Poetry. Translated by Julia Guez and Samantha Zighelboim. In Luis Chaves's EQUESTRIAN MONUMENTS, the stately figure of a former president, Leon CortÈs, is counterbalanced by a cast of mock-heroic or non-normative foils: a cross-dresser, a singleton, homunculus, thief, and gardener. Dialogue from The Exorcist coexists alongside lines from the Latin Kyrie, Rex, while sweeping statements about entire generations, continents, and genres find a basis in the most intimate details of home-life. The intersections are uncanny, sometimes hilarious, often sad and unsettling. Chaves's hyper-caffeinated imagination renders each image in this remarkable collection in a way that orients the reader and provides a moment's stasis and clarity before "the waves come and the waves erase it."

Biography of the medieval Mediterranean's most cross-culturally significant sculptural monument, the tallest in the pre-modern world.

City of the Soul critically examines how an international cast of visitors fashioned Rome's image, visual and literary, in the century between 1770 and 1870 - from the era of the Grand Tour to the onset of mass tourism. The Eternal City emerges not only as an intensely physical place but also as a romantic idea onto which artists and writers projected their own imaginations and longings. The book will appeal to a wide audience of readers interested in the history of art, architecture, and photography, the Romantic poets, and other writers from Byron to Henry James. It will also attract the interest of historians of urbanism, landscape, and Italy. Nonspecialists and armchair travelers will enjoy the diverse literary and artistic responses to Rome.

The noted historian explores the mysterious origins and surprising adventures of four iconic bronze statues as they appear and reappear through the ages. In July 1798, a triumphant procession made its way through the streets of Paris. Echoing the parades of Roman emperors many years before, Napoleon Bonaparte was proudly displaying the spoils of his recent military adventures. There were animals—caged lions and dromedaries—as well as tropical plants. Among the works of art on show, one stood out: four horses of gilded metal, taken by Napoleon from their home in Venice. The Horses of St Mark's have found themselves at the heart of European history time and time again: in Constantinople, at both its founding and sacking in the Fourth Crusade; in Venice, at both the height of its greatness and fall in 1797; in the Paris of Napoleon, and the revolutions of 1848; and back in Venice, the most romantic city in the world. Charles Freeman offers a fascinating account of both the statues themselves and the societies through which they have travelled and been displayed. As European society has developed from antiquity to the present day, these four horses have stood and watched impassively. This is the story of their—and our—times.