Marks of Opulence by Colin Platt

Marks of Opulence by Colin Platt

A sweeping, beautifully written history of artistic patronage from 1000 to the present day by a Wolfson Prize-winning historian. ‘Marks of Opulence’ is a magisterial survey of European art and artistic patronage from 1000 until the birth of modernism. Tracing the history from the discovery of silver in the Harz mountains, through the catastrophic effects of plague in the 14th-century, to the studied magnificence of papal and royal courts in the 16th- and 17th-centuries, Platt shows how the great and the good have always used art to bolster political power. Arguing that the acquisitive instinct – felt by all of us in different ways – is central to the history of Western art, Platt traces how art began to move out of the palaces of the aristocracy into the homes of merchants, bankers and industrialists. From the mid 19th-century onwards, and in the pre-war Belle Époque in particular, it was the immensely wealthy 'robber barons' and their widows – in London and Paris, in Berlin and Vienna, in Moscow and Barcelona, in Philadelphia and New York – who collected the work of the most innovative artists and broke the hold of the Academies on Western art. Professor Platt's ambitious sweep through a thousand years of artistic endeavour in the West argues throughout that a superfluity of money is the chief driver of high achievement in the arts, and for the transforming power of great riches.

‘Exceptionally ambitious…Platt writes knowledgeably and interestingly’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Lively and well informed.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Platt’s pace never slackens and his range in impressive…Written with mighty authority and style.’ Independent

Colin Platt is Professor of Art History at Southampton University. He is the author of many books including King Death : A History of the Plague, The Architecture of Medieval Britain, which was awarded the Wolfson Prize for History, and the classic The Medieval Town. He lives in Devon.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780006531562
ISBN 10	0006531563
Title	Marks of Opulence
Author	Colin Platt
Condition	Unavailable
Binding type	Paperback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers
Year published	2005-01-17
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable