The Renaissance began at the end of the 14th century in Italy and had extended across the whole of Europe by the second half of the 16th century. The rediscovery of the splendour of ancient Greece and Rome marked the beginning of the rebirth of the arts following the break-down of the dogmatic certitude of the Middle Ages. A number of artists began to innovate in the domains of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Depicting the ideal and the actual,...

Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian barocco, the French created the term 'Rococo'. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th century, it rapidly spread to the whole of Europe. Extravagant and light, Rococo responded perfectly to the spontaneity of the aristocracy of the time. In many aspects, this art was linked to its predecessor, Baroque, and it is thus also referred to as late Baroque...

In art history, the term 'Romanesque art' distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic...

John Constable (East Bergholt, 1776 - Hampstead, 1837). John Constable fut le premier peintre de paysage anglais qui ne tira pas son enseignement des peintres hollandais. Assez proche de la vision de Rubens, c'est à Gainsborough qu'il doit tout : ses paysages, avec leurs grands massifs d'arbres bien répartis à travers le décor vallonné, possèdent un rythme souvent présent chez Rubens. Son originalité ne repose pas sur le choix de ses sujets,...

Le continent européen réunit sans nul doute les œuvres d'art les plus connues, témoins de l'histoire artistique occidentale. Les capitales culturelles et leurs musées emblématiques renferment tableaux, sculptures ou encore objets d'art créés par les plus grands artistes, représentatifs de la culture européenne. de madrid à Londres, en passant par prague, les œuvres majeures du « Vieux continent » sont ici présentées. grâce à des...

From ancient Sumerian pottery to Tiffany stained glass, decorative art has been a fundamental part of the human experience for generations. While fine art is confined to galleries and museums, decorative art is the art of the every day, combining beauty with functionality in objects ranging from the prosaic to the fantastical. In this work, Albert Jacquemart celebrates the beauty and artistic potential behind even the most quotidian object. Readers...

John Constable was the first English landscape painter to take no lessons from the Dutch. He is rather indebted to the landscapes of Rubens, but his real model was Gainsborough, whose landscapes, with great trees planted in well-balanced masses on land sloping upwards towards the frame, have a rhythm often found in Rubens. Constable's originality does not lie in his choice of subjects, which frequently repeated themes beloved by Gainsborough. Nevertheless,...

Amedeo Modigliani nació en Italia en 1884 y murió en París a la edad de treinta y cinco años. Desde temprana edad se interesó en estudios de desnudos y en la noción clásica del ideal de belleza. En 1900-1901 visitó Nápoles, Capri, Amalfi y Roma, además de Florencia y Venecia, y estudió de primera mano muchas obras maestras del Renacimiento. Quedó impresionado por los artistas del trecento (siglo XIV), como Simone Martini (c. 1284-1344),...

Born in the Industrial Revolution, the factory has long been considered like a monster of iron, subjugating the individual to the collective in an act of mass dehumanisation. Turning away from the pure functionality for which it was built, the factory is evolving into an aesthetic space, sometimes transformed into modern lofts or a museum of contemporary art. The surprising photographs featured in this work help us rediscover the volume, purity of...

Dürer is the greatest of German artists and most representative of the German mind. He, like Leonardo, was a man of striking physical attractiveness, great charm of manner and conversation, and mental accomplishment, being well grounded in the sciences and mathematics of the day. His skill in draughtsmanship was extraordinary; Dürer is even more celebrated for his engravings on wood and copper than for his paintings. With both, the skill of his...