Gems in the Early Modern World
Gems in the Early Modern World

Author: Michael Bycroft

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 3319963791

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This edited collection is an interdisciplinary study of gems in the early modern world. It examines the relations between the art, science, and technology of gems, and it does so against the backdrop of an expanding global trade in gems. The eleven chapters are organised into three parts. The first part sets the scene by describing how gems moved around the early modern world, how they were set in motion, and how they were pulled together in the course of their travels. The second part is about value. It asks why people valued gems, how they determined the value of a given gem, and how the value of a gem was connected to its perceived place of origin. The third part deals with the skills involved in cutting, polishing, and mounting gems, and how these skills were transmitted and articulated by artisans. The common themes of all these chapters are materials, knowledge and global trade. The contributors to this volume focus on the material properties of gems such as their weight and hardness, on the knowledge involved in exchanging them and valuing them, and on the cultural consequences of the expanding trade in gems in Eurasia and the Americas.

Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt

Author: Nancy Mowll Mathews

Publisher: Mercatorfonds

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300236521

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During her lifetime, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) achieved great fame in both France and America. But while she is still highly regarded in the United States, she is now somewhat overlooked in France, where she lived and worked for more than sixty years and where she became the only American artists to exhibit with the Impressionists in Paris. The exhibition 'Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist in Paris', held in the Musée Jacquemart-André, is the first retrospective dedicated to the painter in France since her death. The exhibition will bring together around fifty major works on loan from museums and institutions ... Oils, pastels, and prints retrace Cassett's entire career, explore the modernity of her approach, and show how she became one of the leading figures of the avant-garde movement of her day. This catalogue, which complements the exhibition, presents the various facets of an artist who had a complex career: a classically trained painter who became an Impressionist, the brilliant creator of the 'Modern Madonna', and a tireless experimenter, Cassatt was also an ardent supporter of women's suffrage. This catalogue aims to restore Cassatt to her rightful place in the history of modern art.