Art: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire, Delirious New Orleans, & Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings

Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire (BOOK): by Charlene Villasenor Black

Creating the Cult of Saint Joseph is a refreshing and stimulating contribution to the fields of Spanish and Latin American art history and cultural studies. Villaseñor's combination of colonial and gender theories with art-historical analysis is sure to yield interesting results in future studies of religious art in the Spanish Empire. Her bibliography is an impressive collection of archival material, primary religious texts, and wide-ranging secondary sources; it promises to become an indispensable research tool for students of the period.—Marta Bustillo, CAA Reviews

Among this book's strengths are its engaging prose, impressive corpus of visual images, and emphasis on the connection between St. Joseph's cult and societal and religious ideals in the early modern Hispanic world. . . . This book offers fresh insight into the dissemination and popularity of the cult of St. Joseph in early modern Spain and colonial Mexico.—Joseph F. Chorpenning, Sixteenth Century Journal

In detail and with an abundance of sources, both graphic and literary, this book follows the major stages of growth in Josephine piety. . . . This book shows the need to study religious art not only on its own aesthetic terms but also as a key participant in and articulator of great (often too great) social, cultural, and religious themes in a given time and place.—Reverend Alvaro Silva, Religion and the Arts

Delirious New Orleans: Manifesto for an Extraordinary American City (BOOK): by Stephen Verderber

"Delirious New Orleans makes the argument that this collection of vernacular architecture serves as cultural touchstones, and that its presence is a necessary component to this great American city. " Kevin Alter, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin "As well as providing a superb record of New Orleans's endangered urban fabric, Delirious New Orleans is also a meditation on "placemaking", something he feels modern architects and town planners have ignored...Verderber's evocative, even loving, descriptions of these structures and artefacts and his striking images create a memorable celebration of the built environment of New Orleans and reflect a deep understanding of place. He hopes his study is not a eulogy but a blueprint for a soon-to-be-reborn city...Whether it continues to fulfil this role in the future will depend on whether the authorities listen to the communities they are supposed to represent and to "preservation warriors" such as Verderber; and whether placemaking triumphs over placelessness."—P.D. Smith, Times Literary Supplement

Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300-1550 (BOOK): by Lisa Monnas

Covering a period that witnessed the flowering of the Renaissance and the major expansion of the Italian silk industry, this volume examines the Italian silk fabrics depicted in paintings from Italy, England and the Netherlands over the course of 250 years. Lisa Monnas offers a masterly evaluation of these paintings as source material for classifying surviving textiles, giving particular attention to the identification of historic textile types and their weave structure.

Monnas examines a wide range of subjects, including silk as a marker of social status, the material possessions of artists and their ownership of textiles as props, the involvement of painters in silk design, and the repetition and transfer of patterns. She considers the evidence of paintings not only for the veracity with which the silks are depicted but also for their value as a historic source concerning the use of fabrics.