具体描述
"After the global hit Ars Sacra, Rolf Toman and his team embark on a journey once more. The Palace of Versailles and St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican are the outstanding buildings from this epoch. There are undreamed-of jewels in Europe and America, the New World, waiting for discovery. Magnificent libraries, vaults of science or mysterious gardens, skilled works of porcelain and illusionistic painting, to name just a few aspects of this complex epoch.
With his passion and meticulousness, photographer Achim Bednorz succeeded to get details in front of his camera that cannot even be seen on the original locally. The photographs that are exclusive for this volume are particularly well-presented in their large format.
The author Barbara Borngässer wrote her take on Baroque history to fit, and swiftly takes the reader into the Great World Theater, the Theatrum Mundi. "
【Review】
Baroque: Theatrum Mundi, The World as Work of Art
text by Barbara Borngässer, photos by Achim Bednorz
It doesn't seem that long ago that Baroque art was treated with something approaching disparagement. In a critical environment that favored the cleaner and simpler lines of Classicism, it seemed cluttered. It was overly ornate. It was pretentious.
In recent years that view has changed and the art of the Baroque has undergone something of a renaissance. What had been seen as bombast is now looked on as a kind of visual rhetoric aimed at fostering a set of values about the nature of the world.
Beginning in Italy in the late 16th century as part of the Counter Reformation, Baroque art had its roots in the church and religion. Religious art was asked to reach into the viewer's deepest soul and evoke a sense of the divinity. The glorious churches, architectural wonders without and within were monuments to the glory of the creator, and if in the process they shed a bit of that glory on the nobles and churchmen who commissioned them, and even the artists who built them, well that was simply a little gravy.
Over the course of the next century and into the 18th, Baroque art spread through Europe and over those areas of the world the Europeans colonized. The Baroque aesthetic spread from the church to the secular world. The elaborate cathedrals begat gorgeous palaces. If art could inspire awe in the Creator, it could certainly do as much for his secular regents, the kings and nobles, and if the kings and nobles, why not the merchant kings and in the end whoever had enough money or clout to commission the artist. For good or ill, the idea of Baroque was to shape the 17th century.
Baroque: Theatrum Mundi, The World as Work of Art, one of the first two volumes now available in publisher H. F. Ullman's new series The Collection of Art Epochs, is a massive attempt to illustrate and explain the scope and variety of the Baroque in all of its many iterations. Architecture, sculpture, painting, decorative art, it looks at it all. If the attempt is massive, the book is no less massive. Its hand-bound 568 pages in a 15 x 11-inch format is not the kind of book you will want to hold on your lap. It is the kind of book that belongs on an ornate table in a Baroque library. In many respects it is itself a work of art.
The series editor, Rolf Toman, explains that the aim of the new volumes is to look at broader contexts than the intensive encyclopedic studies of specialized bits typical of past studies. The intention is to cut a wide swath through the whole period, to look at representative examples from many countries. It is not meant to be a comprehensive history of everything Baroque; it is a selection. "It was important," he tells readers in a brochure that comes with the book, "for us not only to present the objects particularly esteemed as significant by art historians, but also to show in depth such artworks whose special aesthetic quality makes them worthy of rediscovery."
While the book doesn't ignore the established Baroque icons -- St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London, the Palace at Versailles, the Winter Palace in St. Petersberg, it makes an effort to take the reader on an intensive tour, three or four pages of text and photos a variety of lesser known artwork as well. For example, there are four pages and seven photos -- exterior, interior, and details -- of the Palácio Fonteira in Lisbon, emphasizing the "perfect harmony of palace and gardens, the bravura of the staircase and the complex and self-glorifying, cosmological pictorial program." It explains the historical context of the Portuguese espousal of the Baroque as an attempt by nobles to demonstrate their new power when Portugal managed to get out from under Spanish domination. It gives a technical explanation of the use of azulagos, the decorative tiles used in Portugal instead of the usual frescoes because to the dampness of its Atlantic climate.
On the other hand after a short outline of the characteristics of Baroque sculpture, it looks at a view of Bernini's "Pluto and Proserpina" and a full page detail and posits that he is the "epitome" of Roman Baroque sculpture. Indeed the whole discussion of sculpture outside of its appearances in architectural settings is quite limited. Painting is treated more extensively, but it is architecture that gets the most emphasis. Justly so, one would expect.
The photography which is the glory of the book is by Achim Bednorz. There are fantastic photos of church exteriors and interiors often complete with full or double page details of ceiling frescoes, pulpit carvings, or decorative alters. There are even a couple of four panel fold outs. Color, due in part to the technical opportunities provided by digital photography, is stunning.
The text by Barbara Borngässer is fine, but not quite as impressive. At times it seemed a bit too technical for the lay reader, using specialized terminology that wasn't always defined. Although there is a glossary provided for the novice. On the other hand, sometimes it spent a lot of time calling attention to things that would have more than likely common knowledge for the initiated. I'm not sure that given the series' stated intention, the text shouldn't be focused more precisely on a target audience.
On the other hand, text aside, the photography alone is worth the price of the book. A companion volume, Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages is also currently available, and books on the Romanesque and Art Nouveau are in preparation: truly something to look forward to.
By Blogcritics syndicated review
"this hand bound treasure demonstrates publisher H.F. Ullmann's prowess in the art world."
Book Review: Baroque: Theatrum Mundi. The World as a Work of Art
This magnificent companion volume to Gothic exhibits the same precise, lovingly reproduced photography of Achim Bednorz along with the knowledgeable text by art historian Barbara Borngasser. Long discounted, the Baroque period extended over the two hundred fifty years between the Counter-Reformation and the French Revolution at a time when the Catholic Church was widening their powerbase over the known world and the world itself was seen as an exquisite piece of artwork, indeed a stage.
From the stunning ceiling frescos of S. Ignazio and Gran Salone to the massive Dome des Invalides and the amazing pulpit altar housed within Germany's St. Pankratius, it is clear the church was a vital driving force behind the art movement. Cutting edge digital photographic technology has allowed Bednorz to bring to the printed page a sense of the grandeur of these works as never before. Fountains, furniture, paintings, sculptures and indeed entire city blocks are presented in all their glory in this sixteen pound, five hundred sixty eight page book that is certain to provide many happy hours of browsing. Whether you are an art student or historian, an armchair traveler or just have an appreciation for the arts, this hand bound treasure demonstrates publisher H.F. Ullmann's prowess in the art world.
Book review by Sandy Amazeen, Nov 20, 2012, Monsters and Critics, www.monstersandcritics.com
"Rolf Toman is the editor of both volumes, and succeeds with his team in presenting not only some superlative works of art, but in presenting the vision -- an emphatically Christian vision -- that animated works of such surpassing ambition that they would be impossible to conceive of today, in a world of technological genius but narrow horizons... The history of art can be spiritual reading, and Ullmann's bold project achieves something of that.
Gothic
ISBN-10: 3848000407
Baroque
ISBN-10: 3848000393
Art and the beauty of faith
One of my favourite insights from Joseph Ratzinger's long life in theology is that the Church does not convincingly propose the faith by the work of theology alone. Before his election as Pope he wrote that in the end the Church only has two compelling "arguments" for her faith being true. The first is the saints who have lived the Gospel fully and who the Church proposes as models of Christian witness. The second is the art that she has nurtured in her midst, her faith expressed in beauty, whether in painting, sculpture, architecture or music. Theology is necessary, but it is holiness and beauty that persuades.
The Church's faith provides to the world this gift, the gift of beauty. We do not live in a very beautiful world. To our world the Church continues to offer from her patrimony the service of beauty. The Church offers to our common life that which is beautiful. Not just art, but beautiful lives, lives of saintly people from every time and place. The role of faith in our common life is to give our contemporaries reasons to look up, to raise the eyes of a disenchanted culture above the daily grime to that which is beautiful. That is the role of the Christian in ugly time, to make present that which is beautiful. Like the biblical steward we bring out our treasures old and new, beauty from our history and from our current circumstance.
I discovered recently a marvelous publishing project which does precisely that, brings out the treasures of art from Christian history. A few years back the German publisher, h.f. Ullmann, which specializes in high-end art books, the lavishly illustrated tomes about cars, homes, couture, geography, architecture and the like that you might find on the coffee tables of great mansions, decided on a bold experiment. They would produce a mammoth book -- 800 pages, 1,100 photographs, 11 kilograms -- on the entire history of Christian art. Entitled Ars Sacra, it was not a coffee-table book, but a kitchen table book.
It was a most pleasant publishing surprise, that it the age of the Internet a book heavier than a set of twins could sell, and sell well. So last fall, h.f. Ullmann launched an even more ambitious project, a series on the different epochs of art. The first two volumes deal with major periods in Christian art history: Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages 1150-1500 and Baroque: Theatrum Mundi. The World as a Work of Art.
Compared to Ars Sacra, and only relative to that behemoth, are these volumes smaller: 600 illustrations on 600 pages, seven kilograms. These two are to be read at the desk. The publisher sells them for $150, but they can also be ordered online at two-thirds of that price. And, remarkably, both in terms of cost and heft, they are more than good value.
Rolf Toman is the editor of both volumes, and succeeds with his team in presenting not only some superlative works of art, but in presenting the vision -- an emphatically Christian vision -- that animated works of such surpassing ambition that they would be impossible to conceive of today, in a world of technological genius but narrow horizons.
