Author: Ross King
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747599475
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Milan, 1496 and forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on commissions and failing to complete them. He is in a state of professional uncertainty and financial difficulty. For eighteen months he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan and the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter project will become the Last Supper, a complex mural that took a full three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide. Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size, but he had no experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding medium of fresco.For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark has called it 'the keystone of European art', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. Even today, according to Clark, we regard the painting as 'more a work of nature than a work of man'. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic 'miracle', which was created against the backdrop of momentous events both in Milan and in the life of Leonardo himself.In Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King tells the complete story of this creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for Christ and the Apostles that he used; and the numerous personalities involved - everyone from the Leonardo's young assistants to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross King's new book is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci's last five years in Milan and a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted.
Leonardo and the Last Supper
Author: Ross King
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747599475
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Milan, 1496 and forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on commissions and failing to complete them. He is in a state of professional uncertainty and financial difficulty. For eighteen months he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan and the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter project will become the Last Supper, a complex mural that took a full three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide. Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size, but he had no experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding medium of fresco.For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark has called it 'the keystone of European art', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. Even today, according to Clark, we regard the painting as 'more a work of nature than a work of man'. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic 'miracle', which was created against the backdrop of momentous events both in Milan and in the life of Leonardo himself.In Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King tells the complete story of this creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for Christ and the Apostles that he used; and the numerous personalities involved - everyone from the Leonardo's young assistants to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross King's new book is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci's last five years in Milan and a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted.
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747599475
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Milan, 1496 and forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on commissions and failing to complete them. He is in a state of professional uncertainty and financial difficulty. For eighteen months he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan and the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter project will become the Last Supper, a complex mural that took a full three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide. Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size, but he had no experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding medium of fresco.For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark has called it 'the keystone of European art', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. Even today, according to Clark, we regard the painting as 'more a work of nature than a work of man'. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic 'miracle', which was created against the backdrop of momentous events both in Milan and in the life of Leonardo himself.In Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King tells the complete story of this creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for Christ and the Apostles that he used; and the numerous personalities involved - everyone from the Leonardo's young assistants to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross King's new book is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci's last five years in Milan and a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted.
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 163286195X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper, the riveting story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statue David four years earlier, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with challenging curved surfaces such as the Sistine ceiling's vaults. The temperamental Michelangelo was himself reluctant: He stormed away from Rome, incurring Julius's wrath, before he was eventually persuaded to begin. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the fascinating story of the four extraordinary years he spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling, while war and the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. A panorama of illustrious figures intersected during this time-the brilliant young painter Raphael, with whom Michelangelo formed a rivalry; the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus; a youthful Martin Luther, who made his only trip to Rome at this time and was disgusted by the corruption all around him. Ross King blends these figures into a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Italy, while also offering uncommon insight into the connection between art and history.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 163286195X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper, the riveting story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statue David four years earlier, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with challenging curved surfaces such as the Sistine ceiling's vaults. The temperamental Michelangelo was himself reluctant: He stormed away from Rome, incurring Julius's wrath, before he was eventually persuaded to begin. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the fascinating story of the four extraordinary years he spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling, while war and the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. A panorama of illustrious figures intersected during this time-the brilliant young painter Raphael, with whom Michelangelo formed a rivalry; the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus; a youthful Martin Luther, who made his only trip to Rome at this time and was disgusted by the corruption all around him. Ross King blends these figures into a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Italy, while also offering uncommon insight into the connection between art and history.
Summary of Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper
Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 53
Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In 1494, King Charles VIII of France entered an Alpine pass with an army of more than thirty thousand men, intent on marching through Italy and seizing the throne of Naples. The French king was short, myopic, and so ill proportioned that he seemed more like a monster than a man. #2 The city of Milan was the center of Lodovico’s empire, and it was a huge fortress with cylindrical towers on its northeast edge. It had been turned into Italy’s greatest by Lodovico’s wealth and determination.
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 53
Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In 1494, King Charles VIII of France entered an Alpine pass with an army of more than thirty thousand men, intent on marching through Italy and seizing the throne of Naples. The French king was short, myopic, and so ill proportioned that he seemed more like a monster than a man. #2 The city of Milan was the center of Lodovico’s empire, and it was a huge fortress with cylindrical towers on its northeast edge. It had been turned into Italy’s greatest by Lodovico’s wealth and determination.
Ex Libris
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448189608
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Book Description
Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold's hunt for one of these stolen volumes - a lost Hermetic text - soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue; his fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448189608
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Book Description
Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold's hunt for one of these stolen volumes - a lost Hermetic text - soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue; his fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.
