,000 miles to destroy.Accompanying an exhibition at the University of London’s Brunei Gallery, this beautifully illustrated catalogue documents the London Missionary Society from its formation to its initial ‘success’ in Polynesia. The period covered spans roughly 1792 to 1825. Along with historical graphics and archive material – paintings, engravings, books, journals and correspondence of the missionaries – this publication shows some of the idols and artefacts that the missionaries brought back – feather gods and spirit images, necklaces, instruments and tools. In the words of missionary Rev. John Williams, it puts on view an historical “ocular demonstration” of The London Missionary Society. Most objects shown here have not been on public display since the nineteenth century.After the initial and very difficult spiritual conquest of Tahiti – the “night of toil” that took 15 years – the English missionaries turned the thorny job of Christianization over to Polynesian ‘teachers’, who, in the words of Rev. John Williams, knew how to clear away “the rubbish of idolatry & superstition far better than newly arrived or even Old Missionaries”. The best teacher of all was Papeiha, who was energetic, purposeful and a native speaker of Tahitian. His account of events while Christianizing Rarotonga – published here for the first time – is probably the most personal, immediate and detailed description of a conversion in the South Sea.Missionaries are roundly criticized for their unrelenting determination to alter traditional Polynesian religion and customs. In what they referred to as the “bloodless victory”, they largely succeeded. Yet in many ways Evangelicals were progressive. They were vehemently opposed to slavery, infanticide, human sacrifice and warfare. They brought writing, taught literacy, and printed books; in doing so they fi xed the Polynesian languages. They urged the elevation of women in Polynesian society. Unlike the American missionaries in Hawai’i, for example, their aim was to establish spiritual rather than territorial or economic dominion. However questionable the missionary endeavour, the writings and collections presented here show that the missionaries were also agents of cultural preservation.

Jonathan Richardson (1667–1745) was one of 18th-century England’s most significant cultural figures. A leading portrait painter and influential art theorist, he also amassed one of the period’s greatest collections of drawings. But there was another, highly unusual dimension to his pursuits. In 1728, at the age of 61 and shortly before his retirement from professional life, Richardson began to create a remarkable series of self-portrait drawings. Not intended for public display, these works were unguarded explorations of his own character. In one of the most astonishing projects of self-examination ever undertaken by an artist, for over a decade Richardson repeatedly drew his own face. His self-portrait drawings are usually dated precisely, and they document, from month to month, his changing state of mind as much as his appearance. Many were drawn in chalks on large sheets of blue paper, from his reflection in the mirror. Some of these are bold and psychologically penetrating, while others, in which he regards his ageing features with gentle but unflinching scrutiny, are deeply touching. A further group of self-portraits is drawn with graphite on small sheets of fine vellum, and in these Richardson often presents himself in inventive and humorous ways, such as in profile, all’antica, as though on the face of a coin or medal; or crowned with bays, like a celebrated poet. Sometimes, too, he copies his image from oil paintings made decades earlier, in order to recall his appearance as a younger man. In this extraordinary series of self-portraits, Richardson offers a candid insight into his mind and personality. Together, these drawings create nothing less than a unique and compelling visual autobiography. This publication – which accompanies the first ever exhibition devoted to Richardson’s self-portrait drawings, held in the new Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery at the Courtauld – tells the story of these remarkable works

Prolific and successful in his own lifetime, and ""Picture drawer"" to Charles I, Cornelius Johnson (1593–1661) is now the forgotten man of seventeenth-century British art. This is the first book ever to address his life and work. Johnson's surviving works, all portraits, are found in most public collections in Britain and in many private collections seen on the walls of British country houses, in the possession of descendants of the original sitters. Working on every scale from the miniature to the full-length and big group portrait, Johnson faithfully rendered the rich textiles and intricate lace collars worn by his sitters. While always recognisably by him, his works reveal his exceptional flexibility and underline his response to successive influences. When four of Johnson's portraits in the Tate’s collection were recently conserved, the author Karen Hearn commissioned investigations into his working methods and techniques. This previously unpublished material will make a significant contribution to the literature on this little-known artist as well as to the technical literature on 17th-century painting. Johnson's career coincided with one of the most dramatic periods in 17th-century history, and he painted many of the leading figures of the era. In 1632 he was appointed Charles I’s Picture drawer and, as well as portraying the king, he produced exquisite small images of the royal children. In 1643, following the outbreak of Civil War, Johnson emigrated to the northern Netherlands. There he continued to work successfully, in Middelburg, Amsterdam, The Hague and, finally, in Utrecht, where he died a prosperous man. Johnson's portraits are not elaborate Baroque construts on the contrary, they have a delicacy, a dignity and a humanity that speak directly to present-day viewers. Their quality and diversity will be a revelation.

