Xavier Salomon

This fascinating book tells the story of a little-known masterpiece by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822)-the statue of George Washington for the North Carolina State House, delivered in 1821 and destroyed by fire ten years later. It brings together for the first time Canova's full-sized preparatory plaster model, sketches, engravings, drawings, and a selection of Thomas Jefferson's letters about the commission. This is a major addition to the current body of published knowledge on the work of Antonio Canova, as well as on the classical revivalist sculpture of the early nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic.

Hans Holbein's famous portrayal of Sir Thomas More is one of the artist's greatest and most popular portraits. In the opening piece of this appealing new volume, "A Letter to Thomas More, Knight", award-winning author Hilary Mantel vividly imagines the background to the creation of this extraordinary portrait, giving it both historical perspective and immediacy. An insightful, concise, scholarly essay by Xavier Salomon grounds it in the art-historical world. Hans Holbein (1497/98-1543) painted Sir Thomas More in 1527, having been a guest in More's house when he first arrived in England. He brilliantly renders his sitter's rich fabrics and unshaven face with sympathy and perception. Frick Diptychs, a new series of small books to be co-published by GILES with The Frick Collection, New York, pairs masterworks from the Frick with critical and literary essays. The novelist Hilary Mantel will be followed by the filmmaker James Ivory on Vermeer's "Mistress and Maid" and the artist and author Edmund de Waal on a pair of porcelain and bronze candlesticks by the 18th-century French metalworker Pierre Gouthiere.