The Judgment of Paris
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0307374963
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 690
Book Description
Another fascinating book by the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling: a saga of artistic rivalry and cultural upheaval in the decade leading to the birth of Impressionism. If there were two men who were absolutely central to artistic life in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were Edouard Manet and Ernest Meissonier. While the former has been labelled the “Father of Impressionism” and is today a household name, the latter has sunk into obscurity. It is difficult now to believe that in 1864, when this story begins, it was Meissonier who was considered the greatest French artist alive and who received astronomical sums for his work, while Manet was derided for his messy paintings of ordinary people and had great difficulty getting any of his work accepted at the all-important annual Paris Salon. Manet and Meissonier were the Mozart and Salieri of their day, one a dangerous challenge to the establishment, the other beloved by rulers and the public alike for his painstakingly meticulous oil paintings of historical subjects. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel careers, Ross King creates a lens through which to view the political tensions that dogged Louis-Napoleon during the Second Empire, his ignominious downfall, and the bloody Paris Commune of 1871. At the same time, King paints a wonderfully detailed and vivid portrait of life in an era of radical social change. When Manet painted Dejeuner sur l’herbe or Olympia, he shocked not only with his casual brushstrokes but with his subject matter: top-hatted white-collar workers (and their mistresses) were not considered suitable subjects for ‘Art.’ Ross King shows how, benign as they might seem today, these paintings changed the course of history. The struggle between Meissonier and Manet to see their paintings achieve pride of place at the Salon was not just about artistic competitiveness, it was about how to see the world. Full of fantastic tidbits of information and a colourful cast of characters that includes Baudelaire, Courbet and Zola, with walk-on parts for Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cezanne, The Judgment of Paris casts new light on the birth of Impressionism and takes us to the heart of a time in which the modern French identity was being forged.
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0307374963
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 690
Book Description
Another fascinating book by the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling: a saga of artistic rivalry and cultural upheaval in the decade leading to the birth of Impressionism. If there were two men who were absolutely central to artistic life in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were Edouard Manet and Ernest Meissonier. While the former has been labelled the “Father of Impressionism” and is today a household name, the latter has sunk into obscurity. It is difficult now to believe that in 1864, when this story begins, it was Meissonier who was considered the greatest French artist alive and who received astronomical sums for his work, while Manet was derided for his messy paintings of ordinary people and had great difficulty getting any of his work accepted at the all-important annual Paris Salon. Manet and Meissonier were the Mozart and Salieri of their day, one a dangerous challenge to the establishment, the other beloved by rulers and the public alike for his painstakingly meticulous oil paintings of historical subjects. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel careers, Ross King creates a lens through which to view the political tensions that dogged Louis-Napoleon during the Second Empire, his ignominious downfall, and the bloody Paris Commune of 1871. At the same time, King paints a wonderfully detailed and vivid portrait of life in an era of radical social change. When Manet painted Dejeuner sur l’herbe or Olympia, he shocked not only with his casual brushstrokes but with his subject matter: top-hatted white-collar workers (and their mistresses) were not considered suitable subjects for ‘Art.’ Ross King shows how, benign as they might seem today, these paintings changed the course of history. The struggle between Meissonier and Manet to see their paintings achieve pride of place at the Salon was not just about artistic competitiveness, it was about how to see the world. Full of fantastic tidbits of information and a colourful cast of characters that includes Baudelaire, Courbet and Zola, with walk-on parts for Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cezanne, The Judgment of Paris casts new light on the birth of Impressionism and takes us to the heart of a time in which the modern French identity was being forged.
Machiavelli
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061870730
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Ross King’s biography Machiavelli is “a convincing portrait of one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time.”* The author of The Prince—his controversial handbook on power, which is one of the most influential books ever written—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was no prince himself. Born to an established middle-class family, Machiavelli worked as a courtier and diplomat for the Republic of Florence and enjoyed some small fame in his time as the author of bawdy plays and poems. In this discerning biography, Ross King rescues Machiavelli’s legacy from caricature, detailing the vibrant political and social context that influenced his thought and underscoring the humanity of one of history’s finest political thinkers. “Provides a strong sense of the history of both the man and his times and a nice introduction to Machiavelli’s writings. Moreover, like one of Machiavelli’s bawdy plays, it is a riveting and exhilarating read, full of salacious details and brisk prose.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “An engaging, revealing biography and a vivid portrait of a city-state in turmoil.” —Financial Times
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061870730
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Ross King’s biography Machiavelli is “a convincing portrait of one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time.”* The author of The Prince—his controversial handbook on power, which is one of the most influential books ever written—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was no prince himself. Born to an established middle-class family, Machiavelli worked as a courtier and diplomat for the Republic of Florence and enjoyed some small fame in his time as the author of bawdy plays and poems. In this discerning biography, Ross King rescues Machiavelli’s legacy from caricature, detailing the vibrant political and social context that influenced his thought and underscoring the humanity of one of history’s finest political thinkers. “Provides a strong sense of the history of both the man and his times and a nice introduction to Machiavelli’s writings. Moreover, like one of Machiavelli’s bawdy plays, it is a riveting and exhilarating read, full of salacious details and brisk prose.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “An engaging, revealing biography and a vivid portrait of a city-state in turmoil.” —Financial Times
Last Supper
Author: Libby Howard
Publisher: Libby Howard
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 213
Book Description
Who knew bingo could be deadly? When abrasive trophy-wife Stacy Mellomaker winds up dead on the floor of a bingo fundraiser few of the townsfolk are shedding tears. The doctors believe she died from an accidental overdose of painkillers, but Stacy’s ghost, as well as her sister, insist it was foul play. Kay is hired to investigate, but it’s hard to determine whodunnit when the whole town is chock-full of people who all have motive for murder.
