Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700
About the Book Series
A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies.
Theatre and Print Culture in the Manner of Jacques Callot
1st Edition
By Kyna Hamill
April 22, 2026
This book aims to shuffle some long-standing attitudes about the relationship between theatre and print culture. Examining the influential print series Balli di Sfessania di Jacomo Callot, a suite of 24 prints designed and etched by Jacques Callot in 1621–1622, this book highlights the influence of...
Beached Whale Images in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp: Symbols of Humanity’s Dominion over the Earth
1st Edition
By Ryan E. Gregg
April 16, 2026
This book examines a small group of sixteenth-century Antwerp artworks depicting the butchering of beached whales, revealing how these images represent a pivotal moment in European attitudes toward nature. It argues that these "cetaceous units"—iconographic compounds showing humans dominating ...
Art and Its Geographies: Configuring Schools of Art in Europe (1550-1815)
1st Edition
Edited
By Ingrid Vermeulen
January 15, 2026
Schools of art represent one of the building blocks of art history. The notion of a school of art emerged in artistic discourse and disseminated across various countries in Europe during the early modern period. Whilst a school of art essentially denotes a group of artists or artworks, it came to ...
Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto, 1400-1750: Uncovering the Female Presence
1st Edition
Edited
By Tracy Cooper
January 10, 2026
This book of essays highlights the lives, careers, and works of art of women artists and artisans in Venice and its territories from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The collection represents the first fruits of an ongoing research program launched by Save Venice, Inc. Women Artists of ...
Colonial Objects in Early Modern Sweden and Beyond: From the Kunstkammer to the Current Museum Crisis
1st Edition
By Mårten Snickare
January 09, 2026
An elaborately crafted and decorated tomahawk from somewhere along the North American east coast: how did it end up in the royal collections in Stockholm in the late seventeenth century? What does it say about the Swedish kingdom's colonial ambitions and desires? What questions does it raise from ...
Materialized Identities in Early Modern Culture, 1450-1750: Objects, Affects, Effects
1st Edition
Edited
By Susanna Burghartz, Lucas Burkart, Christine Göttler, Ulinka Rublack
January 09, 2026
This collection embraces the increasing interest in the material world of the Renaissance and the early modern period, which has both fascinated contemporaries and initiated in recent years a distinguished historiography. The scholarship within is distinctive for engaging with the agentive ...
Architecture, Opportunity, and Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Sicily: Rebuilding after Natural Disaster
1st Edition
By Martin Nixon
December 01, 2025
The catastrophic Sicilian earthquake of 1693 led to the rebuilding of over 60 towns in the island's south-west. The rebuilding extended into the eighteenth century and gave opportunities for the reassertion and the transformation of power relations. Although eight of the towns are now protected by ...
Art, Trade, and Imperialism in Early Modern French India
1st Edition
By Liza Oliver
December 01, 2025
French mercantile endeavors in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India were marked by novel intersections of aesthetics, science, and often violent commercialism. Connecting all of these worlds were the thriving textile industries of India's Coromandel Coast. This book focuses on the ...
Artisans, Objects and Everyday Life in Renaissance Italy: The Material Culture of the Middling Class
1st Edition
By Paula Hohti Erichsen
December 01, 2025
Did ordinary Italians have a ‘Renaissance’? This book presents the first in-depth exploration of how artisans and small local traders experienced the material and cultural Renaissance. Drawing on a rich blend of sixteenth-century visual and archival evidence, it examines how individuals and ...
Bernardino Poccetti and the Art of Religious Painting at the End of the Florentine Renaissance
1st Edition
By Douglas Dow
December 01, 2025
By almost any measure Bernardino Barbatelli, called Poccetti, was a successful and sought after painter in late sixteenth-century Florence, but his works have remained largely overlooked. This study situates representative examples of his religious painting within their respective contexts to ...
Comfortable Everyday Life at the Swedish Eighteenth-Century Näs Manor
1st Edition
By Carolina Brown
December 01, 2025
During the eighteenth century, comfortable everyday life becomes a new ideal. The good life was no longer about grand representation or the manifestation of material opulence. The new luxury was instead the comfortably arranged life at home. This book is about the traces of this change, its ...
Contamination and Purity in Early Modern Art and Architecture
1st Edition
Edited
By Lauren Jacobi, Daniel Zolli
December 01, 2025
The concepts of purity and contamination preoccupied early modern Europeans fundamentally, structuring virtually every aspect of their lives, not least how they created and experienced works of art and the built environment. In an era that saw a great number of objects and people in motion, the ...