This comprehensive survey lays out in chronological progression the lives and works of the artists whose masterpieces make up the history of European painting, from the late Gothic masters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the Cubists and Surrealists of the early twentieth century, to the postmodernists of our own day. In the work of these artists we can observe the great movements of art history - the dawn of the Renaissance, the birth of Realism, and the rise of abstraction. The artists are represented by full-color illustrations of their most important and characteristic paintings, accompanied by concise, authoritative discussions of their life and work.

Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century is the first book to investigate women artists working in disparate parts of the world. This pioneering collection addresses issues at the heart of feminist and post-colonial studies: the nature of difference, discrepant modernities and cross-cultural encounters. Written in a lively and accessible style, this lavishly illustrated volume offers fresh perspectives on women, art and identity. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of women artists and the art of the nineteenth century.

"An exciting, innovative, and significant work. The author points to how the crowd experience transcended class and gender divisions and was transformed from acts of collective violence into acts of collective consumption."—Michael B. Miller, author of Shanghai on the Métro

In this book, Patricia Mainardi presents a new analysis of the major shift in nineteenth-century art from large public to small private works by examining the political and institutional factors that were in effect. Mainardi brings to life the complex institutional world of official art in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, presenting the relevant individual personalities, group interests, conflicts, and shift in a policy with clarity and detail. Writing in a lively, often witty style, she throws much new light on such subjects as the decline of history painting, the rise and eventual triumph of genre painting, the influence exerted in France by the art of England, Belgium, and Germany, and the inevitable collapse of the official exhibition system.

In the late nineteenth century, Scandinavian urban dwellers developed a passion for a new, utterly modern sort of visual spectacle: objects and effigies brought to life in astonishingly detailed, realistic scenes. The period 1880-1910 was the popular high point of mannequin display in Europe. Living Pictures, Missing Persons explores this phenomenon as it unfolded with the rise of wax museums and folk museums in the largest cities of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Mark Sandberg asks: Why did modernity generate a cultural fascination with the idea of effigy? He shows that the idea of effigy is also a portal to understanding other aspects of visual entertainment in that period, including the widespread interest in illusionistic scenes and tableaux, in the "portability" of sights, spaces, and entire milieus. Sandberg investigates this transformation of visual culture outside the usual test cases of the largest European metropolises. He argues that Scandinavian spectators desired an unusual degree of authenticity--a cultural preference for naturalism that made its way beyond theater to popular forms of museum display. The Scandinavian wax museums and folk-ethnographic displays of the era helped pre-cinematic spectators work out the social implications of both voyeuristic and immersive display techniques. This careful study thus anticipates some of the central paradoxes of twentieth-century visual culture--but in a time when the mannequin and the physical relic reigned supreme, and in a place where the contrast between tradition and modernity was a high-stakes game.