Pleasure and Piety: The Art of Joachim Wtawael
Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2015. Softcover. Color-illus. card wraps with black lettering on pale yellow spine. French flaps. XXV + 210 pp. with 175 illustrations, mostly in color. NF contents; light shelf wear to covers. Item #154930
ISBN: 9780894683916
Text in English. Catalogue to accompany the exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) June - October 2015 and at the Centraal Museum Utrecht and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. With a lengthy biographical introduction, followed by 5 main sections, each with a thorough essay: Desire and Devotion in Wtewael's Art; Love and Passion: Wtawael's Personal Statement; Hastening to See Christ: Religious Painting in an Age of Conflict; Wtewael's Historical Reputation; and Wtewael as Draftsman. Catalogue of 54 works, each well-annotated. Particularly rich color plates in this catalogue. Scarce in softcover. "A brilliant colorist and masterful storyteller, Dutch mannerist Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638) wielded a remarkably skilled brush and the technical ability to show it off in intricate compositions. He took inspiration from a wide range of biblical and mythological sources to create imaginative, often quite erotic scenes. While such pictures were prized in Wtewael's time, more recently they were hidden away--behind other paintings, in leather folders on bookshelves, and in the reserves of great museums. This richly-illustrated volume brings together more than fifty of Wtewael's finest paintings and drawings, from a small jewel-like picture on copper depicting Mars and Venus to large-scale mannerist showpieces such as TheMartyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Perseus and Andromeda. A pillar of the Utrecht community, Wtewael was engaged in business, religion, and politics as well as art. He adopted the exotic mannerist style, full of artifice and inventive manipulation, and continued to be fascinated by the challenge of creating sophisticated variations well into his maturity, when other Dutch artists had turned to naturalism. This book explores Wtewael's amazingly refined and detailed paintings and drawings, shedding light on his reputation, his life, and the conflicted times--marked by iconoclasm and strife--in which he thrived."
Price: $75.00