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Peintures sous verre, de l’Antiquité à nos jours

Jeannine Geyssant

Paintings using the "eglomy" technique, paintings set under glass, paintings al fresco with gold leaf added, paintings with a big brush? This very minimal technical vocabulary is necessary to penetrate the world of painting under glass. The author knows what she is talking about, as half of the works reproduced come from her collection. We generally associate this technique to religious, slightly naive paintings, with bright colors – saints from Bohemia and southern Italy, peasant scenes from Bavaria, seaside ex-voto from Flanders. Actually, the variety of painting under glass is much larger than one imagines, from the «gold sandwich» bowls from the Puglie in Italy to IIIth century B.C. (the gold leaf was exactly placed between two bowls that fit into each other) to the decorations of the restaurants of the Belle Epoque (the Grand Véfour in Paris for example) up to the creations of Croatian naïf artists of the XXth century… There is a special thought for the XVIIIth century: it has still lives from Franche-Comté, in Chardin’s style, portraits from the Lorraine region, wise paintings from Augsbourg and central Switzerland (mythologic scenes, architecture views).

• Peintures sous verre, de l’Antiquité à nos jours, by Jeannine Geyssant, Massin, 2008, 272 p., 38 €, ISBN : 978-2-7072-0578-0

Peintures sous verre, de l’Antiquité à nos jours - Jeannine Geyssant


Review published in the newsletter #104 - from 9 October 2008 to 15 September 2008

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