Shearer West – författare

This fascinating new book explores the world of portraiture from a number of vantage points, and asks key questions about its nature. How has portraiture changed over the centuries? How have portraits represented their subjects, and how have they been interpreted? Issues of identity, modernity, and gender are considered within a cultural and historical context.Shearer West uncovers much intriguing detail about a genre that has often been seen as purely representational, featuring examples from African tribes to Renaissance princes, and from 'stars' such as David and Victoria Beckham to ordinary people. In the process, she shows us how to communicate with the past in an exciting new way.

This was the first multi-disciplinary study of the dissemination of Italian culture in northern Europe during the long eighteenth century (1689-1815). The book covers a diverse range of artists, actors and musicians who left Italy during the eighteenth century to seek work beyond the Alps in locations such as London, St Petersburg, Dresden, Stockholm and Vienna. First published in 1999, the book investigates the careers of important artists such as Amigoni, Canaletto and Rosalba Carriera, as well as opera singers, commedia dell'arte performers and librettists. However, it also considers key themes such as social and friendship networks, itinerancy, the relationships between court and market cultures, the importance of religion and politics to the reception of culture, the evolution of taste, the role of gender in the reception of art, the diversity of modes and genres, and the reception of Italian artists and performers outside Italy.