Albion's Classicism: The Visual Arts in England, 1550-1650, Studies in British Art 2

Book Description
Distinguished scholars from a variety of disciplines examine the visual arts in Britain between 1550 and 1660 and demonstrate that approaches to art at the time were not limited to the classical Italian Renaissance canon, as has been supposed. On the contrary, art, architecture, and literature in Britain were subject to local influences, habits, and visual sensibilities that interacted with classicism and the work of such masters as Inigo Jones.


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The essays in this volume demonstrate how unpredictable attitudes to classical art turn out to be in Britain during this period. They show how, from town halls to catafalques, British artists, patrons, and builders made informed choices from the classical vocabulary, while working within systems and circumstances quite distinct from those of classicism. They also disclose visual sensibilities, in architecture as in painting, that were extinguished and forgotten as classicism came to be regarded as the desirable norm. The visual world of Albion (an ancient name for the islands of Great Britain, now used poetically of Britain) that has been lost is here evoked and the contribution of Inigo Jones in particular is clarified.


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