Arts Revisited

A publishing house is only as useful as the books it keeps in print, and Arts Revisited was formed around that plain requirement.

Arts Revisited Publishing House concentrates on books of arts and history. The list is meant for readers who want the making of a picture, the pressure of a century, or the life of a workshop and a city treated at full length, not reduced to a caption. Painting, architecture, craft, and the written record sit together in the catalog because those subjects rarely stay separate in the periods the house returns to. A study of a painter may turn on a voyage, a court, or a street; a history of a place may turn on what was drawn, built, or buried there. The house prefers that kind of joined account.

Each title is issued in ebook and paperback. The ebook is prepared for immediate reading on the devices readers already use. The paperback is set and bound so the same work can be kept, marked, and passed on. Neither format is treated as a lesser copy of the other. Page design, notes, and images are arranged so the argument holds in both.

Sales run through the Amazon Store. That single channel places ebook and paperback beside one another, where a reader can choose the form and have the book delivered without a separate shopfront. Listings carry the description, the sample, and the purchase path in one place, which keeps the catalog public and the buying step short.

The name states the method. Arts revisited means going back to pictures, places, and periods with a text that can be reread, not a notice that expires with the season. History, on this list, is something to be followed closely and retained. The house measures a book by whether it still rewards that return after the first reading is done.

Rembrandt

A life in Light and Shadow

Beneath restless skies where every brushstroke confesses and every canvas becomes a battlefield, Rembrandt van Rijn rises as the supreme interpreter of light’s eternal quarrel with shadow. Born in 1606 beside his father’s Leiden mill, the child watched great wooden sails alternately flood the chambers with sudden gold and plunge them into profound gloom. That early rhythm of brilliance and eclipse sank into his blood long before he ever grasped a brush; it became the secret grammar of his entire existence. In the ascending years of Amsterdam the high windows of fortune stood open. Wealth arrived, Saskia van Uylenburgh’s luminous presence filled the house, commissions from proud burghers poured in, and the confidence of the young Republic seemed to gild every canvas. Portraits glittered with chains and pearls; The Night Watch itself strode forward from darkness into theatrical fire, as though the civic guards had stepped out of night into an immortal dawn. Yet even at the height of that radiance the shadows had already begun their slow approach. One infant after another slipped into the dark; Saskia herself faded in the very year the masterpiece was unveiled. Bankruptcy followed like a gathering storm. The grand house on the Breestraat was stripped; the collections of exotic shells, classical busts, and costly fabrics—those material embodiments of light—were sold at public auction. The painter moved to quieter rooms on the Rozengracht. Outward brilliance diminished. Strangely, the light within the paintings grew more intense, more concentrated, almost supernatural. Late self-portraits emerge from near-absolute darkness, the eyes still catching a stubborn, defiant gleam. Stripped of every external sun, Rembrandt discovered an inner fire that no creditor, no gossip, no mortality could extinguish. Thus life and art form one continuous chiaroscuro. The turning mill of Leiden, the glittering salons of prosperity, the bare chambers of the final years—all are stations along the same path of alternating illumination and eclipse. Early light was the world’s reflected glory, social and borrowed; late light was the spirit’s own concentrated flame. In The Jewish Bride, in the Return of the Prodigal Son, and in those final faces that stare into the abyss of age and still find gold in the wrinkles, we witness the victory of an inward sun over every external night. Rembrandt becomes the Romantic archetype of the artist who descends into the underworld of circumstance and returns bearing a more terrible and more beautiful illumination. Let the reader enter prepared to walk both the golden chambers and the shadