Brepols Online Books Other Monographs Archive v2016 - bobar16moot

Emblematic Paintings of the Swedish Baroque is the first full-length study of the cycle of emblematic canvases hanging in the corridors at Skokloster Castle outside Stockholm. These imposing paintings were commissioned by a wealthy nobleman and cultural patron from Sweden's Age of Greatness and were inspired by images from one of the most important emblem books of the seventeenth century, Otto Vænius's Emblemata Horatiana. The principal importance of the Skokloster paintings lies in the fact that they appear to be a unique instance of paintings wholly adapted from images in a printed emblem book, a phenomenon never previously recorded in emblem studies. As such, they prompt questions about the place of the emblem within the fine and applied arts, generic issues explored in some detail in the introductory essay. The study presents a detailed reconstruction of the paintings' place within a lost decorative milieu at the Uppland castle of Salsta, and offers interpretations of the role emblems played within its wider conceptive framework. The appeal of Vænius to the commissioning patron is also examined, and through this, a broader consideration of the reception of literary emblematics in seventeenth-century Sweden. This marks a significant attempt at opening up the rich subject of the emblem in Sweden, a national tradition hitherto largely neglected and little understood within emblem studies.

Emblematic Paintings of the Swedish Baroque is the result of extensive field and archival research in major public and private collections in Sweden, and documents a historically significant group of artworks little known outside Scandinavia. The introductory essay presents the necessary groundwork of the pictures' date, provenance, and probable circumstances of commission, as well as an extended reconstruction of the original context in which they were first displayed. Establishing that they were originally owned by Count Nils Bielke, the study examines the intellectual preoccupations of a Swedish nobleman, and the reasons he found the Neo-Stoic ideas promoted in Vænius's emblems conducive to his interests and tastes. The study situates the Skokloster paintings within the intellectual framework of Great Power Sweden, conceiving of the pictures as attempts at private self-representation, but concomitantly aesthetic expressions of the nationalist-mytholopoeic movement promoted by the scholars Olof Rudbeck, Johan Peringskiöld, and Urban Hjärne.

This volume presents the paintings as an emblem text, reassembling the paintings in the order in which they occur in Vænius, and providing each with a commentary on iconography, sources, and analogues. Each plate is accompanied by a moralizing gloss by the seventeenth-century French author and editor of Vænius, Marin Le Roy, Sieur de Gomberville in the translation of Thomas Mannington Gibbs.

Richelieu, cardinal ministre, considérait la nécessité de l’intervention de l’État dans tous les domaines de la vie du royaume - guerre, finances, commerce, organisation du territoire, diplomatie, religion et culture. La France de Richelieu est engagée dans la Guerre de Trente ans qui, caractérisée par une double dimension nationale et religieuse, implique toutes les puissances européennes et ravage les territoires. Richelieu conçoit sa mission d’homme d’État comme devant apporter la paix à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur du royaume et conforter les positions de la France face à l’impérialisme espagnol. Plus que quiconque conscient de l’apparition d’une opinion publique dont il fallait convaincre les différents cercles (la cour, Paris, le royaume) de la légitimité de ses actions et de ses choix, notamment sur la scène extérieure, il mit sa plume au service de ses desseins politiques. On connaît le Richelieu mémorialiste, épistolier, théoricien politique, orateur, on le connaît fondateur de l’Académie française et créateur de la Gazette ; on sait qu’il a encouragé et soutenu le théâtre, qui s’enrichit de très nombreuses formes dans cette première moitié du dix-septième siècle. Richelieu conçut des pièces et les fit écrire, de même que Rubens concevait les toiles dont il confiait ensuite la réalisation à son atelier. Tel est le cas de Europe, dont nous donnons la première publication française depuis 1642, qui peut être ainsi attribuée à la fois à Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin et au Cardinal. Rédigée dans les bouleversements de l’actualité politique dont elle restitue les grandes tensions, cette comédie héroïque en alexandrins qui donne à des thèmes d’abord précieux une coloration tragique met en scène, à travers les péripéties sinueuses de l’ambition du roi d’Espagne, Ibère, le difficile accouchement d’une concorde des nations européennes, sous l’égide d’un héros pacificateur et vertueux, Francion, enfin libérées de leur passion amoureuse mimétique et délétère pour la belle Europe, voire pour l’ensemble du monde - c’est-à-dire libérées de leur impérialisme.

This publication is a collection of essays on the function and significance of emblematic decoration of buildings in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, dealing with general issues involved in architectural emblematics, while a number of the essays are case studies of specific types of building.

The emblematic decoration of buildings, both secular and ecclesiastical, was widespread in Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The function and significance of such decoration is, however, frequently overlooked. The two introductory essays seek to come to grips with the general issues involved in architectural emblematics. The remaining essays are case studies of specific types of building while the final two consider the relation of architecture to the book. The essays are revised versions of selected papers presented at an international conference on the subject held at the Canadian centre for Architecture in November 1994.