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Goya es tal vez el pintor más accesible. Su arte, al igual que su vida, es un libro abierto. Nada ocultó a sus contemporáneos y les ofreció su obra con la misma franqueza. La puerta a su mundo no está oculta detrás de grandes dificultades técnicas. Fue la prueba de que si un hombre tiene la capacidad de vivir y multiplicar sus experiencias, de luchar y trabajar, puede producir grandes obras de arte sin el decoro clásico y la respetabilidad tradicional. Nació en 1746 en Fuendetodos, un pequeño pueblo montañés de un centenar de habitantes. De niño trabajó en los campos con sus dos hermanos y su hermana, hasta que su talento para el dibujo puso fin a su miseria. A los catorce años recibió el apoyo de un mecenas adinerado y se marchó a Zaragoza a estudiar con un pintor de la corte y, posteriormente, cuando cumplió diecinueve años, se fue a Madrid. Hasta los treinta y siete años, sin contar algunos diseños de tapicería de modesta calidad decorativa y cinco pequeñas pinturas, Goya no pintó nada de gran importancia, pero una vez que dominó su temperamento, produjo obras maestras con la misma velocidad que Rubens. Tras su nombramiento en la corte siguió una década de actividad incesante, años de pinturas y escándalos, con intervalos de salud deteriorada. Los grabados de Goya demuestran su gran pericia como dibujante. En la pintura, al igual que Velázquez, depende en mayor o menor medida del modelo, pero no de la manera objetiva del experto en naturalezas muertas. Si una mujer era fea, la convertía en un horror despreciable; si era atractiva, dramatizaba su encanto. Prefería terminar sus retratos en una sola sesión y era un tirano con sus modelos. Al igual que Velázquez, se concentraba en los rostros, pero dibujaba las cabezas con pericia, construyéndolas con varios tonos de grises transparentes. Su mundo en blanco y negro está habitado por formas monstruosas: se trata de las producciones en las que demuestra una reflexión más profunda. Sus figuras fantásticas, como solía llamarlas, nos llenan de una sensación de gozo vulgar, acentúan nuestros instintos diabólicos y nos deleitan con el nada caritativo éxtasis de la destrucción. Su genio alcanzó el punto culminante en sus grabados de los horrores de la guerra. Al compararlas con la obra de Goya, otras pinturas sobre este tema palidecen hasta convertirse en estudios sentimentales de la crueldad. Evitó la acción esparcida por el campo de batalla y se confinó a escenas aisladas de matanzas. En ninguna otra obra demostró tanto dominio de la forma y el movimiento, tantos gestos dramáticos y efectos sorprendentes de luz y sombra. En todos estos aspectos, Goya fue un renovador e innovador.

Encounter one of history’s greatest civilisations through miniatures. In Persian Miniatures, the story of the magnificent Persian Empire is told by way of a small but vibrant artistic tradition. The colourful images, which are, in fact, elaborate book illustrations, introduce a curious world of adventures, heroes and sovereigns. The Mega Square layout highlights three details from each image and helps to discover amazing peculiarities.

Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain was neither a great man nor a lofty spirit like Poussin. His genius cannot, however, be denied and he was, like Poussin, a profoundly original inventor within the limitations of a classical ideal. He too spent most of his life in Rome though the art he created was not specifically Italian, but French. For more than two centuries afterwards everyone in France who felt called upon to depict the beauties of nature would think of Lorrain and study his works, whether it be Joseph Vernet in the eighteenth century or Corot in the nineteenth. Outside France it was the same; Lorrain was nowhere more admired than in England. There is an element of mystery in the vocation of this humble and almost illiterate peasant whose knowledge of French and Italian was equally poor, and who used to inscribe on his drawings notes in a strange broken Franco-Italian. This mystery is in some way symbolic of that with which he imbued his pictures, le mystère dans la lumière. This admirable landscapist drew from within himself the greatest number of extraordinary pictures, in which all is beauty, poetry and truth. He sometimes made from nature drawings so beautiful that several have been attributed to Poussin, but in his paintings his imagination dominates, growing in magnitude as he realised his genius. He understood by listening to Poussin and watching him paint that a sort of intellectual background would be an invaluable addition to his own imagination, visions, dreams and reveries.