The Gothic volume highlights the magnificent French cathedrals -- Chartres taking pride of place -- whose influence is seen in so many places in Canada. The Baroque volume offers one sacred exemplar -- St. Peter's Basilica -- and one profane -- the Palace of Versailles. In all cases, we see the marvels of what human ingenuity can achieve when it is unconstrained. And the great works of the gothic and the baroque -- even the secular ones -- required a spirit sustained by the transcendent. Otherwise, why build a cathedral or palace that you would never live to see finished, or why decorate exquisitely an obscure part of a ceiling that no one, save for God, would ever see?
We read the lives of the saints so that their holiness might attract us. The Ullmann books are analogous to that, works that move us by presenting the beauty that is born from the faith. Spiritual reading for Lent usually emphasizes the ascetical life. A lavish art book may therefore seem incongruous in Lent, but many of the pages in these books are worthy of meditation on the love of God that can make this sinful world beautiful. The history of art can be spiritual reading, and Ullmann's bold project achieves something of that.
The Catholic Register coverageWednesday, 06 February 2013 16:20 Written by Fr. Raymond J. de Souza
作者简介
罗尔夫·托曼（Rolf Toman），研修德语文学和哲学，德国知名独立出版人和国际知名艺术史研究专家。他曾在一家大型国际出版公司任编辑数年，1992年起成为独立出版人，长期从事文化及艺术史学相关的研究与图书出版工作，并与各国较有影响力的一些大型出版公司有多次深入的合作。与艺术史相关的艺术图书是他的工作重点，多年来组织各地相关专家编著出版过多部与艺术史相关的出版物，并有多部作品被引进中国出版。
阿希姆·贝德诺兹（Achim Bednorz），来自科隆，致力于为建筑与艺术史的出版物拍摄作品图像长达二十多年之久。他将自己定义为“神圣处所的守望者”。
巴巴拉·波隆加塞尔(Barbara Borngässer），德累斯顿人，在柏林、佛罗伦萨和萨拉曼卡从事艺术史、罗马研究和考古学研究，曾有多部现代建筑方面的著作出版。
目录信息
读后感
这本书的图片质量和表现内容堪称无与伦比，但与此同时，文字翻译令人啼笑皆非的程度也差不多可以载入史册。以图中显示的那一句子为例，“他于1729年被封圣，1933年开始了其祭坛和坟墓的建造....”，译者在一个死者被封圣以后，用了一个逗号让他继续作为主语开始建造自己的坟墓...
评分这本书的图片质量和表现内容堪称无与伦比，但与此同时，文字翻译令人啼笑皆非的程度也差不多可以载入史册。以图中显示的那一句子为例，“他于1729年被封圣，1933年开始了其祭坛和坟墓的建造....”，译者在一个死者被封圣以后，用了一个逗号让他继续作为主语开始建造自己的坟墓...
评分这本书的图片质量和表现内容堪称无与伦比，但与此同时，文字翻译令人啼笑皆非的程度也差不多可以载入史册。以图中显示的那一句子为例，“他于1729年被封圣，1933年开始了其祭坛和坟墓的建造....”，译者在一个死者被封圣以后，用了一个逗号让他继续作为主语开始建造自己的坟墓...
评分这本书的图片质量和表现内容堪称无与伦比，但与此同时，文字翻译令人啼笑皆非的程度也差不多可以载入史册。以图中显示的那一句子为例，“他于1729年被封圣，1933年开始了其祭坛和坟墓的建造....”，译者在一个死者被封圣以后，用了一个逗号让他继续作为主语开始建造自己的坟墓...
评分这本书的图片质量和表现内容堪称无与伦比，但与此同时，文字翻译令人啼笑皆非的程度也差不多可以载入史册。以图中显示的那一句子为例，“他于1729年被封圣，1933年开始了其祭坛和坟墓的建造....”，译者在一个死者被封圣以后，用了一个逗号让他继续作为主语开始建造自己的坟墓...
用户评价
坦白说，我对《Baroque》这本书最初的期待并不高，想着可能只是泛泛而谈的艺术史介绍。然而，它彻底颠覆了我的认知。作者的视角非常独特，他并没有将巴洛克时期仅仅局限于艺术创作，而是将其视为一种贯穿于社会各个层面的生活态度和精神特质。他深入剖析了那个时代政治的戏剧性、宗教的张力、以及科学探索的萌芽，并将这些元素与当时的艺术形式紧密相连。我特别欣赏他对“炫耀性消费”和“情感表达”这两个概念的解读，它们并非简单的浮夸，而是那个时代在经历动荡、寻求认同、并试图建立自身权威的一种复杂体现。书中关于戏剧艺术的描述，那些充满激情的独白、华丽的服饰，让我看到了那个时代人们宣泄情感、表达个性的方式。它让我意识到，巴洛克风格并非只是表面的华丽，更是一种深刻的文化现象。
评分读完《Baroque》，我仿佛穿越回了那个辉煌而又充满矛盾的时代。作者的文字如同巴洛克绘画的光影交错，在历史的宏大叙事中，细致入微地描绘了那个时代的艺术、音乐、建筑、哲学乃至人们的生活细节。我尤其喜欢书中对卡拉瓦乔画作的解读，那种戏剧性的光线运用，那种对人性阴暗面的毫不避讳的展现，都让我产生了深深的共鸣。书中对宏伟教堂的描述，那些扭曲的线条、繁复的装饰，不仅仅是建筑的堆砌，更是当时人们对宗教狂热、对天堂渴望的具象化。我能感受到作者在字里行间流露出的对那个时代的敬畏与迷恋，那种对细节的极致追求，让我得以身临其境，仿佛能听到教堂的管风琴在空灵地回响，能闻到香料与烛火混合的独特气味。它不是一本简单的历史书，更像是一次沉浸式的体验，让我对“巴洛克”这个词有了更深刻、更立体的理解。
评分《Baroque》这本书给我的感觉，就像是在一个巨大的、精心雕琢的宫殿里漫步。作者的叙述如同流动的喷泉，时而激昂磅礴，时而细腻柔和，将我带入那个令人目眩神迷的时代。我被书中对凡尔赛宫的描述深深吸引，那些金碧辉煌的厅堂、一丝不苟的园林，不仅仅是权力的象征，更是那个时代对于秩序、宏伟和永恒的极致追求。我能感受到作者对那个时代贵族生活细节的捕捉，那些精致的舞步、考究的礼仪，以及隐藏在繁华背后的权力斗争与情感纠葛。更让我意外的是，书中还探讨了科学革命对巴洛克时期思想的影响，那些新的天文学发现、物理学理论，是如何悄然改变了人们对宇宙和自身的认知，也为艺术创作提供了新的灵感。这本书让我看到了一个时代的宏观脉络，也体味到了个体在其中细微的情感波动。
评分《Baroque》这本书的阅读体验，简直就像在聆听一场精心编排的巴洛克音乐会。作者的笔触如同巴赫的赋格，层层递进，严谨而富有逻辑，却又在结构中蕴藏着无尽的激情与变化。我惊叹于他对音乐发展脉络的梳理，从早期复调到后来的奏鸣曲形式，每一个乐章的出现都仿佛是时代呼唤的必然。那些关于维瓦尔第协奏曲的描绘，我仿佛能听到《四季》中春的生机勃勃，夏的狂风骤雨，秋的丰收喜悦，冬的萧瑟寒冷，作者的文字赋予了音符以生命。更让我着迷的是，书中将音乐的风格与当时的社会思潮、哲学理念巧妙地结合起来，让我明白了音乐是如何反映并塑造着那个时代的精神风貌。阅读过程中，我经常会暂停下来，去寻找书中提到的音乐作品聆听，每一次的聆听都让我对书中的文字有了更深的体会，形成了一种奇妙的互动。
评分当我合上《Baroque》这本书时，脑海中回荡着的是那个时代特有的嘈杂与庄严交织的声响。作者的文字具有一种独特的感染力，他仿佛是一位经验丰富的导游，带领我穿梭于历史的长廊，揭示隐藏在表面辉煌之下的复杂肌理。我印象最深刻的是书中对启蒙运动前夕思想挣扎的描绘，那种理性与信仰的碰撞，科学与宗教的博弈，为巴洛克艺术的爆发奠定了复杂而丰富的土壤。他没有回避那个时代的黑暗面，比如宗教战争的残酷，社会阶层的固化，而是将这些现实融入到艺术的解读中，使得作品更加具有深度和张力。我特别喜欢他对于“对立统一”这一巴洛克美学原则的阐释，那种光明与黑暗、秩序与混乱、理性与情感的并存，让我对艺术的理解达到了新的高度。它不是一本轻松的读物，需要我投入思考，但这份思考带来的回报是巨大的。
评分在 pageone 默默站着看完的
评分太厚了但是我看完了 ST PETER没看到我们米大爷 遗憾 但是记住了这位 Franz Anton Maulbertsch！乍一看就爱上！
评分在 pageone 默默站着看完的
评分太厚了但是我看完了 ST PETER没看到我们米大爷 遗憾 但是记住了这位 Franz Anton Maulbertsch！乍一看就爱上！
评分太厚了但是我看完了 ST PETER没看到我们米大爷 遗憾 但是记住了这位 Franz Anton Maulbertsch！乍一看就爱上！
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