James Clifton – författare

Marking the 50th anniversary of the acclaimed Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, this commemorative book presents masterpieces from the foundation’s collection. The works span more than 400 years, from the 16th through the early 20th century, and feature a range of media including paintings, prints, and printed books. After a comprehensive introduction to the foundation and its collection, essays by eight scholars present new scholarship on key works. The featured objects include an image of the Madonna and Child by the Florentine painter Giuliano Bugiardini; Richard Wilson’s iconic 18th-century composition The White Monk; printed materials in Venice that bridged Jewish and Christian cultures; and portraits by Paolo Veronese, Simon Vouet, and others. With more than 200 illustrations, this beautiful publication is a rich survey as well as a timely celebration of this exceptional collection.Distributed for the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

A brilliant colorist and masterful storyteller, Dutch mannerist Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638) wielded a remarkably skilled brush and the technical ability to show it off in intricate compositions. He took inspiration from a wide range of biblical and mythological sources to create imaginative, often quite erotic scenes. While such pictures were prized in Wtewael's time, more recently they were hidden away--behind other paintings, in leather folders on bookshelves, and in the reserves of great museums. This richly illustrated volume brings together more than fifty of Wtewael's finest paintings and drawings, from a small jewel-like picture on copper depicting Mars and Venus to large-scale mannerist showpieces such as The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Perseus and Andromeda. A pillar of the Utrecht community, Wtewael was engaged in business, religion, and politics as well as art. He adopted the exotic mannerist style, full of artifice and inventive manipulation, and continued to be fascinated by the challenge of creating sophisticated variations well into his maturity, when other Dutch artists had turned to naturalism.This book explores Wtewael's amazingly refined and detailed paintings and drawings, shedding light on his reputation, his life, and the conflicted times--marked by iconoclasm and strife--in which he thrived. Exhibition schedule: *Centraal Museum Utrecht, February 21-May 25, 2015*National Gallery of Art, Washington, June 28-October 4, 2015* Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 1, 2015-January 31, 2016

This volume consists of essays that pose fundamental questions about the relation between verbal and visual hermeneutics, especially as relates to biblical culture. Exegesis, as theologians and historians of art, religion, and literature, have come increasingly to acknowledge, was neither solely textual nor aniconic; on the contrary, following from Scripture itself, which is replete with verbal images and rhetorical figures, exegesis has traditionally utilized visual devices of all kinds. In turn, visual exegesis, since it concerns the most authoritative of texts, supplied a template for the interpretation of other kinds of significant text by means of images. Seen in this light, exegetical images prove crucial to understanding how meaning was constituted visually, not only in the sacred sphere but also in the secular.Contributors include Giovanni Careri, Joseph Chorpenning, James Clifton, Nathalie de Breze, Maria Deiters, Ralph Dekoninck, Arthur diFuria, Caroline van Eck, Dagmar Eichberger, Ingrid Falque, Wim Francois, Merel Groentjes, Agnes Guiderdoni, Barbara Haeger, Alexander Linke, Walter Melion, Jurgen Muller, Birgit Ulrike Munch, Colette Nativel, Wolfgang Neuber, Shelley Perlove, Leopoldine Prosperetti, Todd Richardson, Bret Rothstein, Tatiana Senkevitch, Larry Silver, Jamie Smith, Trudelien van 't Hof, Michel Weemans, and Elliott Wise

By clothing the Word with her flesh, the Virgin Mary made God visible, manifesting Christ as a perfect “image” of the Father. By virtue of this archetypal “artistry” of Incarnation, Mary mediates the tradition of Christian image-making. This volume explores images of the Mother of God in early modern devotion, piety, and power. The book is divided into four sections, the first three of which link the subjects thematically and geographically in Europe, while the last one follows Mary’s legacy.Contributors include: Elliott D. Wise, Anna Dlabačová, James Clifton, Kim Butler Wingfield, Barbara Baert, Steven Ostrow, Barbara Haeger, Shelley Perlove, Cristina Cruz González, and Mehreen Chida-Razvi.

By clothing the Word with her flesh, the Virgin Mary made God visible, manifesting Christ as a perfect "e;image"e; of the Father. By virtue of this archetypal "e;artistry"e; of Incarnation, Mary mediates the tradition of Christian image-making. This volume explores images of the Mother of God in early modern devotion, piety, and power. The book is divided into four sections, the first three of which link the subjects thematically and geographically in Europe, while the last one follows Mary's legacy. Contributors include: Elliott D. Wise, Anna Dlabacova, James Clifton, Kim Butler Wingfield, Barbara Baert, Steven Ostrow, Barbara Haeger, Shelley Perlove, Cristina Cruz Gonzalez, and Mehreen Chida-Razvi.