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Art and Architecture 2021
contents
american . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
19th century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
early modern . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
medieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
theory/criticism/
historiography . . . . . . . . . 22
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/PennStateUniversityPress Cover illustration: Elisabetta Sirani, Timoclea, 1659, detail,
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (su concessione
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PSUPress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali-Museo e Real
Bosco di Capodimonte). Additional credits: page 2, Loïs
In cooperation with Penn State University Libraries, Penn State Mailou Jones, Église Saint Joseph, 1954, detail, Smithsonian
University Press will donate 10 percent of proceeds from all American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., bequest of
orders placed directly on its website to help defray the high the artist (courtesy Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust);
8, Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1873, detail, Musée
cost of student textbooks.
Marmottan Monet, Paris; 24–25, Peter Apian, celestial
All books published by Penn State University Press are available planisphere volvelle, detail, from Astronomicum Caesareum
through bookstores, wholesalers, or directly from the publisher, (1540), Typ 520.40.150, Houghton Library, Harvard University,
and are available worldwide, except where noted. Titles, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Houghton Library).
publication dates, and prices announced in this catalogue are
subject to change without notice. Most books are available on
popular ebook platforms.
Penn State is an affirmative action, equal opportunity
University. U. Ed. LIB. 21-501
art 2021
american
“Books about artist
Loïs Mailou Jones have
been too few, making
VanDiver’s meticulous
study a milestone in art,
women’s, and African
American history.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
Designing a New Tradition
Loïs Mailou Jones and the Aesthetics of Blackness
Rebecca VanDiver
In Designing a New Tradition, Rebecca VanDiver fragmented nature of twentieth-century black
presents a fresh perspective on the art and identity and diasporic experiences. Tracing
career of Loïs Mailou Jones. Considering the Jones’s aesthetic transformations along a
importance of Africa for Jones’s work and biographical arc, VanDiver offers a new frame-
examining the broader roles played by class, work for thinking about the connection between
gender, and politics in constructions of African America and Africa and the role of the African
American art histories as a whole, VanDiver diaspora in the creation of African American
makes a convincing case for Jones’s lasting place artistic identity.
in American art history. Accessibly written and filled with fascinating
VanDiver repositions Jones’s work within the anecdotes about Jones’s life and career, her
canon of American art, situating the artist’s pro- many acquaintances, and the challenges she
duction within the larger cultural and aesthetic faced as a black woman artist working in the
debates of the twentieth century, including mod- twentieth century, this book makes a singular
ernism, abstraction, the Harlem Renaissance, contribution to a new and expanded art-histori-
feminism, Négritude, and Pan-Africanism. In cal canon.
doing so, VanDiver reveals one of Jones’s most
256 pages | 51 color/37 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | October 2020
significant contributions to American art: the isbn 978-0-271-08604-0 | hardcover: $59.95 sh
development of a composite black aesthetic that
negotiates African, American, and European
artistic traditions to reflect the increasingly
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art 2021
Alexander Gardner is best known for his inno- Some of the most breathtaking art in America
vative photographic history of the Civil War. lies behind doors that few ever open. One such
american
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
What is less known is the extent to which he masterpiece is The Prophetic Quest, a series
was involved in the international workers’ rights of ten monumental stained glass windows in
movement. Tying Gardner’s photographic story- the Keneseth Israel synagogue, just north of
telling to his transatlantic reform activities, this Philadelphia. This informative and exquisitely
book expands our understanding of Gardner’s illustrated volume pulls back the curtain on this
career and the work of his studio in Washington, little-known work of art.
DC, by situating his photographic production Designed by the renowned American artist
within the era’s discourse on social and political Jacob Landau, The Prophetic Quest encompasses
reform. ten masterful abstract pieces of stained glass
Drawing on previously unknown primary that depict the lives and words of the biblical
sources and original close readings, Makeda Best prophets, each towering nearly twenty-five feet
reveals how Gardner’s activism in Scotland and high and spanning five feet across. Featuring
photography in the United States shared an ideo- essays recounting Landau’s vision, the history
logical foundation. She reads his Photographic The Prophetic Quest of his project, and detailed interpretive com-
Elevate the Masses Sketch Book of the War as a politically moti-
The Stained Glass Windows of Jacob mentary on each window, this book presents
Alexander Gardner, Photography, and vated project, rooted in Gardner’s Chartist an immersive experience of Landau’s religious
Landau, Reform Congregation Keneseth
Democracy in Nineteenth-Century and Owenite beliefs, and illuminates how its masterwork. Personal reflections written by art-
Israel, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania
America treatment of slavery is primarily concerned with ists, art historians, poets, clergy, and congregants
the harm that the institution posed to the United David S. Herrstrom and Andrew D. about their experience of The Prophetic Quest
Makeda Best Scrimgeour
States’ reputation as a model democracy. Best round out the volume with new ways to view and
“Alexander Gardner’s pathbreaking shows how, in his portraiture, Gardner celebrated appreciate Landau’s creation.
“An important contribution to our knowl-
photography developed from long-term Northern labor communities and elevated white Gorgeously illustrated, this book sheds light
edge and understanding of Jewish life
commitments to democracy and social immigrant workers, despite the industrialization on American synagogue art and the history
that degraded them. She concludes with a dis-
in Pennsylvania and religious life more of stained glass in America, and it cements
reform, mixed with shrewd enterprise. broadly. The Prophetic Quest brings
cussion of Gardner’s promotion of an American Landau’s reputation as one of the leading
Makeda Best’s transatlantic biographi- attention to hitherto unknown items that
national infrastructure in which photographers American protest artists.
cal frame shapes stimulating readings of themselves carry artistic, historic, and reli-
and photography played an integral role. The volume features essays by the editors as
enduring images.” Original and compelling, this reconsideration gious significance.” well as Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Rita Rosen Poley,
—Thomas J. brown, author of Civil War of Gardner’s work expands the contribution of —Dianne Ashton, author of Hanukkah in and Lance J. Sussman, along with additional
Monuments and the Militarization of America Civil War photography beyond the immediate America: A History reflections from fifteen other contributors and
narrative of the war to comprehend its relation the photography of Tom Crane.
