Rainer Hagen

The Old Master who ushered in the modern era. Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), one of Spain's most revered and controversial painters, is known for his intense, chilling, and sometimes grotesque paintings depicting the injustice of society with brutal sincerity. A court painter to the Spanish crown, he captured, through his works, a snapshot of life in Spain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Coming at the tail end of the Old Masters period, Goya, with his audacious, subversie, and highly influential works, can be considered the first painter of the modern era. His influence can be seen in the works of artists as varied as Picasso and Francis Bacon. About the Series: Every book in TASCHEN's "Basic Art Series" features: a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist; approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions; and a concise biography.

Masterpieces under the microscope: Paintings hidden secrets revealed This important addition to our understanding of art history's masterworks puts some of the world's most famous paintings under a magnifying glass, to help us look much, much closer at images we might have thought we knew well. Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen help us become detectives of details, solving the mysteries of a masterpiece through its most small and subtle elements. Is the bride pregnant? Why is just one candle burning in the chandelier? And what does the mirror in the background reveal? As they address these and many more intricacies in some of art's most celebrated scenes, the authors not only offer us a vastly enriched appreciation of these paintings, but also shed light on the fashions and lifestyles, loves and intrigues, politics and people that first informed and inspired these works. Delve in and be dazzled, as even the most familiar panels and canvases come alive anew in all the intricacies of their composition and in a very real sense of context of time and place. "

The sense of a scene: Pieter Bruegel’s mastery of composition and community The great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder ( c. 1526/31-1569) was an astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, who made his art historical mark with beautiful, evocative landscapes as well as religious subjects, both notable for their vernacular language and attention to everyday, contemporary life. Immersing himself in rural or small-town communities, Bruegel is particularly notable for his depiction of peasant experience and folk culture, earning the artist nickname “Peasant Bruegel.” Whether hunters shivering in the snow or a boisterous country fair, Bruegel raised the farming, festivals, gatherings, and games of peasant culture to the status of high art. Bruegel’s imposing religious and moral subjects, meanwhile, such as The Triumph of Death and The Tower of Babel are as awestriking and influential today as they were in the 16th century, inspiring contemporary culture from The Lord of the Rings cinematic battle scenes to Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld. From the corn harvest to the conversion of Saul, from quaint wedding processions to Christ’s road to Calvary, this book brings together the rich range of Bruegel’s subjects to introduce his powerful compositions of both biblical and earthly tableaux. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features: •a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance •a concise biography •approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Secrets of the Flesh Nude masterworks under the magnifying glass It might seem like the sitters and subjects of art history's greatest nude paintings have little left to show, but don't be fooled: there is more than meets the eye in these naked masterworks. Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen guide us into the secrets of the flesh, coupling extended discussions with crisp, enlarged details of 12 iconic worksfrom the canon of art history. Biblical tales of morality or modern portrayals of leisure, works such as Tintoretto's Susanna and the Elders or Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass offer diverse visions of natural beauty. Each artwork is presented in reproductions of the highest quality, sourced directly from the original, located in collections of the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Uffizi, and many others. From works depicting ultimate feminine grace, like Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, to Hans Baldung's mesmerizing image of the body's decline in The Three Ages of Man and Death, these paintings are unified in their masterful rendering of the bare human form-both in life and beyond. Through this exploration into the covert secrets of nude works, they cease to be two-dimensional and come to full hot-blooded life.

This important addition to our understanding of art history's masterworks puts some of the world's most famous paintings under a magnifying glass to uncover their most small and subtle elements and all they reveal about a bygone time, place, and culture. Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, authors Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen allow even the most familiar of pictures to come alive anew through their intricacies and intrigues. Is the bride pregnant? Why does the man wear a beret? How does the shadow of war hang over a scene of dancing? Along the way, we travel from Ancient Egypt through to modern Europe, from the Renaissance to the Roaring Twenties. We meet Greek heroes and poor German poets and roam from cathedrals to cabaret bars, from the Garden of Eden to a Garden Bench in rural France. As we pick apart each painting and then reassemble it like a giant jigsaw puzzle, these celebrated canvases captivate not only in their sheer wealth of details but also in the witness they bear to the fashions and trends, people and politics, loves and lifestyles of their time.