Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

The pace and scale of the exchange of cultural goods of all sorts&—paintings, furniture, even ladies' fans&—increased sharply in nineteenth-century Spain, and new institutions and practices for exhibiting as well as valorizing &"art&" were soon formed. Oscar V&ázquez maps this cultural landscape, tracing the connections between the growth of art markets and changing patterns of collecting. Unlike many earlier students of collecting, he focuses not upon questions of taste but rather upon the discursive and institutional frameworks that came to regulate art's economic and symbolic worth at all levels of Spanish society. Drawing upon sources that range from newspaper reviews to notarial documents, V&ázquez shows how collecting acquired the power to mediate debates over individual, regional, and national identity. His book also looks at the emergence of a new state apparatus for arts administration and situates these social and political changes in the broader European context. Inventing the Art Collection will be of interest to historians and sociologists of Spain and Europe, as well as art historians and cultural theorists.

Published in conjunction with an exhibit which opened in Venice in 1996 and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during the first part of 1997. The exhibit organizers aimed to show Tiepolo as one of the presiding geniuses of the European imagination. In essays and entries on every work shown, the text illuminates his formation; his mastery of mythological and poetic subjects; his religious pictures; his excursions into portraiture and studies of ideal heads; and the process by which he proceeded from initial ideas--small- scale sketches--to large canvases and frescoes. Beautifully produced, the volume makes a stunning impact, and will have to suffice for those who can't make it to the exhibit itself. Distributed by Abrams. 10x12"Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR