Silk was one of the great social signifiers of the later Middle Ages, and it is represented in a profusion of paintings from the period, demonstrating the opulence of the patron's own dress. This large book, illustrated throughout with such paintings and with surviving silks, takes a multifaceted look at medieval silk, its production and trade, the various grades of textile, the garments, church vestments drapes and coverings which were made from it, and their decoration, as well as the social context of silk as a high status item, the pageantry of official occasions, and the sumptuary legislation designed to control silk production. A beautiful book, every bit as opulent as its subject.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

A dazzling celebration of the art and artists of late-Mughal Delhi Between 1707 and 1857, Delhi was a hotbed of political intrigue and power struggles the Mughal Empire was on the decline and the British East India Company was emerging as a formidable power. In 1857, these tensions would culminate in the Mutiny that led to the end of Mughal dominion and the beginning of the British Raj. But this turbulent epoch also witnessed a burst of artistic innovation and experimentation. Delhis artists were increasingly employed by Company officials as well as the Mughal and regional courts, and thus became adept at improvising with a variety of techniques, creating traditional miniatures while continually experimenting with new European styles. Art historians are only now coming to recognize the richness and ingenuity of the work created in this period. With insightful essays by distinguished scholars, Princes and Painters is a stunning visual document of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Delhi.

"The relationship between artists and their patrons has always been a complex and fascinating one. In the case of the Habsburg rules of the sixteenth and seventh centuries, this is especially true, not only because those rulers are themselves of intrinsic interest, but because the artists whom they encouraged or employed - Durer, Titian, El Grego, Rubens - were among the greatest of all times. In Princes and Artists Professor Trevor-Roper explores the relationship between art and patronage through the careers of the Emperor Charles V (1500-58), his son Philip II of Spain (1527-98), the Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) and 'the arch-dukes" - Albert and Isabella - who ruled the southern Netherlands from 1598 to 1633. In the context of their personal lives, their several courts, their political activities, and the ideological conflicts of the era, art played an immensely important role - partly as propaganda, partly for the sheer aesthetic pleasure it gave. The author argues that the distinctive characteristics of patronage in this period, which spanned the transition from the High Renaissance to the Baroque in art, from the Reformation to the Counter-Reformation in ideology, are to be explained by the 'world picture' of the age: "Art symbolised a whole view of life, of which politics were a part, and which the court had a duty to advertise and sustain." -- Book jacket.

Prince's upstate New York" Second House" makes a home, literally, for the increasingly physical work of an artist once best known for his studio photographs of magazines. "The Second House" documents his ranch-style gallery, the long grass around it, and the 1973 Plymouth Barracuda parked in the yard, and commemorates the Guggenheim's purchase of the site, which they pledge to open to the public for ten years.