Patrons and Painters, Art and Society In Baroque Italy
(Fusing the social and economic history with the cultural ...)
Fusing the social and economic history with the cultural and artistic achievements of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Italy, this book presents a unique and invaluable perspective on the period.
Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion, and Collecting in England and France
(This book examines the drastic changes in artistic taste ...)
This book examines the drastic changes in artistic taste among critics, collectors, connoisseurs, and the public in nineteenth-century England and France, illustrating the causes, circumstances, and impact of particular vagaries with representative paintings and writings.
Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900
(A history of the development of critical opinions on anci...)
A history of the development of critical opinions on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture discusses the owners, identification, copies, and fame of individual statues.
History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past
(In this engrossing book, an eminent art historian surveys...)
In this engrossing book, an eminent art historian surveys the ways that historians have made use of visual sources-sculptures, paintings, coins, and other relics-in their attempts to understand and visualize the past. Francis Haskell examines the specific objects that were used and discusses a wide range of historians-from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to later writers such as Michelet, Burckhardt, and Huizinga who made inferences from the visual arts to indicate the whole mentality of an age.
The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition
(When and why did large-scale exhibitions of Old Master pa...)
When and why did large-scale exhibitions of Old Master paintings begin, and how have they evolved through the centuries? In this book, an eminent art historian examines the intriguing history and significance of these international art exhibitions.
In 1954 Francis Haskell was elected a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he remained for over a decade, also serving as librarian of the fine arts faculty. In 1967, he was elected as professor of the history of art at Oxford, only the second person to occupy the chair and a fellow of Trinity College. He wrote several books on artistic taste, especially how cultural change brings about differences in what types of art are valued. His first book, the 1963 Patrons and Painters, became a classic largely due to the novelty of incorporating social history into a discussion of art.
Some of his other works include his 1975 Rediscovered in Art, which earned him the Mitchell Prize in Art History in 1976, Taste and the Antique, a book he wrote with Nicholas Penny in 1980, and his 1993 History and Its Images. In addition to penning books and lecturing, Haskell also wrote essays for journals such as Art Bulletin, Nation, and the New York Review of Books.
Achievements
Francis Haskell was one of the most distinguished and internationally admired art historians of his generation and for many years professor of the history of art at Oxford. He expanded the discipline to include the study of patronage and collecting, the formation of museums and canons of taste, the idea of revival and of illustration. His book Patrons and Painters (1963) is one of the first and most influential patronage studies.
