Reza Abbasi

Reza Abbasi (1565 - 1635), was the leading Persian miniaturist of the Isfahan School during the later Safavid period, spending most of his career working for Shah Abbas I He is considered to be the last great master of the Persian miniature, best known for his single miniatures for muraqqa or albums, especially single figures of beautiful youths

Riza was possibly born in Kashan, as Āqā Riżā Kāshānī is one of the versions of his name; it has also been suggested that he was born in Mashad, where his father, the miniature artist Ali Asghar, is recorded as having worked in the atelier of the governor, Prince Ibrahim Mirza After Ibrahim's murder, Ali Asghar joined Shah Ismail II's workshop in the capital Qasvin Riza probably received his training from his father and joined the workshop of Shah Abbas I at a young age By this date, the number of royal commissions for illustrated books had diminished, and had been replaced by album miniatures in terms of employment given to the artists of the royal workshop

Unlike most earlier Persian artists, he typically signed his work, often giving dates and other details as well, though there are many pieces with signatures that scholars now reject He may have worked on the ambitious, but incomplete Shahnameh, now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin A much later copy of the work, from 1628, at the end of Abbas' reign and rendered in a very different style, may also be his It is now in the British Library (MS Additional 27258) His first dated drawing is from 1601, in the Topkapi Palace A book miniature of 1601-2 in the National Library of Russia has been attributed to him; the only other miniature in the book is probably by his father He is generally attributed with the 19 miniatures in a Khusraw and Shirin of 1631-32, although their quality has been criticised

His speciality, however, was the single miniature for the albums or muraqqas of private collectors, typically showing one or two figures with a lightly drawn garden background, sometimes in gold, in the style formerly used for border paintings, with individual plants dotted about on a plain background These vary between pure pen drawings and fully painted subjects with colour throughout, with several intermediate varieties The most typical have at least some colour in the figures, though not in the background; later works tend to have less colour His, or his buyers', favourite subjects were idealized figures of stylishly dressed and beautiful young men According to Barbara Brend:

The line of Riza's ink drawings has an absolute mastery conveying texture, form, movement and even personality His coloured figures, which must often be portraits, are more restrained, and lay more emphasis on the fashions of the day, the rich textiles, the carelessly draped turban, the European hat Effete figures are often presented standing in a curved posture which accentuates their well-fed waists

The style he pioneered remained influential on subsequent generations of Persian painters; several pupils were prominent artists, including Mu'in, who painted his portrait many decades later (illustrated at top) as well as Riza's son, Muhammed Shafi Abbasi

His earlier works were signed Aqa Risa (or Riza, Reza etc, depending on the transliteration used), which, confusingly, is also the name of a contemporary Persian artist who worked for the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in India In 1603, at the age of about 38, the artist in Persia received the honorific title of Abbasi from his patron, the shah, associating him with his name In the early 20th century, there was much scholarly debate, mostly in German, as to whether the later Aqa Risa and Riza Abbasi were the same figure It is now accepted that they were, although his style shows a considerable shift in mid-career Riza Abbasi, the painter, is also not to be confused with his contemporary Ali Riza Abbasi, Shah Abbas' favourite calligrapher, who in 1598, was appointed to the important position of royal librarian, and therefore in charge of the royal atelier of painters and calligraphers Both Rizas accompanied the shah on his campaign to Khurasan in 1598 and followed him to the new capital he established in Isfahan from 1597-98 Soon after, Riza Abbasi left the Shah's employ in a "mid-life crisis", apparently seeking greater independence and freedom to associate with Isfahan's "low-life" world, including athletes, wrestlers and other unrespectable types In 1610, he returned to the court, probably because he was short of money, and continued in the employ of the Shah until his death A series of drawings copying the miniatures attributed to the great 15th-century artist Behzad, which were in the library of the shrine at Ardabil, strongly suggest that Riza had visited the city, probably as part of the Shah's party and perhaps on his visits in 1618 or 1625

About the time of his return to court service, there is a considerable change in his style "The primary colours and virtuoso technique of his early portraits give way in the 1620s to darker, earthier colours and a coarser, heavier line New subjects only partly compensate for this disappointing stylistic development" He painted many older men, perhaps scholars, Sufi divines, or shepherds, as well as birds and Europeans, and in his last years sometimes satirized his subjects

Sheila Canby's 1996 monograph accepts 128 miniatures and drawings as by Riza, or probably so, and lists as "Rejected" or "Uncertain Attributions" a further 109 that have been ascribed to him at some point Today, his works can be found in Tehran in the Reza Abbasi Museum and in the library at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul They can also be found in several western museums, such as the Smithsonian, where the Freer Gallery of Art has an album of works by him and pupils, the British Museum, Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eero Aarnio

Eero Aarnio (Jul 21, 1932) is one of the great Finnish interior of modern furniture design. In the 1960s, Eero Aarnio began experimenting with plastics, vivid colors and organic forms, breaking away from traditional design conventions. Many of Aarnio’s works are included in the world’s most prestigious museums, including Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA in New York and Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein., such as his plastic and fibreglass chairs.

Born in 1932, Finnish designer Eero Aarnio studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, and worked as an interior decorator, photographer, industrial and graphic designer before he began working with plastic as a medium for high-end furniture. Previously he had worked with traditional, natural materials, most notably “Jattujakkare”, a wicker basket chair. However, his interest and curiosity grew about plastic materials, particularly fiber glass, and he began experimenting. Today, the Finnish design world has been gifted with numerous of these innovative and iconic designs.

Aarnio studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, and started his own office in 1962. The following year, he introduced his Ball Chair, a hollow sphere on a stand, open on one side to allow a person to sit within. The similar Bubble Chair was clear and suspended from above. Other innovative designs included his floating Pastil Chair, and Tomato Chair.

Designed in 1963 and manufactured in 1965, his piece “Ball Chair” consists of a spherical plastic shell reinforced with glass fiber and a round opening, allowing the user to peer out from his or her upholstered seat. The chamber also blocks out outside sounds, yet amplifies those that come from within the space of the globe.

Aarnio took the design a step further in 1968 with the introduction of the “Bubble Chair”, wanting to allow more light into the seating sanctuary and maximize visibility. Solid plastic was replaced with transparent Lucite, and the piece was hung from the ceiling, giving the illusion of floating in a giant soap bubble. His Screw Table, as the name suggests, had the appearance of a flat head screw driven into the ground. He was awarded the American Industrial Design award in 1968.

Another distinguished design is the 1968 “Pastil”, which won the American Industrial Design award for its comfortable form and unique aesthetic. Many other imaginative creations came to follow, including tables and light-hearted animal-shaped chairs beloved by children and kids-at-heart adults alike. Though many of these pieces are soaked in playful, pop colors, Eero Aarnio turned his nose to the throwaway ethic of the Pop era in which his work was born and thrived. He strived to challenge the way we think of plastics, and execute it in a way that is durable, beautiful and memorable. We think he succeeded.

Aarnio's designs were an important aspect of 1960s popular culture, and could often be seen as part of sets in period science-fiction films. Because his designs used very simple geometric forms, they were ideal for such productions. Eero Aarnio continues to create new designs, including toys and furniture for children. Eero Aarnio opened his official webshop and first Design Eero Aarnio Showroom, in Helsinki. There you can find Aarnio`s latest design, prototypes and latest news.

Awards:
Valmet Trade Mark Competition, Helsinki, Finland 1958, First Prize
International Furniture Competition, Cantu, Italy 1959, Third Prize
Export Furniture Competition, Helsinki, Finland 1963, Third Prize
International Competition on Furniture Design, Cantu, Italy 1964, First Prize
Scandinavian Park and Street Competition 1965, Stockholm, Sweden, First Prize
Steel Furniture Competition, Helsinki, Finland 1967, Second Prize
International Design Award of the A.I.D. (American Institute of Interior Designers) for Pastil Chair (Gyro) 1968, New York, USA
Honorary member of SIO (Finnish Association of Interior Designers) 1999
The Finland Prize 2005, The Ministry of Education, Finland
Interior Innovation Award Cologne 2006, Germany
The ADI Compasso d’Oro Award 2008, for Trioli chair, Italy
Kaj Franck Design Prize of 2008, Finland
Red Dot Design Award 2010, for Kubo bright light, Germany
Pro Finlandia Medal 2010, Finland
Green GOOD DESIGN 2010, for The Tree, USA
Red Dot Design Award 2012, for Ghost lamp, Germany