Publisher: Libby Howard
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 213
Book Description
Who knew bingo could be deadly? When abrasive trophy-wife Stacy Mellomaker winds up dead on the floor of a bingo fundraiser few of the townsfolk are shedding tears. The doctors believe she died from an accidental overdose of painkillers, but Stacy’s ghost, as well as her sister, insist it was foul play. Kay is hired to investigate, but it’s hard to determine whodunnit when the whole town is chock-full of people who all have motive for murder.
The Bookseller of Florence
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473561027
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
'A marvel of storytelling and a masterclass in the history of the book' WALL STREET JOURNAL The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of another kind: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers. At a time where all books were made by hand, these people helped imagine a new and enlightened world. At the heart of this activity was a remarkable bookseller: Vespasiano da Bisticci. His books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. With a client list that included popes and royalty, Vespasiano became the 'king of the world's booksellers'. But by 1480 a new invention had appeared: the printed book, and Europe's most prolific merchant of knowledge faced a formidable new challenge. 'A spectacular life of the book trade's Renaissance man' JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473561027
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
'A marvel of storytelling and a masterclass in the history of the book' WALL STREET JOURNAL The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of another kind: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers. At a time where all books were made by hand, these people helped imagine a new and enlightened world. At the heart of this activity was a remarkable bookseller: Vespasiano da Bisticci. His books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. With a client list that included popes and royalty, Vespasiano became the 'king of the world's booksellers'. But by 1480 a new invention had appeared: the printed book, and Europe's most prolific merchant of knowledge faced a formidable new challenge. 'A spectacular life of the book trade's Renaissance man' JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES
Galileo's Daughter
Author: Dava Sobel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802777473
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics- indeed of modern science altogether." Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was about to be overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Dava Sobel's previous book Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802777473
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics- indeed of modern science altogether." Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was about to be overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Dava Sobel's previous book Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story
Mad Enchantment
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408861968
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
Claude Monet's water lily paintings are among the most iconic and beloved works of art of the past century. Yet these entrancing images were created at a time of terrible private turmoil and sadness for the artist. The dramatic history behind these paintings is little known; Ross King's Mad Enchantment tells the full story for the first time and, in the process, presents a compelling and original portrait of one of our most popular and cherished artists. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Monet, then in his mid-seventies, was one of the world's most famous and successful painters, with a large house in the country, a fleet of automobiles and a colossal reputation. However, he had virtually given up painting following the death of his wife Alice in 1911 and the onset of blindness a year later. Nonetheless, it was during this period of sorrow, ill health and creative uncertainty that – as the guns roared on the Western Front – he began the most demanding and innovative paintings he had ever attempted. Encouraged by close friends such as Georges Clemenceau, France's dauntless prime minister, Monet would work on these magnificent paintings throughout the war years and then for the rest of his life. So obsessed with his monumental task that the village barber was summoned to clip his hair as he worked beside his pond, he covered hundreds of yards of canvas with shimmering layers of pigment. As his ambitions expanded with his paintings, he began planning what he intended to be his legacy to the world: the 'Musée Claude Monet' in the Orangerie in Paris. Drawing on letters and memoirs and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Mad Enchantment gives an intimate portrayal of Claude Monet in all his tumultuous complexity, and firmly places his water lily paintings among the greatest achievements in the history of art.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408861968
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
Claude Monet's water lily paintings are among the most iconic and beloved works of art of the past century. Yet these entrancing images were created at a time of terrible private turmoil and sadness for the artist. The dramatic history behind these paintings is little known; Ross King's Mad Enchantment tells the full story for the first time and, in the process, presents a compelling and original portrait of one of our most popular and cherished artists. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Monet, then in his mid-seventies, was one of the world's most famous and successful painters, with a large house in the country, a fleet of automobiles and a colossal reputation. However, he had virtually given up painting following the death of his wife Alice in 1911 and the onset of blindness a year later. Nonetheless, it was during this period of sorrow, ill health and creative uncertainty that – as the guns roared on the Western Front – he began the most demanding and innovative paintings he had ever attempted. Encouraged by close friends such as Georges Clemenceau, France's dauntless prime minister, Monet would work on these magnificent paintings throughout the war years and then for the rest of his life. So obsessed with his monumental task that the village barber was summoned to clip his hair as he worked beside his pond, he covered hundreds of yards of canvas with shimmering layers of pigment. As his ambitions expanded with his paintings, he began planning what he intended to be his legacy to the world: the 'Musée Claude Monet' in the Orangerie in Paris. Drawing on letters and memoirs and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Mad Enchantment gives an intimate portrayal of Claude Monet in all his tumultuous complexity, and firmly places his water lily paintings among the greatest achievements in the history of art.