{"product_id":"heaven-on-earth","title":"Heaven on Earth","description":"Product Description\n\n\nThe idea of heaven on earth haunts the human imagination. The day will come, saybelievers, when the pain and confusion of mortal life will give way to a transfiguredcommunity. Such a vision of the world seems indelible. Even politics, some reckon, hasnot escaped from the realm of the sacred: its dreams of the future still borrow theirimagery from the prophets. In\nHeaven on Earth, T.J. Clark sets out to investigate thevery different ways painting has given form to the dream of God’s kingdom come. Hegoes back to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance – to Giotto in Padua, Bruegel facingthe horrors of religious war, Poussin painting the Sacraments, Veronese unfolding thehuman comedy. Was it to painting’s advantage, is Clark’s question, that in an age ofenforced orthodoxy (threats of hellfire, burnings at the stake) artists could reflect onthe powers and limitations of religion without putting their thoughts into words?\n\nAt the heart of the book stands Bruegel’s ironic but tender picture of\nThe Landof Cockaigne, and also Veronese’s inscrutable\nAllegory of Love. The story ends withPicasso’s\nFall of Icarus, made for UNESCO in 1958, which already seems to signal –perhaps to prescribe – an age when all futures are dead.\n\nTable of Contents\n\n1. Giotto and the Angel • 2. Bruegel in Paradise • 3. Poussin and the Unbeliever • 4.\nVeronese’s Higher Beings • Conclusion: Picasso \u0026amp; the Fall • Coda: For a Left with No Future\n\n\nReview\n\n\nA more novel and compelling book about art's version of the afterlife, and how it is inflected by worldly politics and reality, can hardly be imagined --Laura Cumming, Observer Books of the Year\n\nInspiring ... it demands to be read from cover to cover, and happily the flow of [Clark s] prose and the clarity of his argument mean that the experience is a singular delight --Evening Standard Art Books of the Year\n\nLavishly illustrated there is some characteristically arresting phrase-making --World of Interiors\n\n\nAbout the Author\n\n\nT.J. Clark is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the seminal The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (1984) and Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999). He writes art criticism regularly for the London Review of Books. His other publications include Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (1983), also published by Thames \u0026amp; Hudson.","brand":"Thames \u0026 Hudson Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39667952910421,"sku":"9780500295540N","price":11.37,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/products\/c1573c5c-3ad3-4132-8632-0081dec27efb.jpg?v=1644305149","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/products\/heaven-on-earth","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}