Exhibitions:
That´s it, Art Gallery Árvore, Porto, Portugal 2001
Eero Aarnio, Kunsthalle, Helsinki, Finland 2003
Eero Aarnio – popfantasier og sittende dagdrømmer, Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway 2004
Forestil dig en rund stol, Danish Design Center, Kopenhagen, Denmark 2005
Pop Fantasies: Furniture Design by Eero Aarnio, The Embassy of Finland, Washington DC, USA 2005
Fantasías del Pop. El diseño de Eero Aarnio, Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City 2007
Eero Aarnio – Retropop, Phantasie und Tagträume, The Embassy of Finland, Berlin, Germany 2007
The Kaj Franck Design Prize of  2008 – Eero Aarnio, Design Forum Finland, Helsinki 2008
Kaj Frank Design Prize Exhibition at the exhibition center of the visual arts TR1, Tampere 2009
Eero Aarnio Life in Design, AXIS Gallery, Tokyo and Design Museum de sign de, Osaka, Japan 2014
Eero Aarnio, Design Museum, Helsinki, Finland 2016
Eero Aarnio, Nationalmuseum Design, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, Sweden 2017

Group Exhibitions:
Rattan Stools, Asko Oy, Helsinki 1961
7+7 Arkitekter, Stockholm, Sweden 1964
Triennale XIV, Milan, Italy 1964
Eurodomus, Genova, Italy 1966 and Milan, Italy 1970
Fiberglass Furniture, Asko Oy, Helsinki 1968
Plastic as Plastic, New York, USA 1970
Design aus Finnland, Asko GmbH, Cologne, Germany 1979
Masters of Modern Design, IBM Gallery, New York, USA 1991
Plastic Fantastic, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 2005
Pop Art Design, EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art), Finland 2015
Golden Generations. Modernism in Finnish Architecture and Design, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia 2015
Finnish Design 2017, Fukuoka City Museum, Japan 2017

Ilmari Aalto

Ilmari Aalto  (August 7, 1891, Kuopio - September 29, 1934, Helsinki) was a Finnish painter and one of the country's first cubists in the 1910s. He was a member of the November group, who grew up around the expressionist Tyko Sallinen. Aalto painted structural layouts, as well as landscape and portrait images. Aalto studied 1907-1908 at the National Academy of Fine Arts, the current Aalto University College of Art, Design and Architecture, and 1908-1911 at the Visual Arts Academy.

Aalto studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1907 to 1908 and the Finnish Art Society drawing school from 1908 to 1910.

Most of Aalto's landscape paintings are views of Töölö and Suursaari. Aalto's landscape painting is also shown Restaurant Eliel Brussels, Helsinki railway station. The rear wall of the landscape design of Eero Järnefelt and A. W. Finch were the most involved, but only three artist Ilmari Aalto dared to climb high ladders to take the painting.

Aalto started with Expressionism, but also discovered cubism in 1914. An Edvard Munch exhibition at the Ateneum soon after his graduation, had a strong influenced on Aalto and built on the expressionist influences; cubists and expressionists exhibition were seen in Finland in 1914, and were accompanied by key artists, among other things, the German Der Blaue Reiter.

After the 1920 trip to Paris, Aalto began to use more colors and strong brush strokes instead of the previous greyish palette. Later, while visiting Paris in 1928 he adopted a more realistic expression, clear contours and unmixed colors. Ilmari Aalto says that many works have been destroyed in self-critique.

"One of the best painters and spars of the time, as well as an independent and fearless critic. His dependence on Salma was not as great as why it was said. For example, he was brave enough not to get into the paws of Matisse. "

Aalto died of liver cancer at the age of 43. Aalto's spouse was Alli Helena Linnalahti (formerly Ketonen).

Alvar Aalto

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (Feb 3, 1898 - May 11, 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer, as well as a sculptor and painter His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware Aalto's early career runs in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the twentieth century and many of his clients were industrialists; among these were the Ahlström-Gullichsen family The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards His furniture designs were considered Scandinavian Modern What is typical for his entire career, however, is a concern for design as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art; whereby he – together with his first wife Aino Aalto – would design not just the building, but give special treatments to the interior surfaces and design furniture, lamps, and furnishings and glassware The Alvar Aalto Museum, designed by Aalto himself, is located in what is regarded as his home city Jyväskylä

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland His father, Johan Henrik Aalto, was a Finnish-speaking land-surveyor and his mother, Selly (Selma) Matilda (née Hackstedt) was a Swedish-speaking postmistress When Aalto was 5 years old, the family moved to Alajärvi, and from there to Jyväskylä in Central Finland Aalto studied at the Jyväskylä Lyceum school, where he completed his basic education in 1916 and took drawing lessons from a local artist named Jonas Heiska In 1916 he then enrolled to study architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology His studies were interrupted by the Finnish Civil War, which he fought in He fought on the side of the White Army and fought at the Battle of Länkipohja and the Battle of Tampere He built his first piece of architecture while still a student, a house for his parents, at Alajärvi Afterwards, he continued his education, graduating in 1921 In the summer of 1922 he began his official military service, finishing at the Hamina reserve officer training school, and was promoted to reserve second lieutenant in June 1923

In 1920, while still a student, Aalto made his first trip abroad, travelling via Stockholm to Gothenburg, where he even briefly found work with the architect Arvid Bjerke In 1922, he accomplished his first independent piece at the Industrial Exposition in Tampere In 1923 he returned to Jyväskylä, where he opened his first architectural office under the name 'Alvar Aalto, Architect and Monumental Artist' At that same time he also wrote articles for the Jyväskylä newspaper Sisä-Suomi under the pseudonym Remus During this time, he designed a number of small single-family houses in Jyväskylä, and the office's workload steadily increased

On October 6, 1924, Aalto married architect Aino Marsio; their honeymoon journey to Italy was Aalto's first trip there, though Aino had previously made a study trip there The latter trip together sealed an intellectual bond with the culture of the Mediterranean region that was to remain important to Aalto for the rest of his life On their return, they continued with a number of local projects, notably the Jyväskylä Worker's Club, which incorporated a number of motifs which they had studied during their trip, most notably the decorations of the Festival hall modelled on the Rucellai Sepulchre in Florence by Leon Battista Alberti Following winning the architecture competition for the Southwest Finland Agricultural Cooperative building in 1927 the Aaltos moved their office to Turku They had made contact with the city's most progressive architect, Erik Bryggman, already before moving, and they then began collaborating with him, most notably on the Turku Fair of 1928-29 Aalto's biographer, Göran Schildt, claimed that Bryggman was the only architect with whom Aalto cooperated as an equal With increasing works in the Finnish capital, the Aaltos' office moved again in 1933 to Helsinki

The Aaltos designed and built a joint house-office (1935–36) for themselves in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, but later (1954–56) had a purpose-built office erected in the same neighbourhood – nowadays the former is a "home museum" and the latter the premises of the Alvar Aalto Academy In 1926 the young Aaltos designed and had built for themselves a summer cottage in Alajärvi, Villa Flora Aino Aalto died of cancer in 1949 Aino and Alvar Aalto had 2 children, a daughter Johanna "Hanni" Alanen, born Aalto, 1925, and a son Hamilkar Aalto, 1928 In 1952 Aalto married architect Elissa Mäkiniemi (died 1994), who had been working as an assistant in his office In 1952 Aalto designed and had built a summer cottage, the so-called Experimental House, for himself and his new wife in Muuratsalo in Central Finland Alvar Aalto died on 11 May 1976, in Helsinki, and is buried in the Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki His wife and the office employees continued the works of the office which were still in progress In 1978 the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki arranged a major exhibition of Aalto's works

Early career: classicism:
Although he is sometimes regarded as among the first and most influential architects of Nordic modernism, a closer examination of the historical facts reveals that Aalto (while a pioneer in Finland) closely followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar Asplund and Sven MarkeliusAalto 1998, p 76 What they and many others of that generation in the Nordic countries had in common was that they started off from a classical education and were first designing classical architecture, though what historians now call Nordic Classicism – a style that had been a reaction to the previous dominant style of National Romanticism – before moving, in the late 1920s, towards Modernism On returning to Jyväskylä in 1923 to establish his own architect's office, Aalto busied himself with a number of single-family homes, all designed in the Nordic Classicism style, such as the manor-like house for his mother's cousin Terho Manner in Töysa in 1923, a summer villa for the Jyväskylä chief constable in 1923 and the Alatalo farmhouse in Tarvaala in 1924 During this period he also completed his first public buildings, the Jyväskylä Workers' Club in 1925, the Jyväskylä Defence Corps building in 1926 and the Seinäjoki Defence Corp building in 1924–29 Aalto also entered several architectural competitions for prestigious state public buildings, both in Finland and abroad, including the two competitions for the Finnish Parliament building in 1923 and 1924, the extension to the University of Helsinki in 1931, and the building to house the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1926–27 Furthermore, this was the period when Aalto was most prolific in his writings, with articles for professional journals and newspapers Among his most well-known essays from this period are "Urban culture" (1924), "Temple baths on Jyväskylä ridge" (1925), "Abbé Coignard's sermon" (1925), and "From doorstep to living room" (1926)

