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Age of Rubens Diplomacy, Dynastic Politics and the Visual Arts in Early Seventeenth-Century Europe
, brepols, 2016 Softcover ,IV+302 p., 81 b/w ill. + 21 colour ill., 210 x 297 mm Languages: English, French. ISBN 9782503549484.
This thoroughly interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the multi-faceted relationship between international politics, diplomacy and the visual arts that developed during the early seventeenth century. Several chapters provide major re-evaluations of the career of Peter Paul Rubens as an artistdiplomat, based on previously neglected manuscript sources and a deepened analysis of the social and political environments in which he operated. Other contributors focus on Rubens?s contemporary court artists, such as Anthony van Dyck, Guido Reni and Diego Velazquez. In addition to providing original interpretations of several important paintings and painting cycles, the volume examines such topics as the evolution of personified images of nationality, representations of dynastic marriages, the material culture of royal bridal trousseaus, the importance of details of costume and colour to the visual codes of baroque courts, and the roles played by artists within court societies. Ranging across Western Europe, from England to the Low Countries, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, these essays demonstrate conclusively the subtlety and complexity of visual communication within early baroque court societies, which enabled artists to convey complex political messages through paintings. The contributors to this volume display a variety of methodological approaches, demonstrating many different ways in which historical research can be fruitfully integrated with art historical analysis to generate new insights into both the visual culture and the politics of baroque Europe. Luc Duerloo is professor of early modern political history at the University of Antwerp. His current research focuses on the Court of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, their international policies and artistic patronage. His monograph Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598?1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars (2012) won the Filips van Marnix van Sint Aldegonde Prize for History, and was translated into Spanish as El archiduque Alberto: Piedad y politica dinastica durante las guerras de religion (2015). R. Malcolm Smuts is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His publications include Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (1987), Culture and Power in England 1585?1685, and numerous articles and edited collections dealing with the political and cultural history of early modern England and Europe.
