From aesthetic promenades in noble palaces to the performativity of religious apparatus, this edited volume reconsiders some of the events, habits and spaces that contributed to defining exhibition practices and shaping the imagery of the exhibition space in the early modern period. The contributors encourage connections between art history, exhibition studies, and architectural history, and explore micro-histories and long-term changes in order to open new perspectives for studying these pioneering exhibition-making practices. Aiming to understand what spaces have done and still do to art, the book explores an underdeveloped area in the field that has yet to trace its interdisciplinary nature and understand its place in the history of art. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, exhibition history, and architectural history.

This book explores the principles of the display of art in the magnificent Roman palaces of the early modern period, focusing attention on how the parts function to convey multiple artistic, social, and political messages, all within a splendid environment that provided a model for aristocratic residences throughout Europe. Many of the objects exhibited in museums today once graced the interior of a Roman Baroque palazzo or a setting inspired by one. In fact, the very convention of a paintings gallery— the mainstay of museums—traces its ancestry to prototypes in the palaces of Rome. Inside Roman palaces, the display of art was calibrated to an increasingly accentuated dynamism of social and official life, activated by the moving bodies and the attention of residents and visitors. Display unfolded in space in a purposeful narrative that reflected rank, honor, privilege, and intimacy. With a contextual approach that encompasses the full range of media, from textiles to stucco, this study traces the influential emerging concept of a unified interior. It argues that art history—even the emergence of the modern category of fine art—was worked out as much in the rooms of palaces as in the printed pages of Vasari and other early writers on art.

Throughout the early modern period in France, surgeon men-midwives were predominantly associated with sexual impropriety and physical danger; yet over time they managed to change their image, and by the eighteenth century were summoned to attend even the uncomplicated deliveries of wealthy, urban clients. In this study, Lianne McTavish explores how surgeons strove to transform the perception of their midwifery practices, claiming to be experts who embodied obstetrical authority instead of intruders in a traditionally feminine domain. McTavish argues that early modern French obstetrical treatises were sites of display participating in both the production and contestation of authoritative knowledge of childbirth. Though primarily written by surgeon men-midwives, the texts were also produced by female midwives and male physicians. McTavish's careful examination of these and other sources reveals representations of male and female midwives as unstable and divergent, undermining characterizations of the practice of childbirth in early modern Europe as a gender war which men ultimately won. She discovers that male practitioners did not always disdain maternal values. In fact, the men regularly identified themselves with qualities traditionally respected in female midwives, including a bodily experience of childbirth. Her findings suggest that men's entry into the lying-in chamber was a complex negotiation involving their adaptation to the demands of women. One of the great strengths of this study is its investigation of the visual culture of childbirth. McTavish emphasizes how authority in the birthing room was made visible to others in facial expressions, gestures, and bodily display. For the first time here, the vivid images in the treatises are analysed, including author portraits and engravings of unborn figures. McTavish reveals how these images contributed to arguments about obstetrical authority instead of merely illustrating the written content of the books. At the same time, her arguments move far beyond the lying-in chamber, shedding light on the exchange of visual information in early modern France, a period when identity was largely determined by the precarious act of putting oneself on display.

Through a thematic overview of court culture that connects the cultural with the political, confessional, spatial, material and performative, this volume introduces the dynamics of power and culture in the early modern European court. Exploring the period from 1500 to 1750, Early Modern Court Culture is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, providing insights into aspects of both community and continuity at courts as well as individual identity, change and difference. Culture is presented as not merely a vehicle for court propaganda in promoting the monarch and the dynasty, but as a site for a complex range of meanings that conferred status and virtue on the patron, maker, court and the wider community of elites. The essays show that the court provided an arena for virtue and virtuosity, intellectual and social play, demonstration of moral authority and performance of social, gendered, confessional and dynastic identity. Early Modern Court Culture moves from political structures and political players to architectural forms and spatial geographies; ceremonial and ritual observances; visual and material culture; entertainment and knowledge. With 35 contributions on subjects including gardens, dress, scent, dance and tapestries, this volume is a necessary resource for all students and scholars interested in the court in early modern Europe.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the first modern, public museums of art—civic, state, or national—appeared throughout Europe, setting a standard for the nature of such institutions that has made its influence felt to the present day. Although the emergence of these museums was an international development, their shared history has not been systematically explored until now. Taking up that project, this volume includes chapters on fifteen of the earliest and still major examples, from the Capitoline Museum in Rome, opened in 1734, to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, opened in 1836. These essays consider a number of issues, such as the nature, display, and growth of the museums’ collections and the role of the institutions in educating the public. The introductory chapters by art historian Carole Paul, the volume’s editor, lay out the relationship among the various museums and discuss their evolution from private noble and royal collections to public institutions. In concert, the accounts of the individual museums give a comprehensive overview, providing a basis for understanding how the collective emergence of public art museums is indicative of the cultural, social, and political shifts that mark the transformation from the early-modern to the modern world. The fourteen distinguished contributors to the book include Robert G. W. Anderson, former director of the British Museum in London; Paula Findlen, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History at Stanford University; Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute; and Andrew McClellan, dean of academic affairs and professor of art history at Tufts University. Show more Show less

The volume discusses the world as it was known in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on projects concerned with mapping as a conceptual and artistic practice, with visual representations of space, and with destinations of real and fictive travel. Maps were often taken as straightforward, objective configurations. However, they expose deeply subjective frameworks with social, political, and economic significance. Travel narratives, whether illustrated or not, can address similar frameworks. Whereas travelled space is often adventurous, and speaking of hardship, strange encounters and danger, city portraits tell a tale of civilized life and civic pride. The book seeks to address the multiple ways in which maps and travel literature conceive of the world, communicate a 'Weltbild', depict space, and/or define knowledge. The volume challenges academic boundaries in the study of cartography by exploring the links between mapmaking and artistic practices. The contributions discuss individual mapmakers, authors of travelogues, mapmaking as an artistic practice, the relationship between travel literature and mapmaking, illustration in travel literature, and imagination in depictions of newly explored worlds.

The redecoration of the exhibition spaces at the Borghese palace and villa, undertaken together with the reinstallation of the family's vast art collections, was one of the most important events in the cultural life of eighteenth-century Rome. In this comprehensive study, Carole Paul reconstructs the planning and execution of the project and explains its multifaceted significance: its place in the history of Italian art, architecture, and interior design at a complex moment of transition from baroque to neoclassical style, as well as its unrecognized but profound influence on the development of the modern art museum. The study shows how the installations and decorations worked together to evoke traditional themes in innovative ways. Addressed primarily to a new audience of tourists from abroad, the thematic content of the spaces celebrated the greatness of the Borghese family and of Roman tradition, while their stylistic diversity and sophistication made a case for the continued vitality - even modernity - of Roman art and culture. Designed for the exercise of a highly refined social performance, these sites helped to model the experience of art as a form of enlightened modern civility.

The relationship between music and painting in the Early Modern period is the focus of this collection of essays by an international group of distinguished art historians and musicologists. Each writer takes a multidisciplinary approach as he or she explores the interface between music performance and painting, or between music and art theory. The essays reflect a variety and range of approaches and offer methodologies which might usefully be employed in future research in this field. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Franca Trinchieri Camiz, an art historian who worked extensively on topics related to art and music, and who participated in some of the conference panels from which many of these essays originate. Three of Professor Camiz's own essays are included in the final section of this volume, together with a bibliography of her writings in this field. They are preceded by two thematic groups of essays covering aspects of musical imagery in portraits, issues in iconography and theory, and the relationship between music and art in religious imagery.

Museums of Language and the Display of Intangible Cultural Heritage presents essays by practitioners based in language museums around the world. Describing their history, mission, and modes of display, contributors demonstrate the important role intangible heritage can and should play in the museum. Arguing that languages are among our most precious forms of cultural heritage, the book also demonstrates that they are at risk of neglect, and of endangerment from globalisation and linguistic imperialism. Including case studies from across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia, this book documents the vital work being done by museums to help preserve languages and make them objects of broad public interest. Divided into three sections, contributions to the book focus on one of three types of museums: museums of individual languages, museums of language groups – both geographic and structural – and museums of writing. The volume presents practical information alongside theoretical discussions and state-of-the-art commentaries concerning the representation of languages and their cultural nature. Museums of Language and the Display of Intangible Cultural Heritage is the first volume to address the subject of language museums and, as such, should be of interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of museum and cultural heritage studies, applied linguistics, anthropology, tourism, and public education.

This handbook explores key aspects of art and architecture in ancient Greece and Rome. Drawing on the perspectives of scholars of various generations, nationalities, and backgrounds, it discusses Greek and Roman ideas about art and architecture, as expressed in both texts and images, along with the production of art and architecture in the Greek and Roman world.