Author: Grasselli, Margaret Morgan
Title: Renaissance to Revolution : French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800
Description: Washington D.C. National Gallery of Art / Lund Humphries, 2009. Hardcover. Color illustrated dj, tan cloth-bound boards with brown lettering on cover and spine. ix, (1) 2-310 pp. features many full color illustrations. The National Gallery of Art is known for its collection of French old master drawings, representing the history of French draftsmanship before 1800. This book presents a selection of the Gallery's most significant, beautiful, and representative drawings from three centuries, offering a visual exploration of the development of graphic art in France, from its first flowering during the Renaissance through to its neoclassical incarnation during the political and social upheavals of the French Revolution. The earliest work in the book is a rare landscape watercolor dating from about 1500 by the miniaturist Jean Poyet, who worked for Queen Anne de Bretagne; one of the last is a neoclassical portrait from 1795 by Jacques-Louis David, who was an intimate participant in the Revolution. This book encompasses all the major stylistic trends, from the affectations of the school of Fontainebleau in the sixteenth century, through the grand manner under Louis XIV, to the frothy effervescence of the eighteenth-century rococo, and finally, the return to sober classical ideals in the late 1700s. This book also covers a range of genres, including book illustrations, compositions, landscapes, portraits, architectural studies and capriccios, and figure drawings. VG+ as new .

Keywords: European Art ; National Gallery (Washington) ; ; Collections - European Art


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