The shift in Aalto's design approach from classicism to modernism is epitomised by the Viipuri Library (1927–35), which went through a transformation from an originally classical competition entry proposal to the completed high-modernist building Yet his humanistic approach is in full evidence in the library: the interior displays natural materials, warm colours, and undulating lines Due to problems over financing and a change of site, the Viipuri Library project lasted eight years, and during that same time he also designed the Standard Apartment Building (1928-29) in Turku, Turun Sanomat Building (1929–30) and Paimio Sanatorium (1929–32) A number of factors heralded Aalto's shift towards modernism: on a personal level, Aalto's increased familiarization of international trends especially after travelling throughout Europe, but in terms of completed projects it was the client of the Standard Apartment Building giving Aalto the opportunity to experiment with concrete prefabrication, the cutting-edge Corbusian form language of the Turun Sanomat Building, and these were then carried forward both in the Paimio Sanatorium and in the ongoing design for the library Although the Turun Sanomat Building and Paimio Sanatorium are comparatively pure modernist works, they too carried the seeds of his questioning of such an orthodox modernist approach and a move to a more daring, synthetic attitude It has been pointed out that the planning principle for Paimio Sanatorium - the splayed wings - was indebted to the Zonnestraal Sanatorium (1925-31) by Jan Duiker, which Aalto visited while it was still under construction But while these early Functionalist works by Aalto bear hallmarks of influences from Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and other key modernist figures of central Europe, in all these buildings Aalto nevertheless started to show his individuality in a departure from such norms with the introduction of organic references

Through Sven Markelius, Aalto became a member of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), attending the second congress in Frankfurt in 1929 and the fourth congress in Athens in 1933, where he established a close friendship with László Moholy-Nagy, Sigfried Giedion and Philip Morton Shand It was during this time that he followed closely the work of the main driving force behind the new modernism, Le Corbusier, and visited him in his Paris office several times in the following years

It was not until the completion of the Paimio Sanatorium (1932) and Viipuri Library (1935) that Aalto first achieved world attention in architecture His reputation grew in the USA following the invitation to hold a retrospective exhibition of his works at the MOMA in New York in 1938, which was also the first time he visited the US The significance of the exhibition - which afterwards went on a 12-city tour of the country - lies in the fact that he was only the second ever architect - after Le Corbusier - to have a solo exhibition at the museum His reputation grew in the USA following the critical reception of his design for the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, described by Frank Lloyd Wright as a "work of genius" It could be said that Aalto's international reputation was sealed with his inclusion in the second edition of Sigfried Giedion's influential book on Modernist architecture, Space, Time and Architecture: The growth of a new tradition (1949), in which Aalto received more attention than any other Modernist architect, including Le Corbusier In his analysis of Aalto, Giedion gave primacy to qualities that depart from direct functionality, such as mood, atmosphere, intensity of life and even national characteristics, declaring that "Finland is with Aalto wherever he goes"

Mid career: experimentation:
During the 1930s Alvar spent some time experimenting with laminated wood, making sculptures, and abstract reliefs, characterized by irregular curved forms Utilizing this knowledge he was able to solve technical problems concerning the flexibility of wood and also of working out spatial issues in his designs Aalto's early experiments with wood and his move away from a purist modernism would be tested in built form with the commission to design Villa Mairea (1939) in Noormarkku, the luxury home of the young industrialist couple Harry and Maire Gullichsen It was Maire Gullichsen who acted as the main client, and she worked closely not only with Alvar but also Aino Aalto on the design, inspiring them to be more daring in their work The original design was to include a private art gallery, but this was never built The building forms a U-shape around a central inner "garden" the central feature of which is a kidney-shaped swimming pool Adjacent to the pool is a sauna executed in a rustic style, alluding to both Finnish and Japanese precedents The design of the house is a synthesis of numerous stylistic influences, from traditional Finnish vernacular to purist modernism, as well as influences from English and Japanese architecture While the house is clearly intended for a wealthy family, Aalto nevertheless argued that it was also an experiment that would prove useful in the design of mass housing

His increased fame led to offers and commissions outside Finland In 1941 he accepted an invitation as a visiting professor to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA This was during the Second World War, and he involved his students in designing low-cost, small-scale housing for the reconstruction of war-torn Finland While teaching at MIT, Aalto also designed the student dormitory, Baker House, completed in 1948 The dormitory lay along the Charles River and its undulating form provided maximum view and ventilation for each resident This building was the first building of Aalto's redbrick period Originally used in Baker House to signify the Ivy League university tradition, on his return to Finland Aalto used it in a number of key buildings, in particular, in several of the buildings in the new Helsinki University of Technology campus (starting in 1950), Säynätsalo Town Hall (1952), Helsinki Pensions Institute (1954), Helsinki House of Culture (1958), as well as in his own summer house, the so-called Experimental House in Muuratsalo (1957)

In the fifties Aalto immersed himself in his sculpting, be it with wood, bronze, marble, or mixed media Among the notable works from this period is the memorial to the Battle of Suomussalmi (1960); located on the battlefield, it consists of a leaning bronze pillar on a pedestal

Mature career: monumentalism:
The early 1960s and 1970s (up until his death in 1976) were marked by key works in Helsinki, in particular the huge town plan for the void in centre of Helsinki adjacent to Töölö Bay and the vast railway yards, and marked on the edges by significant buildings such as the National Museum and the main railway station, both by Eliel Saarinen In his town plan Aalto proposed a line of separate marble-clad buildings fronting the bay which would house various cultural institutions, including a concert hall, opera, museum of architecture and headquarters for the Finnish Academy The scheme also extended into the Kamppi district with a series of tall office blocks Aalto first presented his scheme in 1961, but it went through various modifications during the early 1960s Only two fragments of the overall plan were ever realized: the Finlandia Hall concert hall (1976) fronting Töölö Bay, and an office building in the Kamppi district for the Helsinki Electricity Company (1975) The Miesian formal language of geometric grids employed in the buildings was also used by Aalto for other sites in Helsinki, including the Enso-Gutzeit building (1962), the Academic Bookstore (1962) and the SYP Bank building (1969)

Following Aalto's death in 1976 his office continued to operate under the direction of his widow, Elissa, completing works already to some extent designed These works include the Jyväskylä City Theatre and Essen opera house Since the death of Elissa Aalto the office has continued to operate as the Alvar Aalto Academy, giving advice on the restoration of Aalto buildings and organising the vast archive material

Furniture career:
Whereas Aalto was famous for his architecture, his furniture designs were well thought of and are still popular today He studied Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte, and for a period of time, worked under Eliel Saarinen He also gained inspiration from Gebrüder Thonet During the late 1920s and 1930s he, working closely with Aino Aalto, also focused a lot of his energy on furniture design, partly due to the decision to design much of the individual furniture pieces and lamps for the Paimio Sanatorium Of particular significance was the experimentation in bent plywood chairs, most notably the so-called Paimio chair, which had been designed for the sitting tuberculosis patient The Aaltos, together with visual arts promoter Maire Gullichsen and art historian Nils-Gustav Hahl founded the Artek company in 1935, ostensibly to sell Aalto products but also other imported products He became the first furniture designer to use the cantilever principle in chair design using wood

Awards:
Aalto's awards included the Prince Eugen Medal in 1954, the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1957 and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in 1963 He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1957 He also was a member of the Academy of Finland, and was its president from 1963 to 1968 From 1925 to 1956 he was a member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne In 1960 he received an honorary doctorate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Works:
Aalto's career spans the changes in style from (Nordic Classicism) to purist International Style Modernism to a more personal, synthetic and idiosyncratic Modernism Aalto's wide field of design activity ranges from the large scale of city planning and architecture to interior design, furniture and glassware design and painting It has been estimated that during his entire career Aalto designed over 500 individual buildings, approximately 300 of which were built, the vast majority of which are in Finland He also has a few buildings in France, Germany, Italy and the USA

Aalto's work with wood, was influenced by early Scandinavian architects; however, his experiments and departure from the norm brought attention to his ability to make wood do things not previously done His techniques in the way he cut the beech tree, for example, and also his ability to use plywood as structural and aesthetic Other examples include the rough-hewn vertical placement of logs at his pavilion at the Lapua expo, looking similar to a medieval barricade, at the orchestra platform at turku and the Paris expo at the World Fair, he used varying sizes and shapes of planks Also at Paris and at Villa Mairea he utilized birch boarding in a vertical arrangement Also his famous undulating walls and ceilings made of red pine In his roofing, he created massive spans (155-foot at the covered statium at Otaniemi) all without tie rods His stairway at Villa Mairea, he evokes feelings of a natural forest by binding beech wood with withes into columns

Aalto claimed that his paintings were not made as individual artworks but as part of his process of architectural design, and many of his small-scale "sculptural" experiments with wood led to later larger architectural details and forms These experiments also led to a number of patents: for example, he invented a new form of laminated bent-plywood furniture in 1932 (which was patented in 1933) His experimental method had been influenced by his meetings with various members of the Bauhaus design school, especially László Moholy-Nagy, whom he first met in 1930 Aalto's furniture was exhibited in London in 1935, to great critical acclaim, and to cope with the consumer demand Aalto, together with his wife Aino, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl founded the company Artek that same year Aalto glassware (Aino as well as Alvar) is manufactured by Iittala

