The Arts of Living Europe

This book accompanies the opening of the V&A’s newly redesigned Europe gallery, which features spectacular paintings, sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts—textiles, fashion, ceramics, glass, metalwork, prints, and books—created by Europe’s finest artists and craftsmen of the 17th and 18th centuries for the period’s most important tastemakers, among them Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, and Catherine the Great. Outstanding art and domestic objects are discussed within their original contexts to highlight the rhythms and rituals of life during this period. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes essays explaining the grandeur of court interiors—for which the larger and more elaborate art objects were made—as well as discussion of more-humble period rooms and intimate interiors.