Icon painting, the ultimate expression of Orthodox Christian art, reached its zenith in Ukraine between the 11th and 18th centuries. This book spans the entire period, showing the development of the style. The Ukrainian icon is a surprising synthesis of the traditions of Eastern Byzantine art and the stylistic characteristics of Russian icon painting. The introduction of this book explains the stages of development of icon-painting over five centuries in Ukraine’s major Centres of art - Kyiv, Chernihiv, Transcarpathia, Galicia, and Volhynia - and discusses the life and work of the masters of icon-painting. Despite the strict stylistic considerations imposed …

¿Qué podría resultarnos más cotidiano que un par de zapatos? Hoy en día, se han transformado en un objeto de consumo masivo y aparecen despojados de todo significado. Sin embargo, estos accesorios funcionan como relatos y cuentan verdaderas historias de quienes los llevan. Antiguamente, no todos podían llevar zapatos, y quienes lo hacían, escogían sus modelos de acuerdo a su posición y situación. A lo largo de la historia, significaron la fuerza de la legión romana, el poder de la aristocracia en la Edad Media, la opresión de las mujeres chinas, la seducción de las estrellas del cine y el …

L’art grecque qu’on situe traditionnellement entre le Xe et le Ier siècle av. J.C., est naturaliste - tout symbolisme lui est étranger. Et si dans son désir d’absolu réalisable, il fait la nature plus belle, c’est dans le sens étroit qu’elle lui a enseigné. Il ne transpose pas, il ne stylise pas, il ne schématise pas, il ne résume même pas. Il exprime avec perfection. Il pousse la splendeur physique de la vie, et rien que physique, jusqu’à l’extrémité des indications formelles que la vie lui a révélées. Il dit tout, comme on ne saura jamais mieux, ni sans doute …

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Dürer became renowned for his mastery of various mediums, including painting, printmaking, and wood-cutting. Throughout his life, Dürer produced a vast array of works that demonstrated his technical skill and innovative vision. His art often incorporated religious and classical themes, and his use of perspective and realism helped to establish new standards in European art. Beyond his artistic achievements, Dürer was also a prolific writer and thinker. His treatises on geometry, human proportion, and the theory of perspective remain …

Egyptian art is perhaps the most impersonal that exists. The artist effaces himself. But he has such an innate sense of life, a sense so directly moved and so limpid that everything of life which he describes seems defi ned by that sense, to issue from the natural gesture, from the exact attitude, in which one no longer sees stiffness. His impersonality resembles that of the trees bowing in the wind with a single movement and without resistance, or that of the water which wrinkles into equal circles all moving in the same direction. From afar, Egyptian art seems changeless …

What is more common than a pair of shoes? In a world where shoes have become an object of mass consumption, these accessories are now rid of any significance. The industry has accomplished its duty: producing a large quantity at a low price. But there was a time when the shoe symbolised the strength of the Roman legion, the power of the Medieval lords or the oppression of the Chinese woman. Its history is both vast and enthralling, as revealed by the author Marie-Josèphe Bossan. Supporting her analysis with an outstanding iconography, the author gives these commonplace objects a universal …

Les bouleversements au cours du XXe siècle dans l'histoire mondiale vont provoquer une incroyable métamorphose de l'art occidental. Une création artistique foisonnante et révolutionnaire va se répandre dans un monde dorénavant sans frontières. Elle laisse libre cours à une extraordinaire prolifération des courants artistiques, du fauvisme au Pop Art. Cet ouvrage présente des illustrations des exemples les plus marquants de cette période, accompagnées d'essais rédigés par des critiques et des historiens de l'art. En tant que fenêtre ouvrant sur la psychologie des grands artistes modernes, L’Art du XXe siècle est le livre indispensable à tout amateur d'art contemporain.

William Hogarth wrote his Analysis of Beauty in 1753, during the Age of Enlightenment. Through this captivating text, he tends to define the notion of beauty in painting and states that it is linked, per se, to the use of the serpentine lines in pictorial compositions. He calls it the line of beauty . His essay is thus dedicated to the study of the composition of paintings, depending on the correct use of the pictorial lines, light, colour, and the figure's attitudes. These timeless concepts have been applied by several artists through the centuries. Paintings from every period have here …

In the arts, Neoclassicism is a historical tradition or aesthetic attitude based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. The movement started around the 18th-century, age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th-century The general credo associated with the aesthetic attitude of Classicism was that art had to be rational and therefore morally better. Neoclassicists also believed that art should be cerebral, not sensual and therefore characterised by clarity of form, sober colours and shallow space. It was a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and a desire to return to the perceived ""purity"" …