Luxurious

books:

	• Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications) Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Luxurious

Published to accompany last year's exhibition at the Met in NYC, this is a wonderful artbook, replete with luxurious full-color illustrations and close-ups of the tapestries exhibited, most of which come from European museums (Madrid and Vienna in particular). The text is highly informative (on weaving techniques, on the artists involved, on the patrons, on the significance of the depicted scenes, etc), almost encyclopedic on this form of art long considered as minor and justly rehabilitated with this collector's piece of a book.

Conceived as a sequel to the critically acclaimed Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002), this lavishly illustrated volume is the first comprehensive survey of 17th-century European tapestry available in English. From the Middle Ages until the late 18th century, European courts expended vast sums on tapestries, which were made with precious materials after designs by the leading artists of the day. Yet, this spectacular medium is still often presented as a decorative art of lesser importance. Tapestry in the Baroque challenges this notion, demonstrating that tapestry remained among the most prestigious figurative mediums throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries, prized by the rich for its artistry and as a propaganda tool.
The book features forty-five of the finest surviving examples from collections in more than fifteen countries, as well as a number of related designs and oil sketches. Through these it examines the stylistic developments of tapestry between 1590 and 1720, when such masters as Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Simon Vouet, Charles Le Brun, Pietro da Cortona, and Giovanni Romanelli responded to the challenges and opportunities of the medium in the context of contemporary artistic developments. (20081001)

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