{"title":"The Discovery Series","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"french-revolution-as-blasphemy-book-william-l-pressly-9780520211964","title":"The French Revolution as Blasphemy","description":"William Pressly presents for the first time a close analysis of two important, neglected paintings, arguing that they are among the most extraordinary works of art devoted to the French Revolution. Johan Zoffany's Plundering the King's Cellar at Paris, August 10, 1792, and Celebrating over the Bodies of the Swiss Soldiers, both painted in about 1794, represent events that helped turn the English against the Revolution. Pressly places both paintings in their historical context--a time of heightened anti-French hysteria--and relates them to pictorial conventions: contemporary history painting, the depiction of urban mobs in satiric and festival imagery, and Hogarth's humorous presentation of modern moral subjects, all of which Zoffany adopted and reinvented for his own purposes. Pressly relates the paintings to Zoffany's status as a German-born Catholic living in Protestant England and to Zoffany's vision of revolutionary justice and the role played by the sansculottes, women, and blacks. He also examines the religious dimension in Zoffany's paintings, showing how they broke new ground by conveying Christian themes in a radically new format. Art historians will find Pressly's book of immense value, as will cultural historians interested in religion, gender, and race.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49675953832209,"sku":"CIN0520211960VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51484417589521,"sku":"GOR014299274","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520211960.jpg?v=1751391755"},{"product_id":"arnolfini-betrothal-book-edwin-hall-9780520212213","title":"The Arnolfini Betrothal","description":"Commonly known as the \"Arnolfini Wedding\" or \"Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride,\" Jan van Eyck's double portrait, painted in 1434, is probably the most widely recognized panel painting of the fifteenth century. One of the great masterpieces of early Flemish art, this enigmatic picture has also aroused intense speculation as to its precise meaning. Edwin Hall's accessible study - firmly grounded in Roman and canon law, theology, literature, and the social history of the period - offers a compelling new interpretation of this wonderful painting. Instead of depicting the sacrament of marriage, Hall argues, the painting commemorates the alliance between two wealthy and important Italian mercantile families, a ceremonious betrothal that reflects the social conventions of the time.Hall not only unlocks the mystery that has surrounded this work of art, he also makes a unique contribution to the fascinating history of betrothal and marriage custom, ritual, and ceremony, tracing their evolution from the late Roman Empire through the fifteenth century and providing persuasive visual evidence for their development. His illuminating view of Van Eyck's quintessential work is a striking example of how art continues to endure and engage us over the centuries.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49988783276305,"sku":"GOR005671256","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52435473105169,"sku":"GOR014524144","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520212215.jpg?v=1750741569"},{"product_id":"artemisia-gentileschi-around-1622-book-mary-d-garrard-9780520228412","title":"Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622","description":"Mary D. Garrard, author of the acclaimed Artemisia Gentileschi, furthers her study of the seventeenth-century artist in this groundbreaking investigation of two little-known paintings. Taking as case studies the Seville Mary Magdalene and the Burghley House Susanna and the Elders, paintings of circa 1621-22 attributed to Artemisia, Garrard examines the ways that identity, gender, and market pressures interact both in the artist's work and in the criticism and connoisseurship that have surrounded it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50329010340113,"sku":"CIN0520228413VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50739822854417,"sku":"CIN0520228413G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50934915760401,"sku":"GOR008726671","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520228413.jpg?v=1751103977"},{"product_id":"devil-at-isenheim-book-ruth-mellinkoff-9780520062047","title":"The Devil at Isenheim","description":"Matthias Grunwald's world-famous Isenheim Altarpiece ranks among the most powerful expressionistic works of the Northern Renaissance. Characterized by great emotional force, exquisite handling of color and brilliantly interwoven subtleties of Christian iconography, the multi-paneled altarpiece has remained the object of intense scholarly interest and the main attraction of the Musee d'Unterlinden in Colmar, France. Ruth Mellinkoff offers an original analysis of the altarpiece, uncovering the late medieval popular beliefs that underlie its unusual visual content. She places its rich imagery within a tradition of Christian art, and stunningly, discovers Lucifer among the angels observing the Nativity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351375024401,"sku":"CIN0520062043G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51372339724561,"sku":"GOR009936297","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520062043.jpg?v=1750741518"},{"product_id":"arnolfini-betrothal-book-edwin-hall-9780520082519","title":"The Arnolfini Betrothal","description":"Commonly known as the 'Arnolfini Wedding' or 'Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride', Jan van Eyck's double portrait, painted in 1434, is probably the most widely recognized panel painting of the fifteenth century. 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His illuminating view of Van Eyck's quintessential work is a striking example of how art continues to endure and engage us over the centuries.