Christopher Wood was Britain's leading writer and broadcaster on Victorian art. His extensive knowledge, honed during his thirteen years at Christie's, where he rose to director of nineteenth-century paintings, informed his insightful analysis of this vibrant artistic period. He offered a unique perspective on the era's artistic output, making complex subjects accessible to a broad audience.
Chart the rise and legacy of the Pre-Raphaelites and see how this most admired British art movement was born. Dozens of reproductions attest to these painters' scrupulous attention to natural details: more than 40 artists are represented, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Arthur Hughes, Edward Burne-Jones, John William Waterhouse, and Ford Maddox Brown.
An examination of the sixteenth century German landscapist and the tradition of landscape painting in Renaissance Germany.
The centenary of Burne-Jones' death falls in 1998, and here the career of the greatest of all English romantic painters is reassesed. Throughout his lifelong association with William Morris and the Pre-Raphelites, Burne-Jones became one of the major figure in the late 19th-century art world. Here, for the first time in a quater of a century, his work and legacy will be restored to their rightful position as a major European artist.
An authoritative history of art history from its medieval origins to its modern predicamentsIn this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original and accessible account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline.The book shows that the pioneering chroniclers of the Italian Renaissance--Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari--measured every epoch against fixed standards of quality. Only in the Romantic era did art historians discover the virtues of medieval art, anticipating the relativism of the later nineteenth century, when art history learned to admire the art of all societies and to value every work as an index of its times. The major art historians of the modern era, however--Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Ernst Gombrich--struggled to adapt their work to the rupture of artistic modernism, leading to the current predicaments of the discipline.Combining erudition with clarity, this book makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of art history.-- "Apollo Magazine"
This study explores the evolution and significance of portraiture during the early Renaissance, examining how artists captured individuality and emotion in their subjects. It delves into the cultural and historical contexts that influenced these artworks, highlighting key figures and techniques that defined the era. Through detailed analysis, the book reveals the impact of these portraits on the development of art and society, offering fresh insights into the relationship between the artist, the sitter, and the viewer.