Off the shelf
Apollo’s selection of recently published books on art, architecture and the history of collecting
Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion Elizabeth L. Block
MIT Press, $34.95
ISBN 9780262045841
In the late th century, wealthy women in the United States took great care in deciding what to wear for their portraits. Their enthusiasm for French couture not only made it on to canvas, but shaped the fashion industry on both sides of the Atlantic.
Titian: Sources and Documents Charles Hope
Ad Ilissum, £500
ISBN 9781912168231
Every document relating to Titian and his work from his lifetime, as well as every reference to the painter in contemporary publications, has been collected here by Charles Hope. The six-volume set contains the original texts, followed by an English summary, notes and commentary.
Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting David Saunders (ed.)
Getty Publications, £55
ISBN 9781606067345
How did the ancients visualise the Underworld – and was the afterlife anything to look forward to? Some surviving examples of funerary vases from southern Italy allow us to form a fuller picture of the horrors of Hades.
Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal Leonhart Fuchs; Werner Dressendörfer (ed.) Taschen, £125
ISBN 9783836587662
In this catalogue of some medicinal plants and their healing properties, the pioneering th-century botanist (from whom fuchsias take their name) created an enduring intellectual history and reference work that remains justly famous for its accomplished illustrations.
The Vanished Collection Pauline Baer de Perignon; Natasha Lehrer (trans.) Head of Zeus, £12.99
ISBN 9781803280905
The author’s account of tracking down the Impressionist paintings and French Regency-era furniture stolen by the Nazis from her great-grandfather, the Parisian collector Jules Strauss, combines dogged detective work with family memoir.
Maillol (re)découvert
Ursel Berger and Elisabeth Lebon Gourcuff Gradenigo, €29
ISBN 9782353403547
Produced in good time for a revival of interest in Aristide Maillol (the Musée d’Orsay’s survey opens this spring), this bilingual catalogue focuses on the artist’s early work and his dealings with Ambroise Vollard, who launched his career and encouraged him to edition his sculptures.