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50356151779601,"sku":"CIN0520082516G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51855730376977,"sku":"GOR014430100","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520082516.jpg?v=1751391734"},{"product_id":"portraits-of-madame-de-pompadour-book-elise-goodman-9780520217942","title":"The Portraits of Madame de Pompadour","description":"The femme savante portraits of Mme de Pompadour (1721-1764), the beautiful and cultivated woman who became the official mistress of Louis XV, are the focus of Elise Goodman's innovative study. The portraits are generally admired as the most glamorous, celebrated likenesses of a woman created during the French Enlightenment, and Goodman's book is the first to fully examine them in the context of the highly saturated feminist atmosphere that existed at the time. Goodman is interested in the iconography of the portraits, especially as seen in three works done by Francois Boucher and one each by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour and Francois-Hubert Drouais.The overarching theme of the portraits is the celebration of a woman of beauty, intelligence, and sophistication. Mme de Pompadour was interested in the world of intellect and culture throughout her life and successfully fashioned herself into the most famous learned woman of the Enlightenment. Drawing from the memoirs of Pompadour's contemporaries and from primary and secondary sources in several disciplines, Goodman's wide-ranging study examines the treatment of the educated woman in French eighteenth-century portraiture and culture.She discusses the relevance of the socio-cultural debate dubbed the \"Women's Quarrel,\" in which liberal writers campaigned for equity in women's education, and the Parisian salon, the primary arena in which intellectual women educated themselves and contributed to Enlightenment culture. While Goodman agrees with those who assume that Pompadour commissioned images of herself that would proclaim her cultural agendas - and enhance her status at court - she situates these portraits within the larger context of how cultivated women were represented in the Enlightenment. As was true of likenesses of woman readers, scientists, and musicians, Pompadour's portraits are imbued with progressive ideas on women's intellectuality and education. Abundantly illustrated, this is a book with great appeal for art historians, French cultural historians, women's studies specialists, and a wide audience of general readers.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50654606098705,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50654607016209,"sku":"GOR008767988","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51752250278161,"sku":"CIN0520217942VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520217942.jpg?v=1751358530"},{"product_id":"hand-and-head-book-peter-springer-9780520216266","title":"Hand and Head","description":"Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's \"Self-Portrait as Soldier\" (1915) is one of the best-known self-portraits of the modern classical period. With its sharp foreground focus on the uniformed artist's bloody amputated hand, the painting has long been interpreted as a vehement protest against war, specifically World War I and Kirchner's participation in it. Peter Springer's innovative study presents a convincing alternative reading of Kirchner's epochal work. Springer sees in it, not a harsh condemnation of militarism, but a marked ambivalence in the artist's attitude toward war. This new reading of the painting grows out of Springer's assessment of its imagery in relation to patronage, gender relations, and national identity - and particularly to propaganda and satire. Using Kirchner's letters and other documentation, much of it only recently available, Springer reconstructs the years of Kirchner's military service. He juxtaposes a range of visual contexts that include traditions of self-portraiture, depictions of prosthetic devices, and propaganda accounts of German soldiers hacking off the hands of Belgian and French children. He then considers Kirchner in relation to Albrecht Durer and to theoretical arguments on the relative dominance of hand and mind in the pictorial arts that invoke the image of \"Raphael without hands.\" Nearly 100 illustrations superbly complement the text.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50786890252561,"sku":"GOR014072451","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50959433105681,"sku":"GOR014147127","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520216261.jpg?v=1751261788"},{"product_id":"behind-closed-doors-book-therese-lichtenstein-9780520209848","title":"Behind Closed Doors","description":"The life-size, adolescent-girl dolls created by German artist Hans Bellmer in the 1930s are the subject of Therese Lichtenstein's highly original book. Disturbing and controversial, Bellmer's dolls - with their uncanny, fragmented bodies and eroticized poses - were just as shocking during Bellmer's time as they are today. Until now there has been little available in English about Bellmer's dolls, and Lichtenstein's book will be welcomed for its fresh interpretation of the artist's work and his place in European modernism. Eighty striking photographs accompany the text. Working during a time when Nazism was on the rise. Bellmer created several dolls with fragmented bodies that could be dismantled and arranged in various configurations. Using a narrative format, he then photographed the dolls in a range of grotesque - often sexual - positions. The images he conveyed were of death and decay, abuse and longing, in stark contrast to Nazism's mythic utopian celebration of adolescence. Lichtenstein interprets Bellmer's complex expressions of eroticism as a protest against the Nazis and also against his father, a cold and repressive Nazi sympathizer. At the same time, she says, by hyperbolically flaunting a passive femininity in a theatrical manner. Bellmer's images allow us to consider how cultural representations can affect the formation of identity and alternative possibilities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52100702863633,"sku":"GOR005263051","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780520209848.jpg?v=1757090574"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/the-discovery-series-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}