16th/17th Century

During the 17th century, Amsterdam became one of the leading economic centres in Europe. The city and its population grew rapidly, trade and art flourished. The influential bourgeoisie shaped the fortunes of the city and confidently celebrated itself in magnificent group portraits by the city’s leading artists, first and foremost Rembrandt.

More than any other artist, the painter Rembrandt developed a charisma through the outstanding quality and originality of his works and through the organisation of his workshop. His pupils and successors continued his style as the Rembrandt “brand” with an appeal which has remained unbroken to this day. We ask: Why did Rembrandt’s art affect contemporary painters as well as continuing to attract generations of collectors and present-day viewers?

In 1532, the Dutch painter Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) travelled from Haarlem to Rome. With pencil in hand he discovered Antiquity and the Renaissance. His remarkable drawings lead us in masterly pictures on a journey through time through 16th-century Rome.

How and why did painters centre sensory experience, enchanting emotions and cultural landscapes in South Asia? "A Splendid Land" is the first book to address this question through dazzling paintings made over a period of two hundred years that extends from Mughal to colonial India. The works have never been published or exhibited in the United States.

Around 1500, Lucas Cranach the Elder steps onto the world stage – in Vienna. The publication explores this, the artist’s earliest period of work and presents all the paintings he produced during this time, their expressiveness radically different from the courtly-elegant compositions he subsequently produced as court painter in Wittenberg.

Founded in 1948, Hirmer Publishers soon established a name for art books produced to the highest standards. Over the past decade they have become equally well-known in English-speaking countries, with a reputation as one of the most prestigious publishers in this field. This survey of English titles from 2010 to 2020 encompasses a wealth of subjects across the centuries, from antiquity to the modern age.  

Three essays by leading scholars in the field of Japanese art explore Sesson Shūkei’s unique life and unconventional painting style, as well as how scholarly perceptions of the artist have changed over time. Fifty-three entries highlight major works by Sesson as well as those by other artists before, during, and after his time.

In the art of the Italian Renaissance, the subject of the Madonna with Child was chosen for pictures more frequently than any other.  Raphael’s paintings are regarded as some of the most innovative compositions to this day, 500 years after his death. Their groundbreaking significance is illuminated in this volume through comparisons with other principal works of the period, including those by Botticelli and Mantegna.

The Great Landscape with a Tempest in Vienna is one of Peter Paul Rubens’s largest and most dramatic landscapes. Starting from the far-reaching discoveries during the latest restoration, the volume provides a comprehensive insight into the process of creation of this fascinating picture as well as its art-historical interpretation.

To mark the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation this opulent volume invites the reader to embark on a journey through the world and across a period of time that extends across five centuries and four continents: It describes in detail the global diversity and history of the effects – and also the conflict potential – of Protestantism between the cultures.