Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Vel#65533;zquez is often considered an artist apart: great, but isolated in a palace/ museum in Spain. This highly original book sets him in conjunction with certain conditions of painting in his time and after.From the seventeenth century to the twentieth, roughly from Rembrandt and Vermeer to Matisse and Picasso, a succession of European painters has taken the studio as the world; that is, the studio is where the world--as it gets into painting--is experienced. Svetlana Alpers first focuses on this retreat into the confines of the studio, then looks at the ways in which the paintings of the Dutch masters  and Vel#65533;zquez acknowledge war and rivalry while offering a way out. The final chapters give a new account of Vel#65533;zquez's The Spinners , a ravishing painting which has been eclipsed by interest in the enigmas of Las Meninas. Alpers concentrates on the seventeenth century but also looks back to Vel#65533;zquez's predecessors Titian and Rubens and forward to his modern successors. She discusses Vel#65533;zquez's resemblance to Manet, whose art also vexes or unsettles, giving us reason to pause and look. The book concludes by asking whether painting continues to do that today.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Alpers (emer., Univ. of California), often referred to as a "progressive art historian," has once again shown her tendency to avoid the traditional approach to the art of the 17th century and employ her independent style of art historical strategy. In this book, Alpers again enters into heretofore-uncharted territory with a study of the 17th-century world of painting in terms of the studio as the site where the artist experiences the world. By focusing on Diego Velazquez, in particular, and including other artists from the 17th to the 20th centuries whose work represents this "studio phenomenon," Alpers addresses the studio as a place for light experimentation, the artist's private museum, the isolated retreat perfect for creating the genre of still life, and the inspiration for fantasy landscapes created in the artist's mind. The second section of the book looks at the "painterly pacific" and describes the ways in which the Dutch artists used the medium of painting to avoid the reality of strife or conflict. The last portion takes an innovative look at Velazquez's The Spinners, and provides elegant comparisons between this court painter and Edouard Manet. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students; faculty. E. M. Hansen Sarasota County Library System

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Svetlana Alpers is professor emerita of the history of art, University of California, Berkeley, and visiting scholar in the department of fine arts, New York University.