An exact date for the invention of photography is evasive. Scientists and amateurs alike were working on a variety of photographic processes for much of the early nineteenth century. Thus most historians refer to the year 1839 as the first year of ph...

Earthquakes pose myriad dangers to heritage collections worldwide. This book provides an accessible introduction to these dangers and to the methodologies developed at the Getty and other museums internationally for mitigating seismic vulnerability....

Jusepe Martinez's "Practical Discourses on the Most Noble Art of Painting" (ca. 1673-1675), though little known today, was highly influential on art, artists, and artistic practice and theory in Spain long after its publication. This volume is the fi...

When one thinks of women in the Middle Ages, the images that often come to mind are those of damsels in distress, mystics in convents, female laborers in the field, and even women of ill repute. In reality, however, medieval conceptions of womanhood...

This J. Paul Getty Museum collection catalogue presents sixty ancient terracottas in detail and provides a guide to the one thousand other ancient terracotta objects in the collection.

The mosaics in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum span the second through the sixth centuries AD and reveal the diversity of compositions found throughout the Roman Empire during this period. Elaborate floors of stone and glass tesserae trans...

For centuries Italy has fascinated travelers and artists. From the crumbling ruins of ancient Rome to the crystal- clear light of Venice, artists have found inspiration not only in the cities but also in the countryside and in the deep history and cu...

Thomas Annan (1829-1887) was the preeminent photographer of Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, a period when the rise in industry and population dramatically altered the landscape of the "second city" of the British Empire. Often working in conju...

Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) is widely regarded as the epitome of realist art. From the very beginning of his career, he captured the beauty and horror of reality with unflinching precision, and he was a consummate master of atmosphere. A man of very sh...

Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, Luca Caravarijs, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Francesco Guardi, Hubert Robert-these renowned view painters are perhaps best known for their expansive canvases depicting the ruins of Rome or the canals of Venice. Many of their...