François Boucher (1703–1770), the friend and protégé of Mme de Pompadour, was the greatest French artist and decorator of the Rococo period. His prolific oeuvre has been both lauded and derided, but it is not until now—in this volume accompanying an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Detroit Institute of Arts—that his art has been fully studied and appreciated. Alastair Laing, the principal author of this volume, shows that Boucher's work represents the acme of French eighteenth-century fine and decorative arts. With the exception of a trip to Italy in his mid-twenties to study the work of Renaissance masters, Boucher lived and worked in Paris. His artistic progression, through religious themes, mythological subjects, genre painting, landscape, and portraiture, is thoroughly documented in this catalogue. The patronage of Mme de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, ensured a large demand for Boucher's work, including drawings, prints and paintings, as well as tapestry and porcelain designs. His art traveled throughout northern Europe, and formed the essence of the French Rococo style sought after by patrons and emulated by artists in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, and Munich. A large collection of these works is illustrated in this volume. In addition, little-known or misattributed early works have been brought to light, showing Boucher's first experiments with composition and color. His designs reproduced in tapestry at Beauvais and Gobelins, and in porcelain at Vincennes and Sèvres, are illuminated in lively discussions by Edith Standen, Consultant, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and by Antoinette Fay-Halle, Conservateur, Musée Nationale de Céramique, Sèvres, and Conservateur, Musée Nationale Adrien-Dubouché, Limoges. Preliminary essays by Alastair Laing, Pierre Rosenberg, Conservateur-en-chef, Département des peintures, Musée du Louvre, and J. Patrice Marandel, Curator, European Paintings, The Detroit Institute of Arts, provide the necessary foundation for a complete appreciation of the artist's work. Augmented by a detailed chronology and bibliography, this volume comprehensively defines a painter of extraordinary productivity, diversity, and influence. It gives the reader a chance to examine with fresh eyes the range of styles and subject matter of an artist who epitomizes the splendid taste of his time—François Boucher.

One of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an architect.

The curator and art historian reflects on the significance of representation in the world of fashion.

By the 1780s the sweeping curves of the late Baroque and the exuberant ornament of the Rococo were giving way to a renewed interest in classical precedents, which found expression in the delicate, rectilinear forms of the Neoclassical, or Federal, style.

Mapungubwe is the earliest known site in southern Africa where the leaders were spatially separated from their followers, reflecting the evolution of a class-based society.

In addition to standing among the most prominent craftsmen of their era, Phyfe and Lannuier have become two of the most recognized names in the field of American decorative art scholarship.

Boucher’s most original contribution to Rococo painting was his reinvention of the pastoral, a form of idealized landscape populated by shepherds and shepherdesses in silk dress, enacting scenes of erotic and sentimental love.

The Neoclassical period in Europe produced a host of gifted sculptors of whom it has sometimes been remarked that their clay models exhibit more spirit than their finished marbles. Sketches and models of terracotta (clay that has been baked for greater longevity) are much like drawings in offering extraordinary insights into the creative process. A pan-European practice, modeling was centered in Rome, site of the collections of antiquities that were the chief inspiration of artists. This publication offers the first comprehensive overview of Neoclassical modeling in the years from 1740 to 1840. The catalogue, numbering 142 objects, analyzes modeling at every stage, from the brusque preliminary impulse of the artist to the highly finished statuettes that were regarded as works of art in their own right. Many of the greatest names are represented here: from France, Bouchardon, Pigalle, Pajou, Houdon, Roland, Clodion, Stouf, and Chinard; from Germany, Dannecker and Schadow; from Italy, Canova and Pacetti; from Sweden, the magnificent Sergel. Some artists are examined in considerable depth, with as many as nine works. Lesser-known talents who merit greater attention and emerge heroically are the Swiss Sonnenschein and the Russians Kozlovsky and Martos. The sections of the catalogue, each preceded by an introductory essay, examine the sculptors' techniques and training and explore prominent themes, such as terracotta's role in the statuary of Great Men and in tomb sculpture, depictions of Arcadia and the loves of the gods, scenes from the Iliad and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Special attention is paid to the ancient visual and literary sources that motivated these generations of discerning and erudite sculptors. Short biographies of all of the artists discussed are included.

By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, British colonists of all ranks were experiencing a consumer revolution.