Aalto's 'High Stool' and 'Stool E60' (manufactured by Artek) are currently used in Apple Stores across the world to serve as seating for customers Finished in black lacquer, the stools are used to seat customers at the 'Genius Bar' and also in other areas of the store at times when seating is required for a product workshop or special event Aalto was also influential in bringing modern art to the knowledge of the Finnish people, in particular the work of his friends, Alexander Milne Calder and Fernand Léger

Significant buildings:
1921–1923: Bell tower of Kauhajärvi Church, Lapua, Finland
1924–1928: Municipal hospital, Alajärvi, Finland
1926–1929: Defence Corps Building, Jyväskylä, Finland
1927-1928: South-West Finland Agricultural Cooperative building, Turku, Finland
1927–1935: Municipal library, Viipuri, Finland (now Vyborg, Russia)
1928–1929, 1930: Turun Sanomat newspaper offices, Turku, Finland
1928–1933: Paimio Sanatorium, Tuberculosis sanatorium and staff housing, Paimio, Finland
1931: Toppila paper mill in Oulu, Finland
1931: Central University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia (former Yugoslavia)
1932: Villa Tammekann, Tartu, Estonia
1934: Corso theatre, restaurant interior, Zürich, Switzerland
1936–1939: Ahlstrom Sunila Pulp Mill, Housing, and Town Plan, Kotka
1937–1939: Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland
1939: Finnish Pavilion, at the 1939 New York World's Fair
1945: Sawmill at Varkaus
1947–1948: Baker House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
1949–1966: Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland
1949–1952: Säynätsalo Town Hall, 1949 competition, built 1952, Säynätsalo (now part of Jyväskylä), Finland
1950–1957: National Pension Institution office building, Helsinki, Finland
1951–1971: University of Jyväskylä various buildings and facilities on the university campus, Jyväskylä, Finland
1952–1958: House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland
1953: The Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland
1956–1958: Home for Louis Carre, Bazoches, France
1956–1958: Church of the Three Crosses, Vuoksenniska, Imatra, Finland
1957–1967: Town center (Town library, Lakeuden Risti Church and central administrative buildings), Seinäjoki, Finland
1958: Post and telegraph office, Baghdad, Iraq
1958–1972: KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Aalborg, Denmark
1959–1962: Community Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany
1959–1962: Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters, Helsinki, Finland
1962: Aalto-Hochhaus, Bremen, Germany
1964–1965: Institute of International Education, New York City
1965: Regional Library of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
1962–1971: Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland
1963–1965: Building for Västmanland-Dala nation, Uppsala, Sweden
1967–1970: Library at the Mount Angel Abbey, St Benedict, Salem, Oregon, USA
1965–1968: Nordic House, Reykjavík, Iceland
1966 (built 1975-1978): Church of Santa Maria Assunta, Riola of Vergato, Italy
1973: Alvar Aalto Museum, aka Taidemuseo, Jyväskylä, Finland
1970-1973: Sähkötalo, Helsinki, Finland
1959–1988: Essen opera house, Essen, Germany
Furniture and glassware:
Chairs
1932: Paimio Chair
1933: Three-legged stacking Stool 60
1933: Four-legged Stool E60
1935-6: Armchair 404 (a/k/a/ Zebra Tank Chair)
1939: Armchair 406
Lamps
1954: Floor lamp A805
1959: Floor lamp A810
Vases
1936: Aalto Vase

Critique of Aalto's architecture:
As already mentioned, Aalto's international reputation was sealed with his inclusion in the second edition of Sigfried Giedion's influential book on Modernist architecture, Space, Time and Architecture: The growth of a new tradition (1949), in which Aalto received more attention than any other Modernist architect, including Le Corbusier In his analysis of Aalto, Giedion gave primacy to qualities that depart from direct functionality, such as mood, atmosphere, intensity of life and even national characteristics, declaring that "Finland is with Aalto wherever he goes" However, a few more recent architecture critics and historians have questioned Aalto's position of influence in the canonic history Italian Marxist architecture historians Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co put forward the viewpoint that Aalto's "historical significance has perhaps been rather exaggerated; with Aalto we are outside of the great themes that have made the course of contemporary architecture so dramatic The qualities of his works have a meaning only as masterful distractions, not subject to reproduction outside the remote reality in which they have their roots" Their viewpoint was propounded by their own priority given to urbanism, seeing Aalto as an anti-urban, and thus consequently disparaging what they regarded as peripheral non-urban areas of the world: "Essentially his architecture is not appropriate to urban typologies" Similarly concerned with the appropriateness of Aalto's form language, at the other end of the political spectrum, American postmodernist critic Charles Jencks made a claim for the need for buildings to signify meaning; however, he then lifted out Aalto's Pensions Institute building as an example of what he termed Aalto's 'soft paternalism': "Conceived as a fragmented mass to break up the feeling of bureaucracy, it succeeds all too well in being humane and killing the pensioner with kindness The forms are familiar red brick and ribbon-strip windows broken by copper and bronze elements – all carried through with a literal-mindedness that borders on the soporific" But also during Aalto's lifetime he faced critique from his fellow architects in Finland, most notably Kirmo Mikkola and Juhani Pallasmaa; by the last decade of his life Aalto's work was seen as idiosyncratic and individualistic, when the opposing tendencies of rationalism and constructivism – often championed under left-wing politics – argued for anonymous virtually non-aesthetic architecture Mikkola wrote of Aalto's late works: "Aalto has moved to his present baroque line"

Memorials:
Aalto has been commemorated in a number of ways:

Alvar Aalto is the eponym of the Alvar Aalto Medal, now considered one of world architecture's most prestigious awards
Aalto was featured in the 50 mk note in the last series of the Finnish markka (before its replacement by the Euro in 2002)
The centenary of Aalto's birth in 1898 was marked in Finland not only by several books and exhibitions, but also by the promotion of specially bottled red and white Aalto Wine and a specially designed cupcake
In 1976, the year of his death, Aalto was commemorated on a Finnish postage stamp
Aalto University, a Finnish university formed by merging Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics and TaiK in 2010, is named after Alvar Aalto
An Alvar Aallon katu (Alvar Aalto Street) can be found in five different Finnish cities: Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Oulu, Kotka and Seinäjoki

Hans von Aachen

Hans von Aachen (1552 – 4 March 1615) was a German painter who was one of the leading representatives of Northern Mannerism

Hans von Aachen was a versatile and productive artist who worked in many genres He was successful as a painter of princely and aristocratic portraits, and further painted religious, mythological and allegorical subjects Known for his skill in the depiction of nudes, his eroticized mythological scenes were particulzarly enjoyed by his principal patron, Emperor Rudolf II These remain the works for which he is best known He also painted a number of genre paintings of small groups of figures shown from the chest upwards, laughing, often apparently using himself and his wife as models Von Aachen usually worked on a small scale and many of his works are cabinet paintings on copper

The life and work of Hans von Aachen bear unique witness to the cultural transfer between North, South and Central Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries After training in the tradition of Netherlandish Renaissance painting the artist moved to Italy in 1574, where he remained for about 14 years, mainly working in Venice He returned in 1587 to his native Germany, where he took up residence in Munich in Bavaria His final years were spent in Prague The combination of the Netherlandish realism of his training and the Italian influences gained during his travels gave rise to his unique painting style

His presence in the important art centres of the time, the wide distribution of prints after his designs and his congenial character all contributed to his international fame during his lifetime

Hans von Aachen was born in Cologne His surname is derived from the birthplace of his father, Aachen in Germany

Hans von Aachen began painting in Germany as a pupil of the portrait painter Georg Jerrigh, who had trained in Antwerp He probably joined the Cologne painters' guild before leaving for Italy around 1574 Like many northern artists of his time, such as the Flemish painter Bartholomeus Spranger, he then spent a long period in Italy He lived in Venice from 1574 to 1587 where he became a member of the Netherlandish and German community of artists, printmakers and art dealers He was active as a copyist and worked in the workshop of the Flemish painter and art dealer Gaspar Rem who was a native of Antwerp Rem arranged for von Aachen to go through an apprenticeship with an artist referred to as Morett (or Moretto) This apprenticeship involved making copies of famous works in Venice's churches Many of these copies were destined for the Northern-European art market A contemporary art collector and dealer in Antwerp by the name of Hermann de Neyt had a collection of nearly 850 original and copied paintings, of which six were by Hans von Aachen (two of which copies after Raphael)

Von Aachen went to Rome in 1575 Here he studied the antique sculptures and the works of Italian masters He became a member of the circle of northern artists active in Rome such as Otto van Veen, Joris Hoefnagel, the brothers Paul and Matthijs Bril, Hans Speckaert and Joseph Heintz the Elder He was able to secure a commission for a Nativity for the Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Rome In Florence in the years 1582–3 he established a reputation for his portraits, which led to commissions from the ruling Medici family In 1585 he again settled in Venice

