front cover of Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Nigel Aston
Reaktion Books, 2009
Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed monumental upheavals in both the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the repercussions rippled down to the churches’ religious art forms. Nigel Aston now chronicles here the intertwining of cultural and institutional turmoil during this pivotal century.

            The sustained popularity of religious art in the face of competition from increasingly prevalent secular artworks lies at the heart of this study. Religious art staked out new spaces of display in state institutions, palaces, and private collections, the book shows, as well as taking advantage of patronage from monarchs such as Louis XIV and George III, who funded religious art in an effort to enhance their monarchial prestige. Aston also explores the motivations and exhibition practices of private collectors and analyzes changing Catholic and Protestant attitudes toward art. The book also examines purchases made by corporate patrons such as charity hospitals and religious confraternities and considers what this reveals about the changing religiosity of the era as well.
 
An in-depth historical study, Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe will be essential for art history and religious studies scholars alike.
 
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front cover of East Asian Aesthetics and the Space of Painting in Eighteenth-Century Europe
East Asian Aesthetics and the Space of Painting in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Isabelle Tillerot
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2024
An insightful look at how East Asian notions of space transformed Western painting.

This volume offers the first critical account of how European imports of East Asian textiles, porcelain, and lacquers, along with newly published descriptions of the Chinese garden, inspired a revolution in the role of painting in early modern Europe. With particular focus on French interiors, Isabelle Tillerot reveals how a European enthusiasm for East Asian culture and a demand for novelty transformed the dynamic between painting and decor. Models of space, landscape, and horizon, as shown in Chinese and Japanese objects and their ornamentation, disrupted prevailing design concepts in Europe. With paintings no longer functioning as pictorial windows, they began to be viewed as discrete images displayed on a wall—and with that, their status changed from decorative device to autonomous work of art.

This study presents a detailed history of this transformation, revealing how an aesthetic free from the constraints of symmetry and geometrized order upended paradigms of display, enabling European painting to come into its own.
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front cover of Music and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Music and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe
A Source Book
Enrico Fubini
University of Chicago Press, 1994
This book collects key writings about eighteenth century music . It brings together for the first time in one place, a wide selection of essential documents not only about music theory and practice, but about the historical, philosophical, aesthetic, ideological, and literary debates which held sway during a century when musical thought and criticism gained a privileged position in the culture of Europe.

Enrico Fubini offers a sampling of English, French, German, and Italian writings on topics ranging from Enlightenment rationalism and the theories of harmony to German musical culture and the polemics on J. S. Bach. Organized by topic and historical period these selections go beyond writings dealing exclusively with specific musical works to larger issues of theory and the reception of musical ideas in the culture at large. The selections are from books, journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and letters; the contributors include Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Grimm, Alfieri, Rameau, Quantz, Gluck, Tartini, Leopold and W. A. Mozart, and C. P .E. Bach. Many are translated here for the first time.

With general and chapter introductions, restored footnotes, and other valuable annotations, and a biographical appendix, this anthology will interest music scholars, students, and teachers.
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