Relics, dreams, voyages is a closely focused sequence of studies of worldwide connections in all the arts in the baroque period. Drawing on original research in libraries, collections, and archives in five countries, and in as many languages, this book draws many astonishing, unfamiliar and beautiful texts, things and events, into a cartography of the secret and strange patterns of baroque cultures worldwide. The visual arts are examined across a wide temporal and geographical span, and many subversive iconographies are decoded: at the French and English courts, in remote Scotland, in Nagasaki, in Valladolid. This books offers a new, extraordinary cultural geography of the baroque world, opening doors to many rich and strange cultural artefacts, from 'China to Peru.'

Prologue: The Gestures of the Skeletons, reticulations of the baroque world
Part I: Centres and peripheries
1 James Fraser: experiencing the arts of Italy in the mid seventeenth century
2 The Jesuits and the languages of Britain: the case of Robert Corbie SJ
3 Gentileschi and the ancestors
4 Pope's recusancy
5 Mr Gibbon's shadow, or 'the parent of the arts'
Part II: Materialities
6 The solemnity of the Madonna Vulnerata, Valladolid, 1600
7 Opposing Elizabeth
8 Relics and memorials of Mary Stuart in the Low Countries
9 Viper wine
10 The Assassin's new Castles: frescoes and textiles for the Leslies at Nové Mesto nad Metují and Ptui
11 A Jesuit reliquary Crucifix from Japan
12 The Jesuit Garden
Part III: Designs of the imagination
13 The dream of Raphael
14 Alexander Seton, his house, his library, his world
15 Paper gardens
16 Imaginary Baroque cities: the Chearnley circle and the Earl of Mar
17 Artificial Islands
Afterword
Bibliography
Index

Author

Peter Davidson is Senior Research Fellow in Renaissance and Baroque Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and a member of the English Faculty