He returned to Germany in 1587, first to Augsburg where he painted portraits for the wealthy Fugger family He also worked in Munich, where he was commissioned to paint two altarpieces for the church of St Michael After visiting his home town Cologne and a return trip to Venice, he chose Munich as his residence from 1589 He married Regina, the daughter of the composer Orlando di Lasso in Munich In Germany he became well known as a painter of portraits for noble houses He also produced historical and religious scenes and earned a wide reputation He painted several works for Duke William V of Bavaria

In Munich he came into contact with the Imperial Court in Prague In 1592 he was appointed official painter of Emperor Rudolf II who resided in Prague Von Aachen did not need to reside at the court in Prague as his appointment was as a 'Kammermaler von Haus aus' (a court painter from home) who could work from his residence Rudolf was one of the most important art patrons of his time He held painting in particular esteem and issued a Letter of Majesty to the Prague Painter's Guild exempting painters from the guild rules, awarding them annual stipends and decreeing that painting should no longer be referred to as a craft but as the 'art of painting' The special treatment provided to painters and artists generally in Rudolf's Prague turned the city into a major art centre The large output consisted mainly of mythological paintings with an erotic quality or complex allegories glorifying the Emperor The Emperor was open to artistic innovation and he presided over a new affected style, full of conceits, which became known as Mannerism This style stressed sensuality, which was expressed in smoothly modeled, elongated figures arranged in elegant poses, often including a nude woman seen from behind

Rudolf also relied on von Aachen as an advisor on his art collection and what is usually called a 'diplomat' In this role he travelled to the owners of art collections to convey the emperor's often shameless bullying to make them accept his offers for their treasures His diplomatic duties required him to travel extensively In 1602 he travelled to Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel, Wittenberg and Dresden, and between 1603 and 1605 to Innsbruck, Venice, Turin, Mantua and Modena The purpose of these later travels was in part for him to make portraits of potential future consorts of the Emperor Emperor Rudolf II conferred knighthood on him in 1605 Von Aachen only moved to Prague years later possibly in 1601 or earlier in 1597 Here he received many commissions for mythological and allegorical subjects

After his patron's downfall in 1605 and his death in 1612 von Aachen was, unlike most of Rudolf's court artists, retained by Rudolf's successor Matthias I who gave him an estate in Raussnitz Emperor Matthias sent him to Dresden and Vienna in 1612, while 1613 saw him back in Augsburg, and 1614 again in Dresden

Von Aachen's pupils included Pieter Isaacsz, who was his pupil in Italy while Andreas Vogel, Christian Buchner and Hans Christoph Schürer were his pupils in Prague

He died in Prague in 1615

Works:
Hans von Aachen was a versatile artist who produced portraits, paintings of historical and religious subjects, genre pictures and allegories He was one of the principal representatives of the late Mannerist style of art that had been nurtured at the court of Rudolf II in Prague around 1600

His style ranges between an idealized style of painting close to Roman and Florentine Mannerism as well as to Venetian masters Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto and the newly emerging tradition of northern realism Von Aachen developed his own mannerist technique from his study of Tintoretto and Michelangelo's followers Throughout his career his principal influences were the style of Bartholomeus Spranger and Hendrick Goltzius who dominated the art scene in Germany at the time

Prints:
While von Aachen did not produce prints himself, his paintings were much reproduced by other court artists of Rudolf II including included Wolfgang Kilian, Dominicus Custos as well as various members of the Sadeler family These prints contributed to his fame and influence across Europe, despite the Mannerist style having fallen from fashion soon after his death

Von Aachen also produced original designs for the court's printmakers An example is the series of prints published under the title Salus generis humani (Salvation of Mankind) The series consists of 13 plates engraved by the Flemish printmaker Aegidius Sadeler who was active at the Prague court Made in 1590, the engravings feature scenes from the Life of Christ after designs by Hans von Aachen The central compositions are surrounded by emblematic borders, whose designs originate from illuminations in the missal (Missale romanum) made by the Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel in 1581–90 for Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria (now in the Austrian National Library, Vienna)

Other Works:
Allegory of Peace, Art and Wealth, 1602, Hermitage (Saint Petersburg)
Self-portrait, wood, circa 1575, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, (Cologne)
Jagdszene, drawing, circa 1585, Dresden State Art Collections, Kupferstichkabinett
Portrait of Francesco I de 'Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, canvas, 1585, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
The Martyr of St Sebastian, canvas, 1589, Michaelskirche, (Munich)
Portrait of Duke William V of Bavaria, canvas, before 1589, Bavarian administration of the state castles, gardens and lakes (Munich)
The Coronation Mariae, canvas, 1596, Basilica of St Ulrich and Afra (Augsburg)
Amor Fucatus, engraving, 1591, Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)
Allegory of Justice, Copper, 1598, Alte Pinakothek (Munich)
The Three Graces, Canvas, circa 1604, Muzeul Naţional de Artă al României (Bucharest)
Portrait of Emperor Rudolf II, canvas, circa 1600, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna)
Bacchus, Ceres and Cupid, canvas, circa 1600, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna)
Allegory (triumph of rule over time), oil on copper, around 1600, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Adoration of the shepherds, in the Marienkapelle of the Cathedral of Dax
Five allegories on the Langenkriegsriege of Emperor Rudolf II, circa 1603/04, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), as a permanent loan in the Military History Museum in Vienna:
Battle of Sisseck on 22 June 1593 (Victoria crowns the sitting Croatia), oil on canvas, 345 × 42 cm
Battle of Hermannstadt (glorification of victory over the tied up rebellion), oil on canvas, 345 × 42 cm
Battle of Kronstadt, oil on canvas, 345 × 42 cm
The declaration of war before Constantinople, oil on canvas, 345 × 42 cm
The conquest of Stuhlweißburg, oil on canvas, 345 × 42 cm

Museums:
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, Austria
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany
Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary
The National Gallery, London

A1one

A1one (Persian: تنها‎‎) is the street name of a visual artist who pioneered graffiti and street art in Iran especially on the walls of Tehran

A1one studied 5 years at the university but got expelled by the school's president following a disagreement over religion

He was the first person who started painting on walls of Tehran so his nickname ended to be "Alone" which then mutated into A1one A1one started painting indoors in the late 1990's He is one of the pioneers of the urban art scene in Middle East When he began, it was a time when nobody knew what graffiti was in his country He has been known as the Iranian Banksy because of his importance in the rise of street art and stencilling within Iran, for art lovers and ordinary people

Already involved in urban arts in general, he met in 1998 the rapper Nima who told him everything about the hip hop underground culture which triggered A1one's desire to grow in that direction His first significant work was a painting under the Tehran-Karaj expressway called Searching for friends

He started his street art project in 2003 and inspired his close friends at that time to also begin painting on the streets Artists such as Elle, isba, KT and Magoi were the first people to join him in Tehran With his public space art, he describes his view on the Iranian society and puts himself regularly in danger In 2006, he met with Tehran city officials to obtain the authorization to paint on walls, but officials had no interest in his work, they solely asked for money and artistic religious illustrations

"When I decided to do my painting on walls I bought some spray cans - at that time we had just some very low quality colors in Iran My first work was a very simple work titled “searching for friends” painted on a wall right next to the Tehran-Karaj expressway late at night It was a really frightening night for me… The next morning I got three calls from friends who recognized my style of painting They were shocked to see my work on a public wall My first stencil was a Munch's Scream Print on Art University walls and after that , experimented with many techniques and methods, but I continue with stencils, graffiti and sticker art"

In 2008, he was invited to show his work at the annual Melbourne Stencil Festival, taking 40 pieces of work with him to his first trip in a non-dictatorship country, thus experimenting exhibiting his artwork without the fear of reprisals for the first time

Style:
A1one's art world is dynamic and made of many different styles, from portraits to calligraphy and funky characters which he mostly uses for his stickers A1ones artworks combine both, Persian calligraphy and Western graffiti His art has been documented by many photographers and featured in Art Asia Pacific Magazine

The artist has been working on Arabic Graffiti Style Design from 2003 and developed graffiti style in Islamic graffiti world He has made a handful of the greatest Style walls with Arabic letter graffiti since 2004

Arrests:
He has been arrested several times and signed agreements with police not to work in streets The management of the Iranian artists forum did not understand his aim and stopped him and called the police In 2012 A1one was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (Iran), under the charge of social and political reasons and was held in Evin Prison for 10 days at Ward 209

