Recent studies and exhibitions, combined with the discovery of work by hitherto little-known artists have enabled Merot to take a fresh look at the period and to suggest a new configuration. The great names of the period - Poussin, Vouet, Le Sueur, de La Tour, Mignard - are located in relation to other developments. Merot includes discussion of the impact of contemporary literature and political, philosophical and social influences. The foundation of the Royal Academy of Painting in 1648, and the influence of Mazarin on artistic developments are considered with other issues of status, patronage and connoisseurship. The book provides a panorama of the period; the text is profusely illustrated in colour, and accompanied by a comprehensive bibliography.

A study of the involvement of the Catholic Church in the cultural life of France in the seventeenth century.

"Since 1957, when Martin Davies published The French School, an unprecedented amount of research has been undertaken on French seventeenth-century artists. Taking account of this, Humphrey Wine has written afresh on the seventeenth-century paintings in Davies's catalogue; he has also written detailed entries on all subsequent acquisitions in this field. These include, as well as paintings by Claude and Poussin, major pictures such as La Hyre's Allegory of Grammar, the Le Nain brothers' Adoration of the Shepherds and Le Sueur's Alexander and his Doctor.".

Encompassing the socio-political, cultural background of the period, this title takes a look at the careers of the Old Masters and many lesser-known artists. The book covers artistic developments across six countries and examines in detail many of the artworks on display.

Idolatry was one of the dominant and most contentious themes of early modern religious polemics. This book argues that many of the best-known literary and philosophical works of the French seventeenth century were deeply engaged and concerned with the theme. In a series of case studies and close readings, it shows that authors used the logic of idolatry to interrogate the fractured and fragile relationship between the divine and the human, with particular attention to the increasingly fraught question of the legitimacy of human agency. Reading d'Urf , Descartes, La Fontaine, S vign , Molire, and Racine through the lens of idolatry reveals heretofore hidden aspects of their work, all while demonstrating the link between the emergent autonomy of literature and philosophy and the confessional conflicts that dominated the period. In so doing, Professor McClure illustrates how religion can become a source of interpretive complexity, and how this dynamism can and should be taken into account in early modern French studies and beyond. ELLEN MCCLURE is Associate Professor of History and French, University of Illinois at Chicago.

The history of collecting is a topic of central importance to many academic disciplines, and shows no sign of abating in popularity. As such scholars will welcome this collection of essays by internationally recognized experts that gathers together for the first time varied and stimulating perspectives on the nineteenth-century collector and art market for French eighteenth-century art, and ultimately the formation of collections that form part of such august institutions as the Louvre and the National Gallery.

Gesa Stedman's ambitious new study is a comprehensive account of cross-channel cultural exchanges between seventeenth-century France and England, and includes discussion of a wide range of sources and topics. Literary texts, garden design, fashion, music, dance, food, the book market, and the theatre as well as key historical figures feature in the book. Importantly, Stedman concentrates on the connection between actual, material transfer and its symbolic representation in both visual and textual sources, investigating material exchange processes in order to shed light on the connection between actual and symbolic exchange. Individual chapters discuss exchanges instigated by mediators such as Henrietta Maria and Charles II, and textual and visual representations of cultural exchange with France in poetry, restoration comedies, fashion discourse, and in literary devices and characters. Well-written and accessible, Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century France and England provides needed insight into the field of cultural exchange, and will be of interest to both literary scholars and cultural historians.