Also of Interest to the vigorous international debates about
144 pages | 54 color/12 b&w illus. | 8.25 x 11.5 | April 2021
Photography and Other democracy, industrialization, and the rights of
Media in the Nineteenth isbn 978-0-271-08781-8 | hardcover: $34.95 sh
citizens. Scholars working at the intersection of Also of Interest Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination Series
Century
Hebrew Melodies
Edited by Nicoletta Leonardi photography, cultural history, and social reform
Heinrich Heine, Translated by
and Simone Natale
in the nineteenth century on both sides of the Stephen Mitchell and
ISBN 978-0-271-07916-5 Jack Prelutsky, Illustrated by
paper: $34.95 sh Atlantic will find Best’s work invaluable to their Mark Podwal, Foreword by
own research. Elisheva Carlebach
ISBN 978-0-271-08480-0
hardcover: $20.00 tr
200 pages | 84 b&w illus. | 7 x 10 | October 2020 Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural
isbn 978-0-271-08609-5 | hardcover: $64.95 sh Imagination Series
4 5
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art 2021
Field Language presents the work of an extraor- The celebrated Ashcan School artist John Sloan
dinary couple who together left the rural produced a distinctive body of work depicting life
american
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
lifeways of their Mennonite upbringing to go on the rooftops of early twentieth-century New
“into the world” to create forms of modern art York City. Designed to accompany the major loan
that reflected on the places and culture they exhibition of the same name organized by the
came from. Published on the occasion of a Palmer Museum of Art, From the Rooftops: John
retrospective exhibition devoted to the working Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space examines
relationship between abstract painter Warren the allure of rooftop locales for Sloan as well as
Rohrer and his wife, poet Jane Turner Rohrer, for more than a dozen of his contemporaries.
this sumptuously illustrated book explores the From his early career as an illustrator in
Rohrers’ painting and poetry in relation to their Philadelphia to the final years of his life, Sloan
biographies and to the nature of modernism and nurtured a fascination with what he called
modernity. the “roof life of the metropolis.” Devoted to the
The artists, poets, and historians contributing importance of this setting in Sloan’s oeuvre, From
to this volume present a variety of perspectives
From the Rooftops the Rooftops features paintings, prints, and photo-
on the Rohrers, situating their work within the graphs by Sloan, alongside examples from other
Field Language context of modernism, the changing agricultural
John Sloan and the Art of a New
notable artists of the time, such as George Ault,
The Painting and Poetry of Warren Urban Space
landscapes of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, William Glackens, Hughie Lee-Smith, Edward
and Jane Rohrer Adam Thomas
and the aestheticization of local craft practices. Hopper, and Reginald Marsh—artists who were
Edited by Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Through the work of these two highly original likewise enthralled by “the city above the city.” In
Christopher Reed, and Joyce Henri “From the Rooftops is an intelligent,
and creative artists, Field Language invites read- this book, art historian Adam Thomas explores
Robinson well-written and extensively researched
ers to consider relationships between global art the pivotal role that New York City’s rooftops
movements and local visual cultures, issues of
catalogue, which happily closes with the played in Sloan’s thinking about urban space and
land use, the sustainability of rural communities author’s sound advice: ‘Sometimes in order places Sloan’s work within its broader artistic
and cultures, and our own relationships with to see differently we must ignore the sign and cultural context. In his analysis, Thomas
agricultural landscapes, seasonal change, labor, that reads “No roof access.”’” considers the liminal status of the rooftop and its
and human need and desire. —Judith Brodie, Print Quarterly complexities as both an extension of the domes-
In addition to the editors, the contributors tic sphere and an escape from it during a period
include Christopher Campbell, Steven Z. Levine, of profound social and architectural transforma-
Nancy Locke, Sally McMurry, Janneken Smucker, tion in New York City.
William R. Valerio, Jonathan Frederick Walz, and Featuring insightful analysis and more than
Douglas Witmer. eighty full-color illustrations, this catalog will
appeal to art historians and art enthusiasts alike.
248 pages | 128 color illus. | 8.25 x 10.75 | August 2020
Also of Interest Also of Interest
isbn 978-0-911209-74-7 | paper: $39.95 sh 96 pages | 86 color illus. | 8.5 x 10.5 | January 2020
Shale Play A Small Radius of Light
Poems and Photographs from G. Daniel Massad, A isbn 978-0-911209-73-0 | paper: $24.95 sh
the Fracking Fields Retrospective
Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Joyce Henri Robinson and
Steven Rubin G. Daniel Massad
ISBN 978-0-271-08093-2 ISBN 978-0-911209-72-3
hardcover: $24.95 tr paper: $34.95 sh
Keystone Books
6 7
“This impressive book is
art 2021
a valuable contribution to
the scholarship on Monet
19th century
and later nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century
French art and culture
more broadly. By the end
of it, readers will have a far
richer understanding of the
manifold ways that Monet’s
late work intersects with
major artistic, political, and
philosophical currents of Why Monet Matters
Meanings Among the Lily Pads
the period.” James H. Rubin works were considered French cultural trea-
sures. Monet was featured in a propaganda film
—Michelle Foa, author of Georges Claude Monet’s Water Lilies are widely recog-
in response to German militarism, and he was
Seurat: The Art of Vision nized as a celebration of nature and a call to
persuaded by Georges Clemenceau to donate
visual experience. The skilled brushwork, vivid
a number of his Water Lilies paintings to the
color, and immersive quality of the paintings
French nation following the Treaty of Versailles.
suspend thoughts of the outside world and its
Taking this into account, Rubin uncovers how the
concerns. And yet, when one realizes that these
theme of floating lily pads could serve political
works were made during a period of social and
ends, exposing relationships between Monet’s
political turmoil—rapid changes of government,
apparently subject-free art and its material
the Dreyfus Affair, and the destruction and
circumstances in the modern world.
devastation of World War I—questions arise
Engagingly written, masterfully argued, and
about the personal, cultural, and historical
featuring more than 150 illustrations, Why Monet
contexts within which they were created. In this
Matters is a major study of an artist who had
book, James H. Rubin explores these conditions
the will and the talent to remain relevant to his
and shows how Monet’s work—said to be a
time without conceding to its fashions. Scholars,
harbinger of abstraction—appeals not only to
students, and those who appreciate Monet and
the eye but also to something deep in modern
Impressionism will value and learn from this
consciousness.
book.