Selected exhibitions:
Group shows (selected):
2005 "Portrait and Expression", Behzad Art Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
2006 "Start Propaganda II", Los Angeles, USA
2007 "Process Invisible", Street Level Gallery, Portland, USA
2007 "Resist", La Condition Pablique, Roubaix,France
2007 "Spray 2007 ", Mehrin Art Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
2008 "Iranian Contemporary Artists Expo", Molavi Organization Hall, Tehran / IRAN
2008 "Visual Slang", Henry Art Settlement,NY, USA
2008 "400 ML", Paris, France
2008 "Melbourne Stencil Festival 08", Yarra Sculpture Gallery,Melbourne, Australia
2008 "Spray1387", Arete Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
2008 12 Inch Art, Winnipeg Canada
2008 Vinyl Killers, Portland,USA
2009 Your Kid Can't Do this / Group show Touring Australia
2009 Visual Slang III / NewYork
2009 Urban Art Agenda / Melbourne / Brisbane, Australia
2009 Brot And Kunst / Famous when Dead Gallery /Melbourne
2009 Group Show / Seyhoun Art Gallery / Tehran
2010 "Public Provocations", Carhartt Gallery - Weil am Rhein, Germany
Solo shows:
2005 "Alone / Pain Things ", Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
2006 "October 1385 ", Mehrin Art Gallery, Tehran / IRAN
2007 "I am Not Political"(private Solo show), Kolahstudio, Tehran / IRAN
2008 "Spray it to the nation", Mehrin Art Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
2010 Solo Show, Seyhoun Gallery, Tehran
Publications:
2002 Turn the Night / As Author and Translator / The most credible book about story of Rock and heavy metal music in Persian language / ISBN 964-7380-10-0 / Mess Publications IRAN
2007 Street Art and the War on Terror ISBN 978-0-9553398-8-2 / Rebellion Books/ UK
2008 Young and Defiant in Tehran ISBN 0-8122-4039-1 /University of Pennsylvania Press(PENN)
2008 Arabesque / Die Gestalten Verlag / ISBN 978-3-89955-206-5 / Germany
2008 Stencil Nation / ISBN 978-1-933149-22-6 / ManicdPress USA
2008 400ml ISBN 978-2-85980-011-6 / Kitchen93
2009 Stickers2 ISBN 978-3-89955-262-1 / Die Gestalten verlag /Germany
2009 The Ark ISBN 978-988-18-4701-0 / Systems-Design Limited (IDN)/ HongKong
2009 Urban IRAN ISBN 978-0-9799666-1-3 /Markbatty Publisher/USA
2010 Street Knowledge by King Adz 978-0007318698 Collins UK/Overlook Press (US)
2011 Graffiti 365 by JaySon Eddin 0810997444 Abrams(October 1, 2011) (US)

Pastoral

 A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A pastoral is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek βουκολικόν, from βουκόλος, meaning a cowherd.

Pastoral literature

Pastoral literature in general

Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres (most notably the pastoral elegy).

Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, defines pastoral in three ways in his critical book Pastoral. The first way emphasizes the historical literary perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the country and in particular the life of a shepherd. This is summed up by Leo Marx with the phrase "No shepherd, no pastoral." The second type of the pastoral is literature that "describes the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban." The third type of pastoral depicts the country life with derogative classifications.

Hesiod's Works and Days presents a 'golden age' when people lived together in harmony with nature. This Golden Age shows that even before Alexandria, ancient Greeks had sentiments of an ideal pastoral life that they had already lost. This is the first example of literature that has pastoral sentiments and may have begun the pastoral tradition. Ovid's Metamorphoses is much like the Works and Days with the description of ages (golden, silver, brazen, iron and human) but with more ages to discuss and less emphasis on the gods and their punishments. In this artificially constructed world, nature acts as the main punisher. Another example of this perfect relationship between man and nature is evident in the encounter of a shepherd and a goatherd who meet in the pastures in Theocritus' poem Idylls 1. Traditionally, pastoral refers to the lives of herdsmen in a romanticized, exaggerated, but representative way. In literature, the adjective 'pastoral' refers to rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside among shepherds, cowherds and other farm workers that are often romanticized and depicted in a highly unrealistic manner. The pastoral life is usually characterized as being closer to the Golden age than the rest of human life. The setting is a Locus Amoenus, or a beautiful place in nature, sometimes connected with images of the Garden of Eden. An example of the use of the genre is the short poem by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson Robene and Makyne which also contains the conflicted emotions often present in the genre. A more tranquil mood is set by Christopher Marlowe's well known lines from The Passionate Shepherd to His Love:

Come live with me and be my Love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dale and field,

And all the craggy mountains yield."

There will we sit upon the rocks

And see the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" exhibits the concept of Gifford's second definition of pastoral. The speaker of the poem, who is the titled shepherd, draws on the idealization of urban material pleasures to win over his love rather than resorting to the simplified pleasures of pastoral ideology. This can be seen in the listed items: "lined slippers," "purest gold," "silver dishes," and "ivory table" (lines 13, 15, 16, 21, 23). The speaker takes on a voyeuristic point of view with his love, and they are not directly interacting with the other true shepherds and nature.

Pastoral shepherds and maidens usually have Greek names like Corydon or Philomela, reflecting the origin of the pastoral genre. Pastoral poems are set in beautiful rural landscapes, the literary term for which is "locus amoenus" (Latin for "beautiful place"), such as Arcadia, a rural region of Greece, mythological home of the god Pan, which was portrayed as a sort of Eden by the poets. The tasks of their employment with sheep and other rustic chores is held in the fantasy to be almost wholly undemanding and is left in the background, abandoning the shepherdesses and their swains in a state of almost perfect leisure. This makes them available for embodying perpetual erotic fantasies. The shepherds spend their time chasing pretty girls — or, at least in the Greek and Roman versions, pretty lads as well. The eroticism of Virgil's second eclogue, Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin ("The shepherd Corydon burned with passion for pretty Alexis") is entirely homosexual.

Pastoral poetry

Pastoral literature continued after Hesiod with the poetry of the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus, several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside (probably reflecting the landscape of the island of Cos where the poet lived) and involve dialogues between herdsmen. Theocritus may have drawn on authentic folk traditions of Sicilian shepherds. He wrote in the Doric dialect but the metre he chose was the dactylic hexameter associated with the most prestigious form of Greek poetry, epic. This blend of simplicity and sophistication would play a major part in later pastoral verse. Theocritus was imitated by the Greek poets Bion and Moschus.

The Roman poet Virgil adapted pastoral into Latin with his highly influential Eclogues. Virgil introduces two very important uses of pastoral, the contrast between urban and rural lifestyles and political allegory most notably in Eclogues 1 and 4 respectively. In doing so, Virgil presents a more idealized portrayal of the lives of shepherds while still employing the traditional pastoral conventions of Theocritus. He was the first to set his poems in Arcadia, an idealized location to which much later pastoral literature will refer.

Horace's The Epodes, ii Country Joys has "the dreaming man" Alfius, who dreams of escaping his busy urban life for the peaceful country. But as "the dreaming man" indicates, this is just a dream for Alfius. He is too consumed in his career as a usurer to leave it behind for the country.

Later Silver Latin poets who wrote pastoral poetry, modeled principally upon Virgil's Eclogues, include Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus and the author(s) of the Einsiedeln Eclogues.

Italian poets revived the pastoral from the 14th century onwards, first in Latin (examples include works by Petrarch, Pontano and Mantuan) then in the Italian vernacular (Sannazaro, Boiardo). The fashion for pastoral spread throughout Renaissance Europe. In Spain, Garcilaso de la Vega was an important pioneer and his motifs find themselves renewed in the 20th-century Spanish-language poet Giannina Braschi. Leading French pastoral poets include Marot and Ronsard.

The first pastorals in English were the Eclogues (c. 1515) of Alexander Barclay, which were heavily influenced by Mantuan. A landmark in English pastoral poetry was Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender, first published in 1579. Spenser's work consists of twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year, and is written in dialect. It contains elegies, fables and a discussion of the role of poetry in contemporary England. Spenser and his friends appear under various pseudonyms (Spenser himself is "Colin Clout"). Spenser's example was imitated by such poets as Michael Drayton (Idea, The Shepherd's Garland) and William Browne (Britannia's Pastorals). During this period of England's history, many authors explored "anti-pastoral" themes. Two examples of this is Sir Philip Sidney's “The Twenty-Third Psalm” and “The Nightingale” focus on the world in a very anti-pastoral view. In “The Twenty-Third Psalm,” Nature is portrayed as something we need to be protected from, and in “The Nightingale,” the woe of Philomela is compared to the speaker's own pain. Additionally, he wrote Arcadia which is filled with pastoral descriptions of the landscape. "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (1600) by Sir Walter Raleigh also comments on the anti-pastoral as the nymph responds realistically to the idealizing shepherd of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by embracing and explaining the true course of nature and its incompatibility with the love that the Shepherd yearns for with the nymph.

In the 17th century came the arrival of the Country house poem. Included in this genre is Aemilia Lanyer’s The Description of Cooke-ham in 1611, in which a woman is described in terms of her relationship to her estate and how it mourns for her when she leaves it. In 1616, Ben Jonson wrote To Penshurst, a poem in which he addresses the estate owned by the Sidney family and tells of its beauty. The basis of the poem is a harmonious and joyous elation of the memories that Jonson had at the manor. It is beautifully written with iambic pentameter, a style that Jonson so eloquently uses to describe the culture of Penshurst. It is very important to note the insertion of Pan and Bacchus as notable company of the manor. Pan, Greek god of the Pastoral world, half man and half goat, was connected with both hunting and shepherds; Bacchus was the god of wine, intoxication and ritual madness. This reference to Pan and Bacchus in a pastoral view demonstrates how prestigious Penshurst was, to be worthy in the company with gods, notions of just how romanticized the estate was.