Egon Schiele(Tulln, 1890 – Vienne,1918)L’oeuvre d’Egon Schiele est tellement singulière qu’elle résiste à toute catégorisation. Admis à l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Vienne dès l’âge de seize ans, ce fut un artiste extraordinairement précoce, dont le talent consommé pour le maniement de la ligne, plus que tout autre chose, conférait une tension expressive à toute son oeuvre. Profondémentconvaincu de sa propre importance en tant qu’artiste, Schiele réalisa plus de choses dans sa jeunesse, brutalement abrégée, que beaucoup d’artistes dans toute leur existence. Ses racines puisaient dans le Jugendstil du mouvement de la Sécession Viennoise. Comme toute sa génération, il tomba sous l’influence écrasante de l’artiste le plus illustre et charismatique de Vienne, Gustav Klimt. A son tour, Klimt reconnut le remarquable talent de Schiele et encouragea le jeune artiste, qui au bout de deux ans, rompait déjà avec la sensualité décorative de son mentor. Amorçant une intensepériode de créativité vers 1910, Schiele entama un intrépide exposé de la forme humaine – sans oublier la sienne – si pénétrant, qu’il est clair que l’examen auquel il se livrait était plus psychologique, spirituel et émotionnel, que physique. Il peignit plusieurs vues urbaines, paysages, portraits formels et sujets allégoriques, mais ce sont ses oeuvres sur papier, extrêmement candides, parfois ouvertement érotiques, et son penchant pour les modèles trop jeunes, qui rendirent Schiele vulnérable à la critique morale. En 1912, il fut soupçonné et emprisonné pour une série d’atteintesaux moeurs incluant le kidnapping, le viol et la débauche publique. Les accusations les plus graves (toutes sauf celle de débauche publique) furent abandonnées, mais Schiele passa environ trois semaines désespérées en prison. En Allemagne, les cercles expressionnistes offrirent un accueil tiède au travail de Schiele. Son compatriote, Kokoschka, réussissait beaucoup mieux dans ce domaine. Tandis qu’il admirait les artistes munichois du Blaue Reiter, par exemple, ceux-ci le repoussaient. Plus tard, pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, son oeuvre se fit mieux connaître et, en 1916,Schiele fut présenté dans un numéro de magazine expressionniste de gauche, basé à Berlin, Die Aktion, et on finit par l’apprécier. Il fut considéré très tôt comme un génie. Cela lui valut le soutien d’un petit groupe de collectionneurs et d’admirateurs très patients. Néanmoins, pendant plusieurs années, ses finances furent précaires. Il avait souvent desdettes et était parfois forcé d’utiliser du matériel bon marché, de peindre sur du papier d’emballage marron ou du carton, au lieu du papier et des toiles réservés aux artistes. Ce n’est qu’en 1918, qu’il connut son premier succès public notable à Vienne. Tragiquement, quelque temps plus tard, il fut emporté avec sa femme, Edith, par l’épidémie massive de grippe de 1918, qui venait de tuer Klimt et des millions d’autres victimes, et ils moururent à quelques jours d’intervalle. Schiele n’avait que vingt-huit ans.

Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he first met the future impressionists at the Café Guerbois. He started his apprenticeship in 1853 at the studio of Louis-Ernest Barrias and, beginning in 1854, studied under Louis Lamothe, who revered Ingres above all others, and transmitted his adoration for this master to Edgar Degas. Starting in 1854 Degas travelled frequently to Italy: first to Naples, where he made the acquaintance of his numerous cousins, and then to Rome and Florence, where he copied tirelessly from the Old Masters. His drawings and sketches already revealed very clear preferences: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna, but also Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandaio, Titian, Fra Angelico, Uccello, and Botticelli. During the 1860s and 1870s he became a painter of racecourses, horses and jockeys. His fabulous painter’s memory retained the particularities of movement of horses wherever he saw them. After his first rather complex compositions depicting racecourses, Degas learned the art of translating the nobility and elegance of horses, their nervous movements, and the formal beauty of their musculature. Around the middle of the 1860s Degas made yet another discovery. In 1866 he painted his first composition with ballet as a subject, Mademoiselle Fiocre dans le ballet de la Source (Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet ‘The Spring’) (New York, Brooklyn Museum). Degas had always been a devotee of the theatre, but from now on it would become more and more the focus of his art. Degas’ first painting devoted solely to the ballet was Le Foyer de la danse à l’Opéra de la rue Le Peletier (The Dancing Anteroom at the Opera on Rue Le Peletier) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay). In a carefully constructed composition, with groups of figures balancing one another to the left and the right, each ballet dancer is involved in her own activity, each one is moving in a separate manner from the others. Extended observation and an immense number of sketches were essential to executing such a task. This is why Degas moved from the theatre on to the rehearsal halls, where the dancers practised and took their lessons. This was how Degas arrived at the second sphere of that immediate, everyday life that was to interest him. The ballet would remain his passion until the end of his days.

Naive art first became popular at the end of the 19th century. Until that time, this form of expression, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Influenced by primitive arts, naive painting is distinguished by the fluidity of its lines, vivacity, and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes.Naive art counts among it artists: Henri Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois. This movement has also found adherents abroad, including such prominent artists as Joan Miró, Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of the group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves “the Nabis”, from the Hebrew word for “prophet”. Influenced by Odilon Redon, Puvis de Chavannes, popular imagery, and Japanese woodblock printing, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton and Denis (to name the most prominent members) revolutionised the spirit of decorative technique during one of the richest periods in French painting.Although the increasing individualism of their works often threatened to weaken their unity, the Nabis were above all a group of close friends. The artwork presented in this book − varying between Bonnard’s guilelessness, Vuillard’s ornamental and mysterious works, Denis’s soft languor and Vallotton’s almost bitter roughness − plunges us into the deep source of their creative talents.

Whilst Impressionism marked the first steps toward modern painting by revolutionising an artistic medium stifled by academic conventions, Post-Impressionism, even more revolutionary, completely liberated colour and opened it to new, unknown horizons. Anchored in his epoch, relying on the new chromatic studies of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Georges Seurat transcribed the chemist’s theory of colours into tiny points that created an entire image. With his heavy strokes, Van Gogh illustrated the midday sun, whilst Cézanne renounced perspective. Rich in its variety and in the singularity of its artists, Post-Impressionism was a passage taken by all the well-known figures of 20th century painting - it is here presented, for the great pleasure of the reader, by Nathalia Brodskaïa.

In Victorian England, with the country swept up in the Industrial Revolution, the Pre-Raphaelites, close to William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, yearned for a return to bygone values. Wishing to revive the pure and noble forms of the Italian Renaissance, the major painters of the circle (such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt) favoured realism and biblical themes over the academicism of the time. This work, with its captivating text and rich illustrations, describes with enthusiasm this singular movement which notably inspired Art Nouveau and Symbolism.

What is the social merit or purpose of all those bras and panties on perfectly sculpted bodies that we see spread across billboards and magazines? Many women indulge in lingerie to please men. Yet, ever since Antiquity, women have always kept lingerie hidden away under outer garments. Thus, lingerie must be more than erotic bait. Authors Muriel Barbier and Shazia Boucher have researched iconography to explore the relationship of lingerie to society, the economy and the corridors of intimacy. They correlate lingerie with emancipation, querying whether it asserts newfound freedoms or simply adjusts to conform to changing social values. The result is a rigorous scientific rationale spiced with a zest of humour. And the tinier lingerie gets, the more scholarly attention it deserves.