Canaletto's time in Mid-Georgian Britain has received much scholarly attention in the past. But this book places his work in a broader political and social context, linking his paintings and drawings with a growing sense of assurance and mission which the British nation was beginning to display - perhaps best represented by the works of William Hogarth.

This groundbreaking reconstruction of Goya's so-called 'Witches and Old Women' album will offer rich insights into the artist's concerns and preoccupations and will immeasurably deepen our understanding of the artist. With its themes of witchcraft, madness and nightmares, the predominant imagery of the album offers a particularly important perspective on the development of Goya's interest in old age and its relationship to the fantastic and diabolical.

This groundbreaking architectural history examines what people actually wanted in their institutional and private patronage over the last two centuries as opposed to what architects and theorists thought they should want - as seen through the prism of Oxford's principal building contractor and craft practitioner, Symm & Company.

Accompanying a focused display at The Courtauld Gallery that will bring together for the first time Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s only three known grisaille paintings – the Courtauld’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (which is barred from travel), The Death of the Virgin from Upton House in Warwickshire (National Trust) and Three Soldiers from the Frick Collection in New York – this book will examine the sources, function and reception of these three exquisite masterpieces. The panels will be complemented by prints and contemporary replicas, as well by other independent grisailles in order to shed light on the development of this genre in Northern Europe.Despite his status as the seminal Netherlandish painter of the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) remains an elusive artist: fewer than forty paintings are ascribed to him. Of these, a dozen are cabinet-sized. These small-scale works offer key insights as they often bear a personal significance for the artist and were sometimes given as gifts to friends and patrons. Presenting these works together for the first time is not only an extraordinary and unprecedented opportunity but it will be extremely revealing, considering their unusual nature in both Bruegel’s oeuvre and 16th-century art in general. Monochrome painting in shades of grey was a mainstay of Netherlandish art from the early 15th century, most often present on the wings of altarpieces and preparatory sketches for engravings. In contrast, Bruegel’s panels constitute one of the earliest and rare examples of independent cabinet pictures in grisaille, created for private contemplation and enjoyment. This seemingly austere type of painting has often been imbued with religious or political significance. On a purely artistic level, it enabled the painter to showcase his skill by limiting his palette. The publication, which includes a technical investigation of the three panels, will provide the opportunity to reassess the practical aspects of the grisaille technique and the many ways in which this effect was achieved. Indeed, Bruegel’s three monochromatic paintings display quite different techniques, raising the question of the painter’s intent. This is the latest in the series of books accompanying critically acclaimed Courtauld Gallery displays, following on from Collecting Gauguin (2013), Antiquity Unleashed (2013), Richard Serra (2013), A Dialogue with Nature (2014), Bruegel to Freud (2014) and Jonathan Richardson (2015).

The self-portrait of Baccio Bandinelli in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, shows the scupltor pointing not to a work of marble or bronze, but to a drawing. Bandinelli was particularly proud of his skills as a draughtsman, and he was prolific in his production of works on paper. This set him apart from contemporaries in his profession; many Renaissance sculptors left us no drawings at all. Accompanying an exhibition at the Gardner Museum, this publication will put Bandinelli's portrait in context by looking at the practice of drawing by scupltors from the Renaissance to the Baroque in Central Italy.A focus of the book will be Bandinelli's own drawings and the development of his practice across his career and his experimentation with different media. Bandinelli's drawings will be compared with those of Michelangelo and Cellini. The broader question considered, however, is when, how, and why scupltors drew. EVery Renaissance sculptor who set out to make a work in metal or stone would first have made a series of preparatory models in wax, clay, and/or stucco. Drawing was not an essential practice for sculptors in teh way it was for painters, and indeed, most surviving sculptors' drawings are not preparatory studies for works they subsequently executed in three dimensions. By comparing bot rough sketches and more finished drawings with related three-dimensional works by the same artists, the importance of drawing for various individual sculptors will be examined.When sculptors did draw, it often indicated something about the artist's training or about his ambitions. Among the most accomplished draftsmen were artists like Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, and Cellini, who had come to sculpture by way of goldsmithery, a profession that required profieciency in ornamental design. Artists who soought to become architects, meanwhile - the likes of Michelangelo, Giambologna, and Ammanati - similarly needed to learn to draw, since architects had to provide plans, elevations, and other drawings to assistants and clients and had to imagine the place of individual figures within a larger multi-media ensemble. Certain kinds of projects, moreover - fountains and tombs, for example - required drawings to a degree that others did not. Sections on the Renaissance goldsmith-sculptor and sculptor-architect will allow comparison of the place drawing had in various artists' careers.Beginning with a chapter dedicated to the importance of draftsmanship in the education of sculptors, showing works by Finiguerra, Cellini Bandinelli, and Giambologna, the book will be split up into chapters dealing with the various challenges scupltors faced while drawing objects in the round, reliefs, and architectural structures. A central section will focus on Bandinelli, demonstrating the importance drawing held for him while he was preparing sculptures and as an independent token of his artistry.

