Jacob Jordaens

Seventeenth-century Art & Architecture

Encompassing the socio-political, cultural background of the period, this title takes a look at the careers of the Old Masters and many lesser-known artists. The book covers artistic developments across six countries and examines in detail many of the artworks on display.

Jacob Jordaens

Imagining Childhood

The images of children that abound in Western art do not simply mirror reality; they are imaginative constructs, representing childhood as a special stage of human life, or emblematic of the human condition itself. In a compelling book ranging widely across time, national boundaries, and genres from ancient Egyptian amulets to Picasso's Guernica, Erika Langmuir demonstrates that no historic period has a monopoly on the 'discovery of childhood'. Famous pictures by great artists, as well as barely known anonymous artefacts, illustrate not only Western society's perennially ambivalent attitudes to children, but also the many and varied functions that works of art have played throughout its history.