Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700
About the Book Series
A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies.
Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity
1st Edition
By Nazanin Hedayat Munroe
December 01, 2025
This book examines a group of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century figural silks depicting legendary lovers from the Khamsa (Quintet) of epic Persian poetry. Codified by Nizami Ganjavi in the twelfth century, the Khamsa gained popularity in the Persian-speaking realm through illustrated manuscripts ...
The Art and Government Service of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei (c. 1421 - c. 1495): Visual Propaganda and Undercover Agency for the Republic of Siena
1st Edition
By Anabel Thomas
December 01, 2025
In 1454 the Sienese painter Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei faced litigation from the Mercanzia in Siena for defaulting on a contract from one of the leading Franciscan confraternities in the city. Two fellow Sienese artists, Giovanni di Paolo and Sano di Pietro, had recently completed a new ...
The Art of Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721-1782)
1st Edition
By Christina Lindeman
December 01, 2025
The Art of Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721–1782) is the first English-language monograph on this exceptional German artist that critically examines Therbusch’s artworks and career as a history and mythological painter, portraitist, and maker of synthetic pigments within the German and international ...
The Codex Borbonicus Veintena Imagery: Visualizing History, Time, and Ritual in Aztec Solar-Year Festivals
1st Edition
By Catherine DiCesare
December 01, 2025
The sixteenth-century pictorial manuscript known as the Codex Borbonicus contains a remarkable record of the eighteen Mexica (or “Aztec”) festival periods of twenty days, known as veintenas, celebrated during the 365-day solar year. Because its indigenous artists framed the Borbonicus veintenas ...
The Life and Work of Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757): The Queen of Pastel
1st Edition
By Angela Oberer
December 01, 2025
The Life and Work of Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757): The Queen of Pastel is the first extensive biographical narrative in English of Rosalba Carriera. It is also the first scholarly investigation of the external and internal factors that helped to create this female painter's unique career in ...
The Matter of Violence in Baroque Painting
1st Edition
By Bogdan Cornea
December 01, 2025
Baroque depictions of violence are often dismissed as ‘over the top’ and ‘excessive’. Their material richness and exciting visual complexity, together with the visceral engagement they demand from beholders, are usually explained in literature as reflecting the presumed violence of early modern ...
The Painted Triptychs of Fifteenth-Century Germany: Case Studies of Blurred Boundaries
1st Edition
By Lynn F. Jacobs
December 01, 2025
This book presents four case studies that interrogate how German fifteenth-century painted triptychs engage with, and ultimately blur, various boundaries. Some of the boundaries are internal to the triptych format, for example, transgressed frames between narrative scenes on triptych interiors, or ...
The Pictorial Art of El Greco: Transmaterialities, Temporalities, and Media
1st Edition
By Livia Stoenescu
December 01, 2025
The Pictorial Art of El Greco: Transmaterialities, Temporalities, and Media investigates El Greco's pictorial art as foundational to the globalising trends manifested in the visual culture of early modernity. It also exposes the figurative, semantic, and allegorical senses that El Greco created to ...
The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 and Its Global Visualization: Political Iconography and Transcultural Negotiation
1st Edition
By Urte Krass
December 01, 2025
The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 ended the dynastic union of Portugal and Spain. This book pioneers in reconstructing the global image discourse related to the event by bringing together visualizations from three decades and four continents. These include paintings, engravings, a statue, coins, ...
Titian's Allegory of Marriage: New Approaches
1st Edition
Edited
By Daniel M. Unger
December 01, 2025
This book offers nine new approaches toward a single work of art, Titian’s Allegory of Marriage or Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos, dated to 1530/5. In earlier references, the painting was named simply Allegory, alluding to its enigmatic nature. The work follows in a tradition of such ambiguous ...
Trade, Globalization, and Dutch Art and Architecture: Interrogating Dutchness and the Golden Age
1st Edition
By Marsely Kehoe
December 01, 2025
We all look to our past to define our present, but we don’t always realize that our view of the past is shaped by subsequent events. It’s easy to forget that the Dutch dominated the world’s oceans and trade in the seventeenth century when it's cultural imagination conjures up tulips and wooden ...
Women Artists and Patrons in the Netherlands, 1500-1700
1st Edition
Edited
By Elizabeth Sutton
December 01, 2025
This essay collection features innovative scholarship on women artists and patrons in the Netherlands 1500-1700. Covering painting, printmaking, and patronage, authors highlight the contributions of women art makers in the Netherlands, showing that women were prominent as creators in their own time...