That Ernst Gombrich was one of the most important art historians of the 20th century would seem to go without saying. And so one might expect him to feature prominently in the numerous surveys, guides and introductions to the history and methods of art history produced during the past two decades. Precisely the opposite, however, is the case. One reason for this certainly was that Gombrich was an avowed enemy of 'big ideas', interested not in generalizations but in the specifics of individual cases. Avoiding jargon or rhetoric, standing for 'common sense', he always argued from clear premises, and his thought was also very wide-ranging. He never 'owned' a subject, remarking "It cannot be too often repeated that the best tribute one can pay a scholar is to take him seriously and constantly to reappraise his lines of argument." The importance of Gombrich's work on the history of taste has yet to be fully recognised, and when it comes to the application of developments in psychology to the visual arts he has remained largely, among art historians, on his own. These essays assess the nature of his empiricism, the degree to which his ideas have been adopted, overturned or developed, and his contribution to the dialogue of art and perception.

No literary figure of the 18th century was more esteemed than the poet Alexander Pope, and his sculpted portraits exemplify the celebration of literary fame at a period when authorship was being newly conceived and the portrait bust was enjoying new popularity. Accompanying an exhibition at Waddesdon Manor (The Rothschild Collection), this publication explores the convergence between authorship, portraiture, and the sculpted image in particular, by bringing together a wide range of works that foreground Pope's celebrity status.Pope took great pains over how he was represented and carefully fashioned his public persona through images, published letters, and the printed editions of his works. Eaxmined alongside some of the most celebrated painted portraits of the poet, will be a selection of the printed texts which Pope planned with meticulous care. The core of the publication will consist of eight different versions of the same portrait bust by the leading sculptor of the period, Louis François Roubiliac.The marble bust had long been seen as a form appropriate for the celebration of literary fame and Pope's bust in part imitates those of classical authors whose works he both translated and consciously imitated in his own poems. More than any other sculptor, Roubiliac reqorked the conventions of the bust, transforming it into a genre that was considered worthy of close and sustained attention. Nowhere is this seen more tellingly than in his compelling and intense portraits of Pope.Based on a vividly modelled clay original, the variant marble versions were carved with arresting virtuosity, recalling Pope's own phrase, "Marble, soften'd into Life". At the same time, the image was reproduced by both the sculptor himself and by others, in a variety of materials.Multiplied and reproduced throughout the 18th century, Pope's bust was the most familiar and visible sign of his authorial fame. At the same time, it was also used as a way of articulating friendship - a constant theme in Pope's verse - and all the early versions of Roubiliac's bust were probably executed for Pope's closest friends. By bringing together the eight versions thought to have been executed by Roubiliac and his studio, and a number of other copies in marble, plaster, and ceramic, this publication will offer the opportunity to explore not only the complex relationship between these various versions but the hitherto little-understood processes of sculptural production and replication in eighteenth-century Britain.

Until recently, the Dutch draughtsman Johan Thopas, who was born in 1626 both deaf and dumb, was only known to a small group of connoisseurs, dealers and collectors. However, his remarkable, subtle and technically refined portrait drawings on parchment deserve a wider audience. This handsome publication, the first devoted to his work, will prove to be an eye opener for many art lovers. Beginning with his earliest works (two beautiful miniatures of 1646 in the Fondation Custodia in Paris), Thopas produced incredibly refined drawings, usually with lead point on parchment. He had an almost magic control of the lead point, and his sense of texture and the way he was able to achieve this with minimal means is astounding, setting him apart from other draughtsmen in the Dutch Golden Age. Thopas was also able to capture brilliantly the characters of his sitters – such as the sulky husband and trouser-wearing wife in the 1684 companion pieces in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Apart from lead-point drawings, Thopas made several drawings in colour, on parchment and on Japanese paper. In most cases these drawings were done after life, although we do know that the large commission he received from the Bas-Kerckrinck family in Amsterdam included several drawings that were done after existing portraits. Furthermore, he produced at least one brilliant copy after a painting by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Venus, Mars and Cupid, and even a painting, portraying a dead child. He must have made more paintings and certainly more drawings than the seventy we know today (all of which are catalogued and illustrated here). In this exhibition his only known painting and the one mythological drawing are accompanied by thirty of his most beautiful portraits, from private collections in the US, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as well-known museums and print rooms, such as the Albertina in Vienna, the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, the Städel in Frankfurt or the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.The author of the catalogue, Prof. Dr Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, is regarded as the most important connoisseur in the field of Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraiture and the author of many important monographs and other publications in the field of Dutch portraiture. He was Director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in The Hague between 1990 and 2012 and gained momentum as Chairman of the Committee that carried his name and proved responsible for the return of many looted works of art that were returned to the heirs of many Jewish collectors in The Netherlands. Included in the book are Dutch and German translations of the essays.