The myth of Impressionism is that it was
reviled and misunderstood, but by the 1890s 392 pages | 78 color/82 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | March 2021
isbn 978-0-271-08620-0 | hardcover: $99.95 sh
Monet was rich by anyone’s standards, and his
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The United States possesses extraordinary hold- In Consuming Painting, Allison Deutsch chal-
ings of seventeenth-century Flemish paintings. lenges the pervasive view that Impressionism
19th century
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
In this pioneering and richly illustrated volume, was above all about visual experience. Focusing
twelve scholars and museum curators reveal on the language of food and consumption as
the origins of these collections by examining they were used by such prominent critics as
the American approach to and interest in the Baudelaire and Zola, she writes new histories
collecting of Flemish art over the course of the for familiar works by Manet, Monet, Caillebotte,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. and Pissarro and creates fresh possibilities for
Chronicling in lively detail the roles played by experiencing and interpreting them.
individuals in forming private and public collec- Examining the culinary metaphors that the
tions, the essays in this volume illuminate how most influential critics used to express their
and why collectors and museums in the United attraction or disgust toward painting, Deutsch
States embraced the Flemish masters with such rethinks French modern-life painting in relation
enthusiasm. They trace how the taste for specific to the visceral reactions that these works evoked
America and the Art of genres and the appreciation of certain artists, in Consuming Painting in their earliest publics. Writers posed viewing
Flanders particular Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Food and the Feminine in as analogous to ingestion and used comparisons
Dyck, changed over the years, and they explore Impressionist Paris to food to describe the appearance of paint and
Collecting Paintings by Rubens,
the historical and cultural motivations behind the painter’s process. The food metaphors they
Van Dyck, and Their Circles Allison Deutsch
these trends. In doing so, they consider the effect chose were aligned with specific female types,
Edited by Esmée Quodbach of the great bequests of Flemish paintings to such as red meat for sexualized female flesh,
“Consuming Painting offers an impressive
American museums and examine the private confections for fashionably made-up women,
“America and the Art of Flanders is yet new take on the history of late nine-
collections of the main tastemakers for Flemish and hearty vegetables for agricultural labor-
another excellent volume in an already teenth-century French art, one that makes
painting, including the Baltimore merchant ers. These culinary figures of speech, Deutsch
impressive series on the history of collect- clear for the first time the sensorial range
Robert Gilmor; John Graver Johnson, the leading argues, provide important insights into both the
ing in the United States. It investigates corporate lawyer of the Gilded Age; and the
in the historical reception of modern paint- fabrication of the feminine and the construction
the changing interest in Flemish art over California oil magnate J. Paul Getty. Gorgeously ing. In her reevaluation and retranslation of of masculinity in nineteenth-century France.
time—and what happens when private love illustrated with almost one hundred represen- art criticism, combined with her highly per- Consuming Painting exposes the social politics at
of art becomes institutional collecting. It tative pieces, this important contribution to the suasive descriptions of a range of paintings, stake in the deeply gendered metaphors of sense
also deals with many different American scholarship on American collecting of Flemish Deutsch shows the sustained discourse of and sensation.
museum collections as part of a greater art will interest art lovers and stimulate further desire and disgust built into the deeply gen- Original and convincing, Consuming Painting
national collection. This is rarely done, and research in the fields of art history and museum dered metaphorics of painting as culinary upends traditional narratives of the sensory
history. consumption.” reception of modern painting. This trailblazing
it is great food for thought.”
In addition to the editor, the contribu- book is essential reading for specialists in nine-
—Peter Hecht, Professor Emeritus of Art —Marnin Young, author of Realism in the Age of
tors include Ronni Baer, Adam Eaker, Lance Impressionism: Painting and the Politics of Time teenth-century art and criticism, gender studies,
History, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Humphries, George S. Keyes, Margaret R. Laster, and modernism.
Alexandra Libby, Louisa Wood Ruby, Dennis P.
216 pages | 25 color/33 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | March 2021
Weller, Arthur K. Wheelock, Marjorie Wieseman, isbn 978-0-271-08723-8 | hardcover: $99.95 sh
and Anne T. Woollett.
248 pages | 92 color/6 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | October 2020
isbn 978-0-271-08608-8 | hardcover: $69.95 sh
The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art
Collecting in America Series | Co-published with The Frick
Collection
10 11
, l an d sca pe s , a nd soc ieti es buildings, la nd sca p es , a n d soci eti es b u i l d i n
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Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture,
1890–1970, documents how architects made
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
environmental technologies into resources that
helped shape their spatial and formal aesthetic.
In doing so, it sheds important new light on the
ways in which mechanical engineering has been
assimilated into the culture of architecture as
one facet of its broader modernist project.
Tracing the development and architectural
integration of air-conditioning from its origins
in the late nineteenth century to the advent
of the environmental movement in the early
1970s, Joseph M. Siry shows how the incorpo-
Air-Conditioning in Modern ration of mechanical systems into modernism’s
American Architecture, discourse of functionality profoundly shaped
Freedom and the Cage
Modern Architecture and
Gunnar Asplund’s Gothenburg
The Transformation of Public
1890–1970 the work of some of the movement’s leading Psychiatry in Central Europe,
1890–1914
Architecture in Interwar Europe
architects, such as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, Nicholas Adams
Joseph M. Siry Leslie Topp 288 pages | 152 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | 2014
Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 256 pages | 3 color/114 b&w illus./1 map isbn 978-0-271-05984-6
hardcover: $64.95 sh
“Joseph Siry’s excellent new book makes a Gordon Bunshaft, and Louis Kahn. For them, the 9 x 10 | 2017 | isbn 978-0-271-07710-9
hardcover: $99.95 sh
convincing case for the inclusion of tech- modernist ideal of functionality was incom-
nology and the conditions of architectural pletely realized if it did not wholly assimilate
heating, cooling, ventilating, and artificial lighting.
production in our approach to architectural
Bridging the history of technology and the history
history. It provides a major new contribu-
of architecture, Siry discusses air-conditioning’s
tion to our understanding of the field.”
technical and social history and provides case
—Dietrich C. neumann, editor of “The Structure studies of buildings by the master architects who
of Light”: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of brought this technology into the conceptual and
Modern Architecture
formal project of modernism.
