Research and Innovation

This book is the first modern study of James Barry, the finest of all painters working in Britain in the "grand manner." Born in Cork, Ireland, Barry settles in London in 1771 after five years of study in France and Italy financed by Edmund Burke. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1773 and appointed professor of painting nine years later. In 1799, however, after fiercely denouncing its policies, he became the first and only artist to be expelled from the Academy. His paintings include several that rank with the nest contemporary work, and his murals at the Royal Society of Arts form perhaps the most important cycle of history paintings in Great Britain.

Anthony Colantuono's essay "High Quality Copies and the Art of Diplomacy During the Thirty Years War" examines several cases in which copies after works of art conceived as instruments of diplomatic discourse were deliberately distributed to foreign heads of state and diplomatic envoys as a means of conveying moral or political concepts that might be difficult to raise in ordinary verbal oratory.