This richly illustrated and beautifully produced scholarly catalogue of the superlative collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronze figurative statuettes from the Hill collection accompanies an exhibition of the collection at the Frick Collection, New York, opening late January 2014. Spanning from 1470 to 1740, the bronzes presented are of exceptional quality and exemplify the development of bronze statuettes from 1470 in Renaissance Italy to their dissemination across the artistic centres of Europe. The Hill Collection is distinguished by rare, autograph masterpieces by Italian sculptors such as Andrea Riccio and Giambologna, and has the most important collection of Baroque Bronzes by Giuseppe Piamontini in the world. Its holding of works by the Giambologna school is the strongest found in any single collection, with the sole exception of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. These evoke the splendour of the late Renaissance courts, while the richness of the international BAroque is represented by religious themes by Alessandro Algardi, northern bronzes by Adriaen de Vries and Hubert Gerhard, and a remarkable assemblage of French 16th- and early 17th-century bronzes in the classical mode by Barthélemny Prieur and from the circle of Ponce Jacquiot.The Hill Collection reveals the range of artistry, invention and technical refinement characteristic of sculptures created when the tradition of the European statuette was at its height.The catalogue includes detailed biographies of each of the artists represented, and is introduced with essays by the distinguished authors. Patricia Wengraf is one of the world's leading dealers in bronzes, scuplture and works of art, and in her particular speciality, bronzes of the 15th-18th centuries, her knowledge and connoisseurship are of world repute. Denise Allen is Curator of Renaissance Paintings and Sculpture at the Frick Collection. Claudia Kryza-Gersch, formerly at the Kunstkammer, Vienna, is an independent scholar renowned for her studies of North Italian bronzes of the 16th and 17th centuries. Dimitrios Zikos, in Florence, an independent scholar renowned for his knowledge of the Florentine archives from c. 1550 to 1740, has curate many exhibitions at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Rupert Harris is the leading conservator of metalwork and sculpture in the UK.

A masterpiece of medieval Arab metalwork revealed, shedding light on courtly life in northern Iraq under the Mongol governorship. Accompanying a major scholarly exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this book explores one of the most beautiful and enigmatic objects in The Courtauld’s collection: the so-called ‘Courtauld wallet’, a brass container richly inlaid with gold and silver, imitating a lady’s textile or leather bag, and probably made in Mosul in northern Iraq around 1300. No other object of this kind is known. Decorated all round with courtly figuresand on the top with an elaborate banqueting scene featuring an enthroned couple, it has long been recognised as a masterpiece of Arab metalwork. Yet, despite the superb quality of its design and craftsmanship and its status as a unique object, this exceptional metalwork bag has never been properly published. Thus it remainslittle known outside a small circle of specialists, and little understood even within that circle. Encompassing a variety of multidisciplinary essays by distinguished historians and art historians – on subjects ranging from music at the Mongol court, Mosul under Mongol governorship and Mongol marriage customs to the role of womenunder the Ilkhanids –this publication aims to explore the origins, function and iconography of this splendid luxury object as well as the cultural context in which it was made and used. It will bring together other images of enthroned Mongols with female consorts, as well as scenes of hunters, revellers and musicians in a varietyof media, including illustrated manuscripts, ceramics, textile, and metalwork. By presenting the bag alongside carefully selected contemporary material, it will provide an insight into courtly life under the Mongols in the newly conquered areas of their empire, and will also provide an unrivalled opportunity to investigate the inlaid brass tradition in Mosul after the Mongol Conquest. Objects made before and after this seismic event will be reproduced side by side to demonstrate how the Mosul metalworkers adapted their work for their new patrons.