"A Country Life", another 17th-century work by Katherine Philips, was also a country house poem. Philips focuses on the joys of the countryside and looks upon the lifestyle that accompanies it as being "the first and happiest life, when man enjoyed himself." She writes about maintaining this lifestyle by living detached from material things, and by not over-concerning herself with the world around her. Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House" was written when Marvell was working as a tutor for Lord Fairfax's daughter Mary, in 1651. The poem is very rich with metaphors that relate to religion, politics and history. Similar to Jonson's "To Penshurst", Marvell's poem is describing a pastoral estate. It moves through the house itself, its history, the gardens, the meadows and other grounds, the woods, the river, his Pupil Mary, and the future. Marvell used nature as a thread to weave together a poem centered around man. We once again see nature fully providing for man. Marvell also continuously compares nature to art and seems to point out that art can never accomplish on purpose what nature can achieve accidentally or spontaneously.

Robert Herrick's The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home was also written in the 17th century. In this pastoral work, he paints the reader a colorful picture of the benefits reaped from hard work. This is an atypical interpretation of the pastoral, given that there is a celebration of labor involved as opposed to central figures living in leisure and nature just taking its course independently. This poem was mentioned in Raymond Williams', The Country and the City. This acknowledgment of Herrick's work is appropriate, as both Williams and Herrick accentuate the importance of labor in the pastoral lifestyle.

The pastoral elegy is a subgenre that uses pastoral elements to lament a death or loss. The most famous pastoral elegy in English is John Milton's "Lycidas" (1637), written on the death of Edward King, a fellow student at Cambridge University. Milton used the form both to explore his vocation as a writer and to attack what he saw as the abuses of the Church. Also included is Thomas Gray's, "Elegy on a Country Churchyard" (1750).

The formal English pastoral continued to flourish during the 18th century, eventually dying out at the end. One notable example of an 18th-century work is Alexander Pope's Pastorals (1709). In this work Pope imitates Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar, while utilizing classical names and allusions aligning him with Virgil. In 1717, Pope's Discourse on Pastoral Poetry was published as a preface to Pastorals. In this work Pope sets standards for pastoral literature and critiques many popular poets, one of whom is Spenser, along with his contemporary opponent Ambrose Phillips. During this time period Ambrose Phillips, who is often overlooked because of Pope, modeled his poetry after the Native English form of Pastoral, employing it as a medium to express the true nature and longing of Man. He strove to write in this fashion to conform to what he thought was the original intent of Pastoral literature. As such, he centered his themes around the simplistic life of the Shepherd, and, personified the relationship that humans once had with nature. John Gay, who came a little later was criticized for his poem's artificiality by Doctor Johnson and attacked for their lack of realism by George Crabbe, who attempted to give a true picture of rural life in his poem The Village.

In 1590, Edmund Spenser also composed a very famous pastoral epic called The Faerie Queene, in which he employs the pastoral mode to accentuate the charm, lushness, and splendor of the poem's (super)natural world. Spenser alludes to the pastoral continuously throughout the work and also uses it to create allegory in his poem, with the characters as well as with the environment, both of which are meant to have symbolic meaning in the real world. It is composed of six books but Spenser intended to write twelve. He wrote the poem primarily to honor Queen Elizabeth. William Cowper addressed the artificiality of the fast-paced city life in his poems Retirement (1782) and The Winter Nosegay (1782). Pastoral nevertheless survived as a mood rather than a genre, as can be seen from such works as Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis (1867), a lament on the death of his fellow poet Arthur Hugh Clough. Robert Burns can be read as a Pastoral poet for his nostalgic portrayals of rural Scotland and simple farm life in To A Mouse and The Cotter's Saturday Night. Burns explicitly addresses the Pastoral form in his Poem on Pastoral Poetry. In this he champions his fellow Scot Allan Ramsey as the best Pastoral poet since Theocritus.

Another subgenre is the Edenic Pastoral, which alludes to the perfect relationship between God, man, and nature in the Garden of Eden. It typically includes biblical symbols and imagery. In 1645 John Milton wrote L'Allegro, which translates as the happy person. It is a celebration of Mirth personified, who is the child of love and revelry. It was originally composed to be a companion poem to, Il Penseroso, which celebrates a life of melancholy and solitude. Milton's, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629) blends Christian and pastoral imagery.

Pastoral epic

Milton is perhaps best known for his epic Paradise Lost, one of the few Pastoral epics ever written. A notable part of Paradise Lost is book IV where he chronicles Satan’s trespass into paradise. Milton’s iconic descriptions of the garden are shadowed by the fact that we see it from Satan’s perspective and are thus led to commiserate with him. Milton elegantly works through a presentation of Adam and Eve’s pastorally idyllic, eternally fertile living conditions and focuses upon their stewardship of the garden. He gives much focus to the fruit bearing trees and Adam and Eve's care of them, sculpting an image of pastoral harmony. However, Milton in turn continually comes back to Satan, constructing him as a character the audience can easily identify with and perhaps even like. Milton creates Satan as character meant to destabilize the audience’s understanding of themselves and the world around them. Through this mode, Milton is able to create a working dialogue between the text and his audience about the ‘truths’ they hold for themselves.

Pastoral romances

Italian writers invented a new genre, the pastoral romance, which mixed pastoral poems with a fictional narrative in prose. Although there was no classical precedent for the form, it drew some inspiration from ancient Greek novels set in the countryside, such as Daphnis and Chloe. The most influential Italian example of the form was Sannazzaro's Arcadia (1504). The vogue for the pastoral romance spread throughout Europe producing such notable works as Bernardim Ribeiro "Menina e Moça" (1554) in Portuguese, Montemayor's Diana (1559) in Spain, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1590) in England, and Honoré d'Urfé's Astrée (1607–27) in France.

Pastoral plays

Pastoral drama also emerged in Renaissance Italy. Again, there was little Classical precedent, with the possible exception of Greek satyr plays. Poliziano's Orfeo (1480) shows the beginnings of the new form, but it reached its zenith in the late 16th century with Tasso's Aminta (1573), Isabella Andreini's Mirtilla (1588), and Guarini's Il pastor fido (1590). John Lyly's Endimion (1579) brought the Italian-style pastoral play to England. John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, Ben Jonson's The Sad Shepherd and Sidney's The Lady of May are later examples. Some of Shakespeare's plays contain pastoral elements, most notably As You Like It (whose plot was derived from Thomas Lodge's pastoral romance Rosalynde) and The Winter's Tale, of which Act 4 Scene 4 is a lengthy pastoral digression.

The forest in As You Like It can be seen as a place of pastoral idealization, where life is simpler and purer, and its inhabitants live more closely to each other, nature and God than their urban counterparts. However, Shakespeare plays with the bounds of pastoral idealization. Throughout the play, Shakespeare employs various characters to illustrate pastoralism. His protagonists Rosalind and Orlando metaphorically depict the importance of the coexistence of realism and idealism, or urban and rural life. While Orlando is absorbed in the ideal, Rosalind serves as a mediator, bringing Orlando back down to reality and embracing the simplicity of pastoral love. She is the only character throughout the play who embraces and appreciates both the real and idealized life and manages to make the two ideas coexist. Therefore, Shakespeare explores city and country life as being appreciated through the coexistence of the two.

Pastoral music

Theocritus's Idylls include strophic songs and musical laments, and, as in Homer, his shepherds often play the syrinx, or Pan flute, considered a quintessentially pastoral instrument. Virgil's Eclogues were performed as sung mime in the 1st century, and there is evidence of the pastoral song as a legitimate genre of classical times.

The pastoral genre was a significant influence in the development of opera. After settings of pastoral poetry in the pastourelle genre by the troubadours, Italian poets and composers became increasingly drawn to the pastoral. Musical settings of pastoral poetry became increasingly common in first polyphonic and then monodic madrigals: these later led to the cantata and the serenata, in which pastoral themes remained on a consistent basis. Partial musical settings of Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido were highly popular: the texts of over 500 madrigals were taken from this one play alone. Tasso's Aminta was also a favourite. As opera developed, the dramatic pastoral came to the fore with such works as Jacopo Peri's Dafne and, most notably, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. Pastoral opera remained popular throughout the 17th-century, and not just in Italy, as is shown by the French genre of pastorale héroïque, Englishman Henry Lawes's music for Milton's Comus (not to mention John Blow's Venus and Adonis), and Spanish zarzuela. At the same time, Italian and German composers developed a genre of vocal and instrumental pastorals, distinguished by certain stylistic features, associated with Christmas Eve.

