As if in a Bright Mirror -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography of Cited Works -- Index

Pearls have enthralled global consumers since antiquity, and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella explicitly charged Columbus with finding pearls, as well as gold and silver, when he sailed westward in 1492. American Baroque charts Spain's exploitation of Caribbean pearl fisheries to trace the genesis of its maritime empire. In the 1500s, licit and illicit trade in the jewel gave rise to global networks, connecting the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the pearl-producing regions of the Chesapeake and northern Europe. Pearls—a unique source of wealth because of their renewable, fungible, and portable nature—defied easy categorization. Their value was highly subjective and determined more by the individuals, free and enslaved, who produced, carried, traded, wore, and painted them than by imperial decrees and tax-related assessments. The irregular baroque pearl, often transformed by the imagination of a skilled artisan into a fantastical jewel, embodied this subjective appeal. Warsh blends environmental, social, and cultural history to construct microhistories of peoples' wide-ranging engagement with this deceptively simple jewel. Pearls facilitated imperial fantasy and personal ambition, adorned the wardrobes of monarchs and financed their wars, and played a crucial part in the survival strategies of diverse people of humble means. These stories, taken together, uncover early modern conceptions of wealth, from the hardscrabble shores of Caribbean islands to the lavish rooms of Mediterranean palaces.

Starting in antiquity and finishing in the Baroque, this book provides a complete analysis of significant works of architecture from a structural viewpoint. A distinguished architect and academic, the author's highly illustrated exploration will allow readers to better understand the monuments, get closer to them and to explore whether they should be conserved or modified. Contents: Stones Resting on Empty Space; The Invention of the Dome; The Hanging Dome; The Ribbed Dome; A Planified Revenge - Under the Shadow of Brunelleschi; The Century of the Great Architects; The Omnipresent Sinan; Even Further; Scenographical Architecture of the 18th Century; The Virtual Architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque.

Long considered to be an impenetrable, hermetic treatise, Walter Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama has rarely received the attention it deserves as a key text, central to a full understanding of his work. In this critically acclaimed study, distinguished Benjamin scholar Beatrice Hanssen unlocks the philosophical and ethical dimensions of his thought with great clarity and sophisitication.

From one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient Greek art, a groundbreaking account of how Greek images were understood and used by other ancient peoples, from Britain to China In this book, acclaimed archaeologist and art historian John Boardman explores Greek art as a foreign art transmitted to the non-Greeks of antiquity—peoples who weren’t necessarily able to judge the meaning of Greek art and who may have regarded the Greeks themselves with great hostility. Boardman examines how and why the arts of the classical world traveled and to what effect, from Britain to China, from roughly the eighth century BCE to the early centuries CE. In some places, such as Italy, Greek images were overwhelmingly successful. In Egypt, the Celtic world, the eastern steppes, and other regions with strong local traditions, they were never effectively assimilated. And in cultures where there was a subtler blend of influences, notably in the Buddhist east, classical images served as a catalyst to the generation of new styles. Along the way, Boardman demonstrates that looking at Greek art from the outside provides a wealth of new insights into Greek art itself, and he raises important questions about how images in general are copied and reinterpreted.