Michael Maek-Gérard Books

Adam Elsheimer is first recorded in 1600 and by 1610 he was dead. But, rather like Giorgione, who had died young in Venice 100 years earlier, Elsheimer was influential on the coming century to a degree out of all proportion to his brief career and small oeuvre. He developed a wonderful mastery of light, a dramatic chiaroscuro that gave new depth to his subject-matter, and a rather less definable poetic feeling that gives a very special savor to all his painting. “What is remarkable about this volume is the number of quality reproductions of the artist's work that can be seen together for the first time. This collection of paintings demonstrates more comprehensively than ever before Elsheimer's extraordinary intuition for light and atmosphere” (Antiques Magazine).

This detailed volume completes the survey of European sculpture and works of art in the collection. Eighty-seven pieces are illustrated and described, including examples in terracotta by Benedetto da Maiano and Riccio, in bronze by Antico and in marble by Bernini.This sequel to ""Medieval Sculpture and Works of Art"" by Paul Williamson (1987) completes the catalogue of European sculpture in The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Each object is illustrated in colour, many in numerous views. A special theme explored in the introduction is the variety of ways in which particular images were repeated at different the multiple production of relief images of the Virgin and Child in various materials; variations on a popular iconographical theme in the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider; and the difficulties of identifying contemporary and later terracotta and plaster reproductions of popular portrait busts produced in eighteenth century France.