A monumental work by a renowned expert in
American modernist architecture, this book asks
us to see canonical modernist buildings through
a mechanical engineering–oriented lens. It will be
especially valuable to scholars and students of
architecture, modernism, the history of technol-
ogy, and American history. Making Modern Paris Architecture and Statecraft
Victor Baltard’s Central Markets Charles of Bourbon’s Naples,
304 pages | 150 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | February 2021 and the Urban Practice of 1734–1759
isbn 978-0-271-08694-1 | hardcover: $139.95 sh Architecture Robin L. Thomas
Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies Series Christopher Curtis Mead 248 pages | 120 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | 2013
isbn 978-0-271-05639-5
Winner, 2015 Alice Davis Hitchcock Book
hardcover: $93.95 sh
Award, Society of Architectural Historians
324 pages | 157 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | 2012
isbn 978-0-271-05087-4
hardcover: $93.95 sh
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This groundbreaking book seeks to explain why Philip II of Spain was a major patron of the arts,
women artists were far more numerous, diverse, best known for his magnificent palace and royal
early modern
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
and successful in early modern Bologna than mausoleum at the Monastery of San Lorenzo of
elsewhere in Italy. They worked as painters, El Escorial. However, neither the king’s mon-
sculptors, printmakers, and embroiderers; many astery nor his collections fully convey the rich
obtained public commissions and expanded artistic landscape of early modern Iberia. In
beyond the portrait subjects to which women this book, Laura Fernández-González examines
were traditionally confined. Babette Bohn asks Philip’s architectural and artistic projects, placing
why that was the case in this particular place and them within the wider context of Europe and the
at this particular time. transoceanic Iberian dominions.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Bohn Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire
investigates an astonishing sixty-eight women investigates ideas of empire and globalization
Women Artists, Their Patrons, artists, including Elisabetta Sirani and Lavinia Philip II of Spain and the in the art and architecture of the Iberian world
Fontana. The book identifies and explores the during the sixteenth century, a time when the
and Their Publics in Early factors that facilitated their success, including Architecture of Empire Spanish Empire was the largest in the world.
Modern Bologna local biographers who celebrated women artists Laura Fernández-González Fernández-González illuminates Philip’s use of
Babette Bohn in new ways, an unusually diverse system of building regulations to construct an imperial
artistic patronage that included citizens from all “Laura Fernández-González’s attention to city in Madrid and highlights the importance
“This book is a monumental contribution to classes, the impact of Bologna’s venerable uni- understudied buildings is admirable, as is of his transformation of the Simancas fortress
a rapidly growing body of studies on pio- versity, an abundance of women writers, and the her characterization of the Spanish Empire into an archive. She analyzes the refashioning
neering women artists. It will galvanize this frequency of self-portraits and signed paintings as one ‘under construction.’ Philip II of of his imperial image upon his ascension to the
field with fresh topics of discussion and a by many women artists. In tracing the evolution Spain and the Architecture of Empire makes Portuguese throne and uses the Hall of Battles
of Bologna’s female artists from nun-painters to an important contribution to the study of in El Escorial as a lens through which to under-
rich harvest of new archival findings.”
working professionals, Bohn proposes new attri- domestic architecture and will certainly put stand visual culture, history writing, and Philip’s
—Sheila Barker, Founding Director, Jane
butions and interpretations of their works, some the Royal Archive at Simancas on the map kingly image as it was reflected in the funeral
Fortune Research Program on Women Artists
of which are reproduced here for the first time. of important undertakings by Philip II.” commemorations mourning his death across
Featuring original methodological models, the Iberian world. Positioning Philip’s art and
—Jesús Escobar, author of The Plaza Mayor and
innovative and historically grounded insights, architectural programs within the wider cultural
the Shaping of Baroque Madrid
and new documentation, this book will be a context of politics, legislation, religion, and the-
crucial resource for art historians, historians, and oretical trends, Fernández-González shows how
women’s studies scholars and students. design and images traveled across the Iberian
world and provides a nuanced assessment of
332 pages | 81 color/60 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | March 2021
isbn 978-0-271-08696-5 | hardcover: $74.95 sh Philip’s role in influencing them.
Also of Interest Also of Interest Original and important, this panoramic work
Medieval Art in Motion Baroque Seville will have a lasting impact on Philip II’s artistic
The Inventory and Gift Giving Sacred Art in a Century of
of Queen Clémence de Hongrie Crisis legacy. Art historians and scholars of Iberia and
Mariah Proctor-Tiffany Amanda Wunder sixteenth-century history will especially value
ISBN 978-0-271-08112-0 ISBN 978-0-271-07664-5 Fernández-González’s research.
hardcover: $89.95 sh hardcover: $84.95 sh
240 pages | 45 color/42 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | May 2021
isbn 978-0-271-08724-5 | hardcover: $94.95 sh
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Guided by Aristotelian theories, medieval phi- Framed by evocative inscriptions, tumultu-
losophers believed that nature abhors a vacuum. ous historical events, and the ambiguities of
medieval
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
Medieval art, according to modern scholars, Christian death, Romanesque tomb effigies were
abhors the same. The notion of horror vacui—the the first large-scale figural monuments for the
fear of empty space—is thus often construed departed in European art. In this book, Shirin Fozi
as a definitive feature of Gothic material culture. explores these provocative markers of life and
In The Absent Image, Elina Gertsman argues death, establishing early tomb figures as a coher-
that Gothic art, in its attempts to grapple with ent genre that hinged upon histories of failure
the unrepresentability of the invisible, actively and frustrated ambition.
engages emptiness, voids, gaps, holes, and In sharp contrast to later recumbent funer-
erasures. ary figures, none of the known European tomb
Exploring complex conversations among effigies made before circa 1180 were commis-
The Absent Image medieval philosophy, physics, mathematics, sioned by the people they represented, and all of
piety, and image-making, Gertsman explains the identifiable examples of these tombs were
Lacunae in Medieval Books
how nothingness was understood in the medie- Romanesque Tomb Effigies dedicated to individuals whose legacies were
Elina Gertsman val world and discusses the different forms that fraught rather than triumphant. Fozi draws on
Death and Redemption in Medieval
it takes: void, zero, and described by negation. Europe, 1000–1200 this evidence to argue that Romanesque effigies
“This is an intellectually ambitious, rig-
With a special focus on murals and manuscripts, were created to address social rather than
orously argued, and erudite book that Shirin Fozi
Gertsman studies these visually varied empty individual anxieties: they compensated for defeat
explores visual strategies and their the- spaces. She considers the concept of nothing- by converting local losses into an expectation
oretical underpinnings of ‘empty spaces’ “This deeply researched and insightful
ness in concert with the imaginary, investigates of eternal victory, comforting the embarrassed
in medieval manuscripts. A must-read book fills a significant lacuna in the study
erasure and how it transforms an image, and heirs of those whose histories were marked by
for scholars of medieval and northern of medieval sculpture, portraiture, and
looks at manuscripts that harbor holes and how misfortune and offering compensation for the
Renaissance art and intellectual history.” commemoration. It makes a vital contribu-
they enact meaning for the viewer. Gertsman disappointments of the world.