The pastoral, and parodies of the pastoral, continued to play an important role in musical history throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. John Gay may have satirized the pastoral in The Beggar's Opera, but also wrote an entirely sincere libretto for Handel's Acis and Galatea. Rousseau's Le Devin du village draws on pastoral roots, and Metastasio's libretto Il re pastore was set over 30 times, most famously by Mozart. Rameau was an outstanding exponent of French pastoral opera. Beethoven also wrote his famous Pastoral Symphony, avoiding his usual musical dynamism in favour of relatively slow rhythms. More concerned with psychology than description, he labelled the work "more the expression of feeling than [realistic] painting". The pastoral also appeared as a feature of grand opera, most particularly in Meyerbeer's operas: often composers would develop a pastoral-themed "oasis", usually in the centre of their work. Notable examples include the shepherd's "alte Weise" from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, or the pastoral ballet occupying the middle of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades. The 20th-century continued to bring new pastoral interpretations, particularly in ballet, such as Ravel's Daphis and Chloe, Nijinsky's use of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, and Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps and Les Noces.

The Pastorale is a form of Italian folk song still played in the regions of Southern Italy where the zampogna continues to thrive. They generally sound like a slowed down version of a tarantella, as they encompass many of the same melodic phrases. The pastorale on the zampogna can be played by a solo zampogna player, or in some regions can be accompanied by the piffero (also commonly called a ciaramella, 'pipita', or bifora), which is a primitive key-less double reed oboe type instrument.

Pastoral art

Idealised pastoral landscapes appear in Hellenistic and Roman wall paintings. Interest in the pastoral as a subject for art revived in Renaissance Italy, partly inspired by the descriptions of pictures Sannazzaro included in his Arcadia. The Fête champêtre (Pastoral Symphony) attributed to Giorgione is perhaps the most famous painting in this style. Later, French artists were also attracted to the pastoral, notably Claude, Poussin (e.g. Et in Arcadia ego) and Watteau (in his Fêtes galantes). Thomas Cole has a series of paintings titled The Course of Empire, and the second of these paintings (shown on the right) depicts the perfect pastoral setting.

Pastoral theory

In the past four hundred years, a range of writers have worked on theorizing the nature of pastoral. These include Friedrich Schiller, George Puttenham, William Empson, Frank Kermode, Raymond Williams, Renato Poggioli, Annabel Patterson, Paul Alpers, and Ken Hiltner.

George Puttenham was one of the first Pastoral theorists. He did not see the form as merely a recording of a prior rustic way of life but a guise for political discourse, which other forms had previously neglected. The Pastoral, he writes, has a didactic duty to “contain and enforme morall discipline for the amendment of mans behaviour”.

Friedrich Schiller linked the Pastoral to childhood and a childlike simplicity. For Schiller, we perceive in nature an “image of our infancy irrevocably past”.

Sir William Empson spoke of the ideal of Pastoral as being embedded in varying degrees of ambivalence, and yet, for all the apparent dichotomies, and contradicting elements found within it, he felt there was a unified harmony within it. He refers to the pastoral process as 'putting the complex into the simple.' Empson argues that "... good proletarian art is usually Covert Pastoral", and uses Soviet Russia's propaganda about the working class as evidence. Empson also emphasizes the importance of the double plot as a tool for writers to discuss a controversial topic without repercussions.

Raymond Williams argues that the foundation of the pastoral lies in the idea that the city is a highly urban, industrialized center that has removed us from the peaceful life we once had in the countryside. However, he states that this is really a "myth functioning as a memory" that literature has created in its representations of the past. As a result, when society evolves and looks back to these representations, it considers its own present as the decline of the simple life of the past. He then discusses how the city's relationship with the country affected the economic and social aspects of the countryside. As the economy became a bigger part of society, many country new-comers quickly realized the potential and monetary value that lay in the untouched land. Furthermore, this new system encouraged a social stratification in the countryside. With the implementation of paper money came a hierarchy in the working system, as well as the "inheritance of titles and making of family names".

Poggioli was concerned with how death reconciled itself with the pastoral, and thus came up with a loose categorization of death in the pastoral as 'funeral elegy', the most important tropes of which he cites as religion (embodied by Pan); friendship; allegory;and poetic and musical calling. He concedes though that such a categorization is open to much misinterpretation. As well, Poggioli focused on the idea that Pastoral was a nostalgic and childish way of seeing the world. In The Oaten Flue, he claims that the shepherd was looked up to was because they were “an ideal kind of leisure class."

Frank Kermode discusses the pastoral within the historical context of the English Renaissance. His first condition of pastoral poetry is that it is an urban product. Kermode establishes that the pastoral is derived as an opposition between two modes of living, in the country and in the city. London was becoming a modern metropolis before the eyes of its citizens. The result of this large-scale urban sprawl left the people with a sense of nostalgia for their country way of living. His next argument focuses on the artificiality of poetry, drawing upon fellow theorist, Puttenham. Kermode elaborates on this and says, "the cultivated, in their artificial way, reflect upon and describe, for their own ends, the natural life". Kermode wants us to understand that the recreation or reproduction of the natural is in itself artificial. Kermode elaborates on this in terms of imitation, describing it as "one of the fundamental laws of literary history" because it "gives literary history a meaning in terms of itself, and provides the channels of literary tradition". Kermode goes on to explain about the works of Virgil and Theocritus as progenitors of the pastoral. Later poets would draw on these earlier forms of pastoral, elaborating on them to fit their own social context. As the pastoral was becoming more modern, it shifted into the form of Pastourelle. This is the first time that the pastoral really deals with the subject of love.

Annabel Patterson emphasizes many important ideas in her work, Pastoral and Ideology. One of these is that the pastoral mode, especially in the later 18th century, was interpreted in vastly different ways by different groups of people. As a result, distinctive illustrations emerged from these groups which were all variations of the understanding of Virgil’s Eclogues. Patterson explains that Servius' Commentary is essential to understanding the reception of Virgil's Eclogues. The commentary discusses how poets used analogy in their writings to indirectly express the corruption within the church and government to the public. When speaking of post-Romanticism, it is imperative to take into consideration the influence and effect of Robert Frost on pastoral ideology. His poem, Build Soil is a critique of war and also a suggestion that pastoral, as a literary mode, should not place emphasis on social and political issues, but should rather, as Patterson says, "turn in upon itself, and replace reformist instincts with personal growth and regeneration". William Wordsworth was a highly respected poet in the 1800s and his poem, Prelude, published in 1805, was an excellent example of what a dream of a new golden age might materialize as or look like.

Paul Alpers, in his 1996 book, What is Pastoral?, describes the recurring plot of pastoral literature as the lives of shepherds. With William Empson's notion of placing the complex into the simple, Alpers thus critically defines pastoral as a means of allegory. Alpers also classifies pastoral as a mode of literature, as opposed to a genre, and he defines the attitude of pastoral works maintaining a humble relationship with nature. Alpers also defines pastoral convention as the act of bringing together, and authors use this to discuss loss. He says the speakers in pastoral works are simple herdsmen dramatized in pastoral encounters. However, authors like Herrick changed the herdsmen to nymphs, maidens, and flowers. Thus, achieving a mode of simplicity but also giving objects voice. This is done by personifying objects like flowers. Moreover, authors that do this in their works are giving importance to the unimportant. Alpers talks about pastoral lyrics and love poems in particular. He says "a lyric allows its speaker to slip in and out of pastoral guise and reveal directly the sophistication which prompted him to assume it in the first place″. In other words, he claims pastorals lyrics have both pastoral and not pastoral characteristics, perhaps like in the comparisons between urban and rural, but they always give importance to and enhance on the pastoral. Alpers talks about love poems and how they can be turned into pastoral poems simply by changing words like lover to shepherd. And he mentions Shakespeare as one of the authors who did this in his works. Furthermore, Alpers says the pastoral is not only about praise for the rural and the country side. For instance, Sidney dispraises the country life in The Garden. Pastoral can also include the urban, the court, and the social like in L’Allegro. Alpers says that pastoral narration contradicts “normal” narrative motives and that there is a double aspect of pastoral narration: heroic poetry and worldly realities with narrative motives and conventions. And in respect to pastoral novels, Alpers says pastoral novels have different definitions and examples depending on the reader. Also, the pastoral novel differs from Theocritus and Virgil’s works. He says there are pastoral novels of the country life, of the longing for the simple, and with nature as the protagonist. And says the literary category of pastoral novels is realistic and post-realistic fiction with a rural theme or subject based on traditional pastoral.

In What Else Is Pastoral?, Ken Hiltner argues that Renaissance pastoral poetry is more often a form of nature writing than critics like Paul Alpers and Annabel Patterson give it credit for. He explains that even though there is a general lack of lavish description in Renaissance Pastoral, this is because they were beginning to use gestural strategies, and artists begin to develop an environmental consciousness as nature around them becomes endangered. Another argument presented in the book is that our current environmental crisis clearly has its roots in the Renaissance. To do this we are shown examples in Renaissance pastoral poetry that show a keen awareness of the urban sprawl of London contrasted to the countryside and historical records showing that many at the time were aware of the issue of urban growth and attempted to stop it.

From Wikipedia

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral