This volume explores the concept of magnificence as a social construction in seventeenth-century Europe.

Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as “being of an orderly and diligent position” and thus having no feeling for the sublime, this book argues that the sublime played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture. By looking at different visualizations of exceptional heights, divine presence, political grandeur, extreme violence, and extraordinary artifacts, the authors demonstrate how viewers were confronted with the sublime, which evoked in them a combination of contrasting feelings of awe and fear, attraction and repulsion. In studying seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture through the lens of notions of the sublime, we can move beyond the traditional and still widespread views on Dutch art as the ultimate representation of everyday life and the expression of a prosperous society in terms of calmness, neatness, and order. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, architectural history, and cultural history.

Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (r.1520-1566) dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Ottoman worlds - and the imagination of his contemporaries - very much as his fellow sovereigns Charles V, Francis I and Henry VIII in the west. He greatly expanded the Ottoman empire, capturing Rhodes, Belgrade, Hungary, the Red Sea coast of Arabia, and even besieging Vienna. Patron and legislator as well as conqueror, he stamped his name on an age. These specially-commissioned essays by leading experts examine Suleyman's reign in its wider political and diplomatic context, both Ottoman and European. The contributors are: Peter Burke; Geza David; Suraiaya Faroqhi; Peter Holt; Colin Imber; Salih Uzbaran; Metin Kunt; Christine Woodhead; and Ann Williams.

The first comprehensive history of the Reformation origins and flourishing of Lutheran baroque; while the Protestant reform movements are generally associated with iconoclasm, this book studies art, religion, and politics to show that in Lutheran Germany a rich visual culture developed, despite theologians' ambivalent attitude towards images.

An exploration of the important role played by elaborate clockwork in relations between China and Europe from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries

As she did in her critically acclaimed The Last Days of the Romanovs, Helen Rappaport brings a compelling documentary feel to the story of this royal marriage and of the queen's obsessive love for her husband – a story that began as fairy tale and ended in tragedy. After the untimely death of Prince Albert, the queen and her nation were plunged into a state of grief so profound that this one event would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy. For Britain had not just lost a prince: during his twenty year marriage to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert had increasingly performed the function of King in all but name. The outpouring of grief after Albert's death was so extreme, that its like would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana 136 years later. Drawing on many letters, diaries and memoirs from the Royal Archives and other neglected sources, as well as the newspapers of the day, Rappaport offers a new perspective on this compelling historical psychodrama--the crucial final months of the prince's life and the first long, dark ten years of the Queen's retreat from public view. She draws a portrait of a queen obsessed with her living husband and – after his death – with his enduring place in history. Magnificent Obsession will also throw new light on the true nature of the prince's chronic physical condition, overturning for good the 150-year old myth that he died of typhoid fever.

Maravall focuses on the beginnings of Spanish Baroque mass culture as it developes in 17th century Spain and the role culture plays in the formation of the modern state in relationship to other western European contries.

The vast Deccan plateau of south-central India stretches from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the region was home to several major Muslim kingdoms and became a nexus of international trade — most notably in diamonds and textiles, through which the sultanates attained remarkable wealth. The opulent art of the Deccan courts, invigorated by cultural connections to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, developed an otherworldly character distinct from that of the contemporary Mughal north: in painting, a poetic lyricism and audacious use of color; in the decorative arts, lively creations of inlaid metalware and painted and dyed textiles; and in architecture, a somber grandeur still visible today in breathtaking monuments throughout the plateau. The first book to fully explore the history and legacy of these kingdoms, Sultans of Deccan India elucidates the predominant themes in Deccani art—the region’s diverse spiritual traditions, its exchanges with the outside world, and the powerful styles of expression that evolved under court patronage—with fresh insights and new scholarship. Alongside the discussion of the art, lively, engaging essays by some of the field’s leading scholars offer perspectives on the cycles of victory and conquest as dynasties competed with one another, vied with Vijayanagara, a great empire to the south, and finally succumbed to the Mughals from the north. Featuring some 200 of the finest works from the Deccan sultanates, as well as spectacular site photographs and informative maps, this magnificently illustrated catalogue provides the most comprehensive examination of this world to date and constitutes a pioneering resource for specialists and general readers alike.

Although Swedish design has exercised an extraordinary influence on modern architecture and interior furnishings internationally since the early twentieth century, the intellectual background from which it emerged is far less wellknown, for some of the crucial, generative writings on the subject by Swedish thinkers of the time have never been widely translated. Modern Swedish Design Theory collects three of these seminal essays for the first time in English. Accompanying these texts in the book are introductory essays and a postscript by the renowned architectural historian Kenneth Frampton.