reveals profoundly inventive approaches to
tion to the field’s ‘material turn,’ bringing Featuring numerous examples and engaging
—Nino Zchomelidse, author of Art, Ritual, and
Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy emptiness in late medieval visual culture, from together monuments in stone, metal, and the visual, historical, and theological contexts
ingenious images of the world’s creation ex nihilo stucco to reveal both their distinctive prop- that inform them, this groundbreaking work adds
to figurations of absence as a replacement for erties and their interconnections. At the a fresh dimension to the study of monumental
the invisible forces of conception and death. same time, Fozi never lets us forget the real sculpture and the idea of the individual in the
Innovative and challenging, this book will find human beings these tombs honored or the northern European Middle Ages. It will appeal to
its primary audience with students and scholars communities that took pride in and com- scholars of art history and medieval studies.
of art, religion, physics, philosophy, and mathe- fort from these depictions.” 264 pages | 16 color/80 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | April 2021
matics. It will be particularly welcomed by those isbn 978-0-271-08719-1 | hardcover: $89.95 sh
—Jacqueline E. jung, author of Eloquent Bodies:
interested in phenomenological and cross-dis- Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in
Also of Interest ciplinary approaches to the visual culture of the Gothic Sculpture
Apocalypse Illuminated later Middle Ages.
The Visual Exegesis of
Revelation in Medieval
264 pages | 58 color/62 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | June 2021
Illustrated Manuscripts
isbn 978-0-271-08784-9 | hardcover: $124.95 sh
Richard K. Emmerson
ISBN 978-0-271-07865-6
hardcover: $59.95 sh
16 17psupress.org
art 2021
The concept of the medieval city is fixed in the Why does a society seek out images of violence?
modern imagination, conjuring visions of fortified What can the consumption of violent imagery
medieval
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
walls, towering churches, and winding streets. teach us about the history of violence and the
In Riemenschneider in Rothenburg, Katherine M. ways in which it has been represented and
Boivin investigates how medieval urban planning understood? Assaf Pinkus considers these ques-
and artistic programming worked together to tions within the context of what he calls galleries
form dynamic environments, demonstrating the of violence, the torment imagery that flourished
agency of objects, styles, and spaces in mapping in German-speaking regions during the four-
the late medieval city. teenth and fifteenth centuries. Exploring these
Using altarpieces by the famed medieval images and the visceral bodily responses that
artist Tilman Riemenschneider as touchstones they produced in their viewers, Pinkus argues
for her argument, Boivin explores how artwork in that the new visual discourse on violence was a
Germany’s preeminent medieval city, Rothenburg watershed in premodern conceptualizations of
ob der Tauber, deliberately propagated civic selfhood.
Riemenschneider in ideals. She argues that the numerous artistic Visual Aggression Images of martyrdom in late medieval
pieces commissioned by the city’s elected Images of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Germany reveal a strikingly brutal parade of pas-
Rothenburg council over the course of two centuries built sion: severed heads, split skulls, mutilated organs,
Sacred Space and Civic Identity in the Germany
upon one another, creating a cohesive structural extracted fingernails and teeth, and myriad other
Late Medieval City network that attracted religious pilgrims and fur-
Assaf Pinkus torments. Stripped from their devotional context
Katherine M. Boivin thered the theological ideals of the parish church.
“A suggestive and richly illustrated study of and presented simply as brutal acts, these
By contextualizing some of Rothenburg’s most portrayals assailed viewers’ bodies and minds
“Riemenschneider in Rothenburg should violence imagery in late medieval German-
significant architectural and artistic works, such so violently that they amounted to what Pinkus
be of great interest to art historians and speaking lands. Pinkus meticulously
as St. James’s Church and Riemenschneider’s describes as “visual aggressions.” Addressing
others. It sheds light on a major figure of Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, Boivin shows how
collates and catalogues the monumental contemporary discourses on violence and cruelty,
the Northern ‘Renaissance’ and also on the city government employed these works to ‘galleries of violence’ that are his focus, con- the aesthetics of violence, and the eroticism of
issues of civic contextualization that are of establish a local aesthetic that awed visitors, textualising sculptural cycles of martyrdom the tortured body, Pinkus ties these galleries of
current interest. The scholarship is thor- raising Rothenburg’s profile and putting it on the in the Upper and Middle Rhine regions violence to larger cultural concerns about the
ough and careful. It is, in short, an excellent pilgrimage map of Europe. with reference to local histories and cir- ethics of violence and bodily integrity in the con-
book.” Carefully documented and convincingly cumstances. Attentive to issues of language, ceptualization of early modern personhood.
argued, this book sheds important new light on he also shows how the concept of violence Innovative and convincing, this study heralds
—Richard Kieckhefer, author of Theology in
the history of one of Germany’s major tourist came to be located within an ethical system. a fundamental shift in the scholarly conversa-
Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to
destinations. It will be of considerable interest to The result is a significant contribution to tion about premodern violence, moving from
Berkeley
medieval art historians and scholars working in our understanding of medieval martyrdom a focus on the imitatio Christi and the liturgy of
the fields of cultural and urban history. punishment to the notion of violence as a moral
imagery and the responses it elicits.”
problem in an ethical system. Scholars of medi-
Also of Interest 248 pages | 77 color/20 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | May 2021 —Robert Mills, author of Suspended Animation:
isbn 978-0-271-08778-8 | hardcover: $99.95 sh eval and early modern art, history, and literature
Pygmalion’s Power Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture
Romanesque Sculpture, will welcome and engage with Pinkus’s research
the Senses, and Religious
Experience for years to come.
Thomas E. A. Dale
216 pages | 50 color/87 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | February 2021
ISBN 978-0-271-08345-2
hardcover: $99.95 sh
isbn 978-0-271-08379-7 | hardcover: $109.95 sh
18 19psupress.org
art 2021
What does the study of iconography entail for In a major departure from previous scholarship,
scholars active today? How does it intersect this volume argues that the illustrations in the
medieval
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
with the broad array of methodological and famous and widely influential Utrecht Psalter
theoretical approaches now at the disposal of art manuscript were inspired by a late antique
historians? Should we still dare to use the term Hebrew version of Psalms, rather than a Latin,
“iconography” to describe such work? Christian version of the text.
The seven essays collected here argue that Produced during the early ninth century in
we should. Their authors set out to evaluate the a workshop near Reims, France, the Utrecht
continuing relevance of iconographic studies to Psalter is illustrated with pen-and-ink draw-
current art-historical scholarship by exploring ings in a lively style reminiscent of Hellenistic
the fluidity of iconography itself over broad spans art. The motifs are largely literal renditions
of time, place, and culture. These wide-ranging of words and phrases found in the book of
case studies take a diverse set of approaches as Psalms. However, more than three dozen motifs
they track the transformation of medieval images cannot be explained by either the Latin text that
The Lives and Afterlives of and their meanings along their respective paths, Hebrew Psalms and accompanies the imagery or the commentaries
exploring how medieval iconographies remained of the church fathers. Through a close reading
Medieval Iconography stable or changed; how images were reconceived
the Utrecht Psalter of the Hebrew Psalms, Pamela Berger demon-
Edited by Pamela A. Patton and in response to new contexts, ideas, or viewer-
Veiled Origins strates that these motifs can be explained only
Henry D. Schilb ships; and how modern thinking about medieval Pamela Berger by the Hebrew text, the Jewish commentary, or
images—including the application or rejection Jewish art. Drawing comparisons between the
of traditional methodologies—has shaped our “Hellenistic” style of the Psalter images and the
understanding of what they signify. These essays style of late antique Galilean mosaics and using
demonstrate that iconographic work still holds a evidence from recent archaeological discoveries,
critical place within the rapidly evolving disci- Berger argues that the model for those Psalter
pline of art history as well as within the many illustrations dependent on the Hebrew text was
other disciplines that increasingly prioritize the produced in the Galilee.
study of images. Pioneering and highly persuasive, this book
This inaugural volume in the series Signa: resolves outstanding issues surrounding the
Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton origins of one of the most extensively studied
University demonstrates the importance of keep- illuminated manuscripts. It will be mandatory
ing matters of image and meaning—regardless reading for many historians of medieval art and
of whether we use the word “iconography”—at literature and for those interested in the Hebrew
the center of modern inquiry into medieval visual text of the book of Psalms.
culture.
240 pages | 38 color/52 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | Janaury 2020
In addition to the editors, the contributors to Also of Interest isbn 978-0-271-08477-0 | hardcover: $135.00 sh
this volume are Kirk Ambrose, Charles Barber, Art of Estrangement
Redefining Jews in Reconquest
Catherine Fernandez, Elina Gertsman, Jacqueline Spain
E. Jung, Dale Kinney, and D. Fairchild Ruggles. Pamela A. Patton
ISBN 978-0-271-05383-7
216 pages | 32 color/49 b&w illus. | 8 x 10 | February 2021 hardcover: $82.95 sh
Winner, 2014 Eleanor Tufts Book
isbn 978-0-271-08621-7 | hardcover: $84.95 sh Award from American Society for
Signa: Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton Hispanic Art Historical Studies
University Series
20 21psupress.org
art 2021
This important critical study of the history of During the nineteenth century, Albrecht Dürer’s
public art museums in Austria-Hungary explores art, piety, and personal character were held up as
theory/criticism/historiography
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
their place in the wider history of European models to inspire contemporary artists and—it
museums and collecting, their role as public was hoped—to return Germany to international
institutions, and their involvement in the com- artistic eminence. In this book, Jeffrey Chipps
plex cultural politics of the Habsburg Empire. Smith explores Dürer’s complex posthumous
Focusing on institutions in Vienna, Cracow, reception during the great century of museum
Prague, Zagreb, and Budapest, The Museum building in Europe, with a particular focus on the
Age in Austria-Hungary traces the evolution artist’s role as a creative and moral exemplar for
of museum culture over the long nineteenth German artists and museum visitors.
century, from the 1784 installation of imperial art In an era when museums were emerging as
collections in the Belvedere Palace (as a gallery symbols of civic, regional, and national identity,
open to the public) to the dissolution of Austria- Albrecht Dürer and the dozens of new national, princely, and civic muse-
Hungary after the First World War. Drawing on ums began to feature portraits of Dürer in their
source materials from across the empire, the Embodiment of Genius elaborate decorative programs embellishing the
authors reveal how the rise of museums and dis- Decorating Museums in the Nineteenth facades, grand staircases, galleries, and cere-
play was connected to growing tensions between Century monial spaces. Most of these arose in Germany
The Museum Age in the efforts of Viennese authorities to promote a Jeffrey Chipps Smith and Austria, though examples can be seen as far
Austria-Hungary cosmopolitan and multinational social, politi- away as St. Petersburg, Stockholm, London, and
Art and Empire in the Long Nineteenth cal, and cultural identity, on the one hand, and, “While Renaissance studies have taken New York City. Probing the cultural, political, and
Century on the other, the rights of national groups and the international importance of Albrecht educational aspirations and rivalries of these
cultures to self-expression. They demonstrate Dürer as a given for a long time, his role for museums and their patrons, Smith traces how
Matthew Rampley, Markian Prokopovych,
the ways in which museum collecting policies, the nineteenth-century imagination has Dürer was painted, sculpted, and prominently
and Nóra Veszprémi
practices of display, and architecture engaged remained mostly a German affair. Smith’s placed to accommodate the era’s diverse needs
“This is a highly original study. There is no with these political agendas and how museums wide-ranging study will change this. and aspirations. He investigates what these
other comparative treatment of the devel- reflected and enabled shifting forms of civic Written in vivid, easily accessible prose, the portraits can tell us about the rise of a distinct
opment of art museums in the major cities identity, emerging forms of professional practice, canon of famous Renaissance and Baroque art-
book presents the reader with a rich picture
the production of knowledge, and the changing ists—addressing the question of why Dürer was
of the Habsburg monarchy, and only such of Dürer’s omnipresence in the museum
composition of the public sphere. so often paired with Raphael, who was consid-
a study can address effectively the analytic age across the globe.”
Original in its approach and sweeping in ered to embody the greatness of Italian art—and
questions about the development and —Cordula Grewe, author of The Nazarenes:
scope, this fascinating study of the museum why, with the rise of German nationalism, Hans
functions of the art museums in a changing age of Austria-Hungary will be welcomed by Romantic Avant-garde and the Art of the Concept Holbein the Younger often replaced Raphael as
public sphere that are raised here.” students and scholars interested in the cultural Dürer’s partner.
—Gary B. cohen, author of Education and and art history of Central Europe. Accessibly written and comprehensive in
Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 scope, this book sheds new light on museum
304 pages | 47 b&w illus. | 7 x 10 | February 2021
isbn 978-0-271-08710-8 | hardcover: $99.95 sh building in the nineteenth century and the rise
of art history as a discipline. It will appeal to spe-
cialists in nineteenth-century and early modern
art, the history of museums and collecting, and
art historiography.
256 pages | 79 color/64 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | October 2020
isbn 978-0-271-08594-4 | hardcover: $99.95 sh
22 23psupress.org
art 2021
Advances in technology allow us to see the Sound and statuary have had a complicated
invisible: fetal heartbeats, seismic activity, cell relationship in Western aesthetic thought since
theory/criticism/historiography
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
mutations, virtual space. Yet in an age when antiquity. Taking as its focus the sounding
experience is so intensely mediated by visual statue—a type of anthropocentric statue that
records, the centuries-old realization that knowl- invites the viewer to imagine sounds the statue
edge gained through sight is inherently fallible might make—The Sculpted Ear rethinks this
takes on troubling new dimensions. This book relationship in light of discourses on aurality
considers the ways in which seeing, over time, emerging within the field of sound studies. Ryan
has become the foundation for knowing (or at McCormack argues that the sounding statue is
least for what we think we know). best thought of not as an aesthetic object but
A. Joan Saab examines the scientific and as an event heard by people and subsequently
socially constructed aspects of seeing in order conceptualized into being through acts of writing
to delineate a genealogy of visuality from the and performance.
Renaissance to the present, demonstrating Constructing a history in which hearing plays
that what we see and how we see it are often an integral role in ideas about anthropocentric
historically situated and culturally constructed. statuary, McCormack begins with the ancient
Through a series of linked case studies that sculpture of Laocoön, before moving to a discus-
Objects of Vision highlight moments of seeming disconnect sion of the early modern automaton known as
Making Sense of What We See between seeing and believing—hoaxes, miracles,
The Sculpted Ear Tipu’s Tiger and the statue of the Commendatore
A. Joan Saab spirit paintings, manipulated photographs, and Aurality and Statuary in the West in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Finally, he examines
holograms, to name just a few—she interrogates Ryan McCormack statues of people from the present and the past,
“Well researched, beautifully written, and the relationship between “visions” and visuality. including the singer Josephine Baker, the violinist
fascinatingly presented, Objects of Vision This focus on the strange and the wonderful in “The Sculpted Ear evidences a long and rich Aleksandar Nikolov, and the actor Bob Newhart—
offers the visual studies field a historical understanding changing notions of visions and history of sounding and hearing associated with each case touching on some of the issues
reading of case studies with and around visual culture is a compelling entry point into with the apparently silent art of sculpture. that have historically plagued the aesthetic
objects and artifacts from the Renaissance the increasingly urgent topic of technologically The book tackles important questions in viability of the sounding statue. McCormack con-
to the present. Joan Saab expands the scope enhanced representations of reality. sound studies, musicology, philosophy, and vincingly demonstrates how sounding statues
of visual studies to include material and Accessibly written and thoroughly enlighten- art history from a fresh perspective. The served as important precursors and continuing
ing, Objects of Vision is a concise history of the case studies to be found in each chapter contributors to modern ideas about the ontology
technological forms ranging from spirit
connections between seeing and knowing that provide new, fascinating information to the of sound, technologies of sound reproduction,
photography to holograms, and she gives
will appeal to students and teachers of visual and performance practices blurring traditional
timely insight into photographic truth and scholar of sound as well as intriguing new
studies and sensory, social, and cultural history. divides between music, sculpture, and the other
the everyday proliferation of images.” perspectives on the history of hearing.”
arts.
166 pages | 31 color/13 b&w illus. | 7 x 10 | November 2020 —James G. mansell, author of The Age of Noise
—Lisa Cartwright, coauthor of Practices of A compelling narrative that illuminates the
isbn 978-0-271-08810-5 | hardcover: $69.95 sh
Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture in Britain: Hearing Modernity
Perspectives on Sensory History Series stories of individual sculptural objects and the
audiences that hear them, this book will appeal
to anyone interested in the connections between
aurality and statues in the Western world, in
particular scholars and students of sound studies
and sensory history.
224 pages | 6 x 9 | April 2020
isbn 978-0-271-08692-7 | hardcover: $89.95 sh
isbn 978-0-271-08693-4 | paper: $32.95 sh | June 2021
24 Perspectives on Sensory History Series 25art 2021 new in paperback
Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Jules Michelet
psupress.org
Debates Writing Art and History in Nineteenth-
art 2021
Art Through a Modern American Mind Century France
C. Oliver O’Donnell Michèle Hannoosh
Winner of the Zentralinstitut für Jules Michelet, one of France’s most influential
new in paperback
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
Kunstgeschichte’s 2019 Willibald Sauerländer historians and a founder of modern historical
Award for distinguished research in the history practice, was a passionate viewer and relent-
and practice of art-historical writing less interpreter of the visual arts. In this book,
Michèle Hannoosh examines the crucial role that
Described in the New York Times as the greatest
art writing played in Michelet’s work and shows
art historian America ever produced, Meyer
how it decisively influenced his theory of history
Schapiro was both a close friend to many of the
and his view of the practice of the historian.
famous artists of his generation and a scholar
The visual arts were at the very center of
who engaged in public debate with some of
Michelet’s conception of historiography. He filled
the major intellectuals of his time. This volume
his private notes, public lectures, and printed
synthesizes his prolific career for the first time,
books with discussions of artworks, which, for
demonstrating how Schapiro worked from the
him, embodied the character of particular histori-
nexus of artistic and intellectual practice to
cal moments. Michelet believed that painting,
confront some of the twentieth century’s most
sculpture, architecture, and engraving bore
abiding questions.
witness to histories that frequently went untold;
Schapiro was renowned for pioneering inter-
272 pages | 36 b&w illus. | 6 x 9 | November 2020 248 pages | 31 b&w illus. | 6 x 9 | November 2020
that they expressed key ideas standing behind
disciplinary approaches to interpreting visual
isbn 978-0-271-08465-7 | paper: $29.95 sh isbn 978-0-271-08357-5 | paper: $39.95 sh events; and that they articulated concepts that
art. His lengthy formal analyses in the 1920s,
would come to fruition only later.
Marxist interpretations in the 1930s, psycho-
“An important resource on one of art “In this book Hannoosh reveals a brilliant This groundbreaking reevaluation of
analytic critiques in the 1950s and 1960s, and
history’s most brilliant practitioners.” mind using art to invent a way of writing Michelet’s approach to history elucidates how
semiotic explorations in the 1970s all helped
writing about art provided a model for the histo-
—D. Pincus, Choice open new avenues for inquiry. Based on archival history, inspiring the discipline of art his-
rian’s relation to, and interpretation of, the past,
research, C. Oliver O’Donnell’s study is struc- tory itself, inspiring us to continue to build
and thus for a new type of historiography—one
tured chronologically around eight defining the ‘cathedral of knowledge’ as both metic-
that acknowledges and enacts the historian’s
debates in which Schapiro participated, including ulous scholarship and profound love of art.” own implication in the history he or she tells.
his dispute with Isaiah Berlin over the life and —Beth S. wright, Nineteenth-Century Art
writing of Bernard Berenson, Schapiro’s critique Worldwide
of Martin Heidegger’s ekphrastic commen-
tary on Van Gogh, and his confrontation with
Claude Lévi-Strauss over the applicability of
mathematics to the interpretation of visual
Also of Interest art. O’Donnell’s thoughtful analysis of these Also of Interest
The Seductions of Darwin intellectual exchanges not only traces Schapiro’s Art and Form
Art, Evolution, Neuroscience From Roger Fry to Global
philosophical evolution but also relates them to Modernism
Matthew Rampley
ISBN 978-0-271-07742-0 the development of art history as a discipline, to Sam Rose
cloth: $34.95 sh ISBN 978-0-271-08239-4
central tensions of artistic modernism, and to paper: $34.95 sh | Refiguring
modern intellectual history as a whole. Modernism Series
28 29Disharmony of the Spheres Power and Posterity
psupress.org
The Europe of Holbein’s Ambassadors American Art at Philadelphia’s 1876
art 2021
Jennifer Nelson Centennial Exhibition
Kimberly Orcutt
2021 Historians of British Art Book Prize for a
single-authored book with a subject up to 1600 A milestone in American cultural history, the
new in paperback
P E N N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was
Anxious about the threat of Ottoman inva- one of the most broadly shared, heavily attended,
sion and a religious schism that threatened and thoroughly documented public experiences
Christianity from within, sixteenth-century north- of the nineteenth century. Power and Posterity illu-
ern Europeans increasingly saw their world as minates how the art featured in the celebration
disharmonious and full of mutual contradictions. informed and reflected national debates over the
Examining the work of four unusual but influen- country’s identity and its role in the world.
tial northern Europeans as they faced Europe’s The Centennial’s fine arts display, which
changing identity, Jennifer Nelson reveals the included both a government-sanctioned
ways in which these early modern thinkers and selection of American works and significant con-
artists grappled with the problem of cultural, 296 pages | 43 color/41 b&w illus. | 9 x 10 | December 2020 tributions from sixteen other countries, spurred
religious, and cosmological difference in relation isbn 978-0-271-07837-3 | paper: $39.95 sh
a transformation in the American art world.
to notions of universals and the divine. Drawing from official records, published criticism,
Focusing on northern Europe during the first “A richly detailed, satisfying visual, cultural, guidebooks, poems, and satire, Kimberly Orcutt
216 pages | 19 color/24 b&w illus. half of the sixteenth century, this book proposes
7 x 10 | December 2020
and historical account of American art provides a nuanced, in-depth study of the
isbn 978-0-271-08341-4 | paper: $34.95 sh
a complementary account of a Renaissance and at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition exhibition. She considers the circumstances of
Reformation for which epistemology is not so the artworks’ creation, the ideological positions
of 1876. . . . Power and Posterity makes a
much destabilized as pluralized. Addressing expressed through their installation, and the
“Nelson brings a refreshing interdisciplinar- significant contribution to the understand-
a wide range of media—including paintings, responses of critics, collectors, and the general
ity to Holbein’s Ambassadors that allows us ing of the American art on view at this
etchings and woodcuts, university curriculum public as they evolved from antebellum nation-
to see it through a theological preoccupa- regulations, clocks, sundials, anthologies of
signal event of the 19th-century (art) world.
alism to a postwar cosmopolitanism in which
tion with difference and discrepancy. The proverbs, and astrolabes—Nelson argues that Highly recommended.”
artists and collectors took the international stage.
happy result is a defamiliarizing of one of inconsistency, discrepancy, and contingency —J. Decker, Choice
Orcutt reveals how the fair democratized the
the most familiar paintings of Renaissance were viewed as fundamental features of worldly fine arts, gave art criticism newfound reach and
Europe.” existence. Taking as its starting point Hans authority, and led art museums to proliferate
—Michael Gaudio, caa.reviews Holbein’s famously complex double portrait across the country.
The Ambassadors, and then examining Philipp Deeply researched, thoughtfully written, and
Melanchthon’s measurement-minded theology featuring a mix of more than eighty full-color and
of science, Georg Hartmann’s modular sundi- black-and-white illustrations, this thorough and
als, and Desiderius Erasmus’s eclectic Adages, insightful book will appeal to those interested in
Disharmony of the Spheres is a sophisticated and American culture and history, the art world, and
challenging reconsideration of sixteenth-century world’s fairs and exhibitions in Philadelphia and
Also of Interest Also of Interest
northern European culture and its discomforts. beyond.
Animating Empire “The Spanish Element in
Automata, the Holy Roman Carefully researched and engagingly written, Our Nationality”
Empire, and the Early Modern Spain and America at the
World
Disharmony of the Spheres will be of vital interest World’s Fairs and Centennial
Jessica Keating to historians of early modern European art, reli- Celebrations, 1876–1915
ISBN 978-0-271-08002-4 gion, science, and culture. M. Elizabeth Boone
hardcover: $69.95 sh ISBN 978-0-271-08331-5
hardcover: $99.95 sh
30 31You can also read
