{ "item_title" : "The Secret Language of Art", "item_author" : [" Adam Gedney "], "item_description" : "In the Dutch Republic of the 1600s, painters filled tabletops with skulls, burned-down candles, hourglasses, coins and flowers past their bloom. These were vanitas paintings, and each one communicated the Latin phrase memento mori remember that you will die, and that wealth and pleasure are ephemeral. Every object on the table carried a meaning, and buyers knew those meanings from the emblem books on their own shelves. They could read a painting the way we read a sentence, and a crowded table the way we read an essay.The meanings were eventually lost, when emblem books fell out of fashion and the objects went back to being furniture and fruit.This book gives you that vocabulary back, reviving the vanitas tradition. It gathers 86 symbols documented in the Dutch tradition, each with its meaning and a full-page image. Read it and you too will speak the secret language of art, well enough to read the old paintings and to compose meaningful images of your own.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/818/294/9798182947442_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "60.00", "online_price" : "60.00", "our_price" : "60.00", "club_price" : "60.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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