Controversial Monuments : Personifying the Continents between the 18th and 21st Centuries / edited by Louise Arizzoli, Marion Romberg, and Maryanne Cline Horowitz.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Horowitz, Maryanne Cline, editor.

Romberg, Marion, editor.

Arizzoli, Louise, editor.

Series:

Early Modern History and Modern History E-Books online, Collection 2026.

Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History ; 84

Early Modern History and Modern History E-Books online, Collection 2026

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art--History.

Art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (335 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Personifying the Continents between the 18th and 21st Centuries

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : BRILL, 2026.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Controversial Monuments: Personifying the Continents from the 18th to the 21st century offers a sweeping exploration of the iconography of the Four Continents, tracing its evolution from origins in Antiquity through early modern religious and imperial frameworks to contemporary artistic reinterpretations. Through richly illustrated case studies spanning pulpits, frescoes, sculptures, maps, and world fair displays, the book reveals how these personifications perpetuated Eurocentric worldviews, racial hierarchies, and colonial ideologies across centuries. Featuring contributions from leading scholars, it unpacks the symbolic power and persistent influence of this imagery while also highlighting how contemporary artists are critically engaging with, subverting, and reshaping these historic visual traditions for the 21st century. Contributors are: Louise Arizzoli, Renée Ater, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Elisa Antonietta Daniele, Catherine Dossin, Charles Forsdick, Daniel Fulco, Maria P. Gindhart, Paul Kaplan, Hoyon Mephokee, Anne Pingeot, Marion Romberg, Wolfgang Schmale, and Chet Van Duzer.

Contents:

Contents

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Continents and the Visual Language of Empire: Fantasy, Stereotype, and Controversy / Louise Arizzoli

Part 1 The Continents as Markers of Global Church and Empire

1 Jesuit Pulpits in the Lowlands: Preaching across the Globe of Continents / Maryanne Cline Horowitz

2 Africa and Sheaves of Grain: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Allegories of the Continent / Elisa Antonietta Daniele

3Envisioning the World in the Royal Palace of Madrid: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Glory and Power of the Spanish Monarchy under Charles III / Daniel Fulco

Part 2 An Era of Dramatic Change: Personifications of the Continents in the Age of Revolutions

4 An Era of Dramatic Change: Personifications of the Continents in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries / Chet Van Duzer

5 L’Amérique Libérée and Other French Allegories of the United States / Catherine Dossin

Part 3 Imperialism, Sculpted Continents and Nineteenth Century World Fairs

6 “Exotic but Controversial” Flair along the Viennese Ringstrasse: the Sculptures of the Four Continents at the Naturhistorisches Museum / Marion Romberg

7Scientism and Second-Empire Sculpture: Personifying and Contending with Blackness in Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde Hoyon Mephokee

8The Six Continents at the 1878 Exposition Universelle: “a History of Taste” / Anne Pingeot

9 Mapping Monumental Sculptured Continents in the Public Space: a Visual Archive / Louise Arizzoli

Part 4 Continents and Race at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris

1 La France des Cinq Parties du Monde: Representing Continents and Racial Types at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale in Paris / Maria P. Gindhart

11 Between Permanency and Ephemerality: the Sculptural and Other Afterlives of the 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale / Charles Forsdick

Part 5 Continent Personification in Twentieth Century United States: Race, Racism and Controversy

12Race, Representation, and Empire: the Four Continents for the U.S. Custom House in New York City / Renée Ater

13 From Subject People to Subjugated Continents: Africa and America in Presidential Imagery from Washington to Theodore Roosevelt / Paul H.D. Kaplan

Part 6 Conclusion: Contemporary Artists Revisit the Personifications of Continents

14 Kent Monkman’s Four Continents (212–216)—a 21st-Century Answer to Giambattista Tiepolo’s Four Continents (1752/53) (with an Excursus on Maître Leherb (1981–1992) / Wolfgang Schmale

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

90-04-74855-5

90-04-52784-2

90-04-19103-8

OCLC:

817584020

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004527843 DOI