After their first explosive encounter, Giuseppe and Sophia hate one another with a passion. As fate would have it, both have a secret identity permitting them to conduct investigations incognito. Once his false mustache and wig are removed, Giuseppe becomes "the Eagle." And when her tights and black hood are donned, Sophia transforms into "the Black Scorpion." The Eagle and the Scorpion feel an irresistible attraction for one another... but will they share their first kiss and track down the mysterious "Codex Bellum" before Giuseppe and Sophia tear each other into beautiful little pieces?
Magnificent Mosaic Quilts, Direct from Venice to You. Re-create the grandeur of Venice in 10 splendid quilts inspired by marble floor tiles. Learn to give your quilts the look of real marble with batiks and hand-dyed fabrics, or choose brighter colors for a bold, contemporary look. Speedy new strip piecing methods make these quilts surprisingly easy to piece-try Christine's technique for sewing Tumbling Blocks with no Y-seams! For centuries, these grand mosaic designs have graced the floors of some of Venice's most beautiful buildings. Now you can make these mosaics your own in fabric. The book includes complete instructions for 10 quilts, including a spectacular Venetian Sampler medallion quilt. An extensive gallery shows the brilliant effects you can create by making the same quilts in a brighter color palette.
Colors of Art takes the reader on a journey through history via 80 carefully curated artworks and their palettes. For these pieces, color is not only a tool (like a paintbrush or a canvas) but the fundamental secret to their success. Color allows artists to express their individuality, evoke certain moods, and portray positive or negative subliminal messages. And throughout history the greatest of artists have experimented with new pigments and new technologies to lead movements and deliver masterpieces. But, as something so cardinal, we sometimes forget how poignant color palettes can be, and how much they can tell us. When Vermeer painted The Milkmaid, the amount of ultramarine he could use was written in the contract. How did that affect how he used it? When Turner experimented with Indian Yellow, he captured roaring flames that brought his paintings to life. If he had used a more ordinary yellow, would he have created something so extraordinary? And how did Warhol throw away the rulebook to change what color could achieve? Structured chronologically, Colors of Art provides a fun, intelligent, and visually engaging look at the greatest artistic palettes in art history – from Rafael’s use of perspective and Vermeer’s ultramarine, to Andy Warhol’s hot pinks, and Lisa Brice’s blue women. Colors of Art offers a refreshing take on the subject and acts as a primer for artists, designers, and art lovers who want to look at art history from a different perspective.
A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.
An artist's restaging of a Venetian nautical tradition calls attention to the threats of climate change This book documents a community art project created by artist Melissa McGill (born 1969) in 2019 that activated Venice's lagoon and canals with four large-scale regattas of traditional sailboats hoisted with hand-painted red sails.
A biography of the American painter Ralph W. Curtis (1854-1922), of the Boston family who bought the Palazzo Barbaro on the Grand Canal in Venice in 1885. After graduating at Harvard, Curtis moved to Paris to study art with Carolus Duran, where he met his distant cousin John S. Sargent, with whom he travelled to Holland to see Franz Hals’s paintings. He exhibited at the Paris salons, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, at the Venice Biennale in the 1880s. At Palazzo Barbaro he met Robert Browning, Henry James, but also Venetian painters such as Ettore Tito and Antonio Mancini. He travelled widely, even to Japan and India. His works are in American Museums and private collections.
The Renaissance was a golden age in the long history of Venetian painting, and the art that came from Venice during that era includes some of the most visually exciting works in the whole of western art. This attractive book - a comprehensive account of painting in Venice from Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto - is an accessible introduction to the paintings of this period. Peter Humfrey surveys the development of a distinctly Venetian artistic tradition from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. He discusses the work of Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto as well as the paintings of those less well known - such as the three Vivarini, Cima, Carpaccio, Palma Vecchio, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano. Humfrey analyses these painters' works in terms of their pictorial style, technique, subject matter, patronage and function. He also sets the art against the background of the political, social and religious conditions of Renaissance Venice, as outlined in his Introduction. The book includes an appendix that provides brief biographies of thirty-six of the most important painters active in Renaissance Venice.
This highly original book opens up the almost entirely neglected area of the black African presence in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Covering history, literature, art history and anthropology, it investigates a whole range of black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe, from various types of slavery to black musicians and dancers, from real and symbolic Africans at court to the views of the Catholic Church, and from writers of African descent to Black African criminality. Their findings demonstrate the variety and complexity of black African life in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by firmly held preconceptions relating to the African continent and its inhabitants, reinforced by Renaissance ideas and conditions. Of enormous importance both for European and American history, this book mixes empirical material and theoretical approaches, and addresses such issues as stereotypes, changing black African identity, and cultural representation in art and literature.
