Jan Białostocki
The Message of Images. Studies in the History of Art

  • Vienna 1988
  • 290 x 222 mm, hardback with a dust jacket
  • 309 pages, 183 b&w illustrations
  • ISBN 3-900731-08-X

This book, a collection of major essays, provides a representative survey of Jan Białostocki’s (1921-1988) studies in the field of iconological research during the last two decades of his life, as well as a comprehensive approach to the interpretation of art.

Jan Białostocki (1921-1988) was one of the world’s most renowned art historians. He was director of the Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw, curator of the Gallery of the European Painting in the National Museum in Warsaw, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, doctor honoris causa of the University of Groningen, Holland (among others), and member of academies and scientific societies both in Europe and the United States. He organized numerous international exhibitions, like the one on “Venetian Painting” in the National Museum in Warsaw (1968), and “The Origins of the Modern Landscape” (1972), in the same museum.

CONTENTS

Preface

Ars Auro Prior

The Door of Death. The Survival of a Classical Motif in Sepulchral Art

Books of Wisdom and Books of Vanity

The Renaissance Concept of Nature and Antiquity

Modes of Reality and the Representation of Space in Memlinc’s Donor Wings of the Last Judgement Triptych

The Eye and the Window. Realism and Symbolism of Light-Reflections in the Art of Albrecht Düer and his Predecessors

Man and Mirror in Painting: Reality and Transience

The Power of Beauty. A Utopian Idea of Leone Battista Albert

Judith: Story, Image, and Symbol. Giorgione’s Paintinf in the Evolution of the Theme

Myth and Allegory in Düer’s Etchings and Engravings

Puer Sufflans Ignes

Refflections on Eroticism in Three Rubens Paintings

The Doctus Artifex and the Library of the Artist in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries

Mere Imitation of Nature or Symbolic Image of the World? Problems in the Interpretation of Dutch Painting of the XVIIth Century

Esilio Privato: Oudry’s Painting of King Stanisław Leszczyński

Art and Politics: 1770-1830

The Firing Squad from Paul Revere to Goya: the Formation of a Pictorial Theme in America, Russia, and Spain

The Image of the Defeated Leader in Romantic Art

Footnotes

List of Illustrations

Original Places of Publication

Index