Book Description
The seventeenth century saw a tremendous thematic and technical development in the realm of painting as artists experimented with realism and anatomical exactitude, and gave free expression to themes of sensuality. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Velazquez’ Venus at Her Mirror, also known as The Rokeby Venus. In this absorbing and comprehensive study Andreas Prater uses the much-studied and imitated painting to trace Venus’s depiction in art through the centuries. Prater begins by offering a fresh and thoroughly detailed examination of Velazquez’s masterpiece. He delves into its numerous levels of meaning as well as its impact on the nude paintings of its day. He also looks at the painting’s fascinating history, including its attempted devastation by a suffragette in 1919. Velazquez’s self-admiring Venus is compared to her depictions in other well-known works by earlier artists, including da Vinci, Giorgione, and Titian, as well as in works by later artists such as Manet and Cabanel, and into the modern world of advertising. These comparisons provoke intriguing perspectives on the evolution of eroticism, feminism, and Christianity in art, and offer a renewed understanding of the influence one artist and one work can have on generations that follow.
From the Publisher
Prater begins by offering a fresh and thoroughly detailed examination of Velazquez’s masterpiece. He delves into its numerous levels of meaning as well as its impact on the nude paintings of its day. He also looks at the painting’s fascinating history, including its attempted devastation by a suffragette in 1919. Velazquez’s self-admiring Venus is compared to her depictions in other well-known works by earlier artists, including da Vinci, Giorgione, and Titian, as well as in works by later artists such as Manet and Cabanel, and into the modern world of advertising. These comparisons provoke intriguing perspectives on the evolution of eroticism, feminism, and Christianity in art, and offer a renewed understanding of the influence one artist and one work can have on generations that follow.
About the Author
Andreas Prater is Professor of Art History at Freiburg University in Germany.
Venus at Her Mirror: Velazquez and the Art of Nude Painting FROM THE PUBLISHER
"From the sixteenth century onwards, artists increasingly turned their attention to images of Venus. In their treatment of this great mythological subject, they also honed their skills in the portrayal of seductive nudes celebrating the beauty of the female body." "Few such paintings possess the multi-facetted complexity of Velazquez' Venus at Her Mirror (better known as the Rokeby Venus), which has intrigued and challenged scholars ever since. Andreas Prater examines the many aspects and possible interpretations of this famous work, its lasting impact on the art of the nude and the enduring fascination it has exerted on the public. He looks at the painting's interesting history leading up to its being slashed by a suffragette at the National Gallery in London in 1919 and its subsequent, painstaking restoration." In this publication, the author places the Rokeby Venus in its poltical and art-historical context, comparing and contrasting it with works by Giorgione, Veronese, Titian, Goya and Manet.
SYNOPSIS
The seventeenth century saw a tremendous thematic and technical
development in the realm of painting as artists experimented with realism and
anatomical exactitude, and gave free expression to themes of sensuality. Nowhere
is this more apparent than in Velazquez' Venus at Her Mirror, also known as The
Rokeby Venus. In this absorbing and comprehensive study Andreas Prater uses the
much-studied and imitated painting to trace Venus's depiction in art through the
centuries.
Prater begins by offering a fresh and thoroughly detailed examination of Velazquez's masterpiece. He delves into its numerous levels of meaning as well as its impact on the nude paintings of its day. He also looks at the painting's fascinating history, including its attempted devastation by a suffragette in 1919. Velazquez's self-admiring Venus is compared to her depictions in other well-known works by earlier artists, including da Vinci, Giorgione, and Titian, as well as in works by later artists such as Manet and Cabanel, and into the modern world of advertising. These comparisons provoke intriguing perspectives on the evolution of eroticism, feminism, and Christianity in art, and offer a renewed understanding of the influence one artist and one work can have on generations that follow.
About the
Author
Andreas Prater
is Professor of Art History at Freiburg University in Germany.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
As these two books demonstrate, the female nude still inspires artists and scholars. In her personal "collection" of representations, graphic designer Ferrara (European Instit. of Design, Milan) sets forth over 129 colorful reproductions of reclining female nudes in an enlarged, horizontal, chronological arrangement, spanning Western art history from the Renaissance to the present. Her book showcases mainly European masterpieces of the early 20th century that are located in public art collections. Predominately graphic, the book also offers a brief author's note and a two-page introduction by Frances Borzello, a leading art historian in the field of female portraits. Whereas Ferrara's study mostly delights the eyes with a variety of images, many of which shaped the art historical canon, Prater's work provides intellectual enticement with 40 issues-oriented chapters covering all aspects of the first known female nude in Spanish painting. Prater (Freiburg Univ., Germany) argues that Diego Velazquez's Venus at her Mirror (the Rokeby Venus) constitutes a polysemic representation of the goddess rather than of a nude woman. To make his point, Prater compares the artist's painting to similar subjects by Titian, Paolo Veronese, Annibale Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens, and other Renaissance masters, among them Botticelli and Bellini. Prater further attempts to contextualize the work within the era of the Spanish Inquisition by linking it to the ancient Roman literary tradition that was revived and adapted in Italian art of the 15th and 16th centuries. Referring to later painting, including Goya's Naked and Clothed Majas, Prater reasserts the seminal nature of Vel zquez's masterpiece. Well documented and illustrated with 63 color and 15 black-and-white images, this translation from German includes some spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, leaps of the imagination, and hasty references to other images and texts. Still, while the author's viewpoint and methodological approach may not convince entirely, they significantly add to the art historical literature. Both publications are recommended for academic libraries, but owing to its mainly visual nature, Ferrara's compilation may be suited best for applied arts or gallery collections.-Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
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