The J. Paul Getty Museum's paintings collection continues to grow in breadth and quality, and since the last edition of Masterpieces important acquisitions have been made in works ranging from the 14th to the end of the 19th century. This new edition...

"Nature and Its Symbols" is the fifth volume in the series "A Guide to Imagery", reference guides whose goal is to explain the symbols used in art. This volume includes chapters on plants, flowers, fruits, and animals of the earth, air, and water, as...

In a garden glade before a grand fountain, surrounded by a musical party, an elegant woman in a lustrous white gown dances as part of a foursome, raising her eyes to the viewer as if extending an invitation to the dance. This is the enticing scene in...

Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) – court physician to the King of Saxony – was a naturalist, amateur painter and theoretician of landscape painting whose "Nine Letters on Landscape Painting" is an important document of early German Romanticism and an ap...

This series is a vehicle for texts generated through the experiences of writers, scholars, and artists who have been residents at the Getty Research Institute or involved in its programs.

Carol Armstrong offers an important study of Edgar Degas's work and reputation. Armstrong grapples with contradictory portrayals of Degas as "odd man out" within the modernist canon: he was a realist whom realists rejected, a storyteller in pictures...

Throughout the Middle Ages, sacred Christian art had two objectives: to express veneration for God and to provide illustrative lessons on the Christian faith to a largely illiterate population. Continuing in the spirit of the other books in this seri...

Learning in and through the arts will allow education to meet the unique challenges facing it as the twenty-first century approaches. Leaders in business, technology, and arts education address these challenges in six persuasive pieces on education r...

"Departures" chronicles the exhibition of specially commissioned works produced by eleven acclaimed artists as each responds to an object in the Getty Museum. Using the Getty collections as a point of departure, the artists create new works spanning...

Much has been written about the identity of the sitter in this portrait. In 1568, Vasari noted that "Pontormo" painted a beautiful work, a portrait of Francesco Guardi. In 1612, however, the name of Cosimo i de' Medici was attached to a description o...