Reflecting an era when Europe looked to both the classical past and a global future, this volume explores the emergence and acceptance of the nude as an artistic subject. It engages with the numerous and complex connotations of the human body in more...

What is a historiated initial? What are canon tables? What is a drollery? This revised edition of Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms offers definitions of the key elements of illuminated manuscripts, demystifying the te...

From the costly velvets and furs worn by kings to the undyed wools and rough linens of the peasantry, the clothing worn by the various classes in the Middle Ages played an integral role in medieval society. In addition to providing clues to status, p...

The art of the Sistine Chapel, decorated by artists who competed with one another and commissioned by popes who were equally competitive, is a complex fabric of thematic, chronological, and artistic references. Four main campaigns were undertaken to...

Ever innovative and predictably diverse in their physical formats, artists' books occupy a creative space between the familiar four-cornered object and challenging works of art that effectively question every preconception of what a book can be. Many...

In 1911 the French couturier Paul Poiret challenged Edward Steichen to create the first artistic, rather than merely documentary, fashion photographs, a moment that is now considered to be a turning point in the history of fashion photography. As fas...

No thinker in the West has had a wider and more sustained influence than the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. From philosophy to drama, religion to politics, it is difficult to find a current cultural or social phenomenon that is not in some aspect i...

Kinetic art not only includes movement but often depends on it to produce an intended effect and therefore fully realize its nature as art. It can take a multiplicity of forms and include a wide range of motion, from motorized and electrically driven...

Giovanni Andrea Gilio's "Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters" (1564) is one of the first treatises on art published in the post-Tridentine period. It remains a key primary source for the discussion of the reform of art as it unfolded at the...

Harald Szeemann is associated with some of the most important artistic developments of the postwar era. A passionate advocate of avant-garde movements like conceptualism and post minimalism, he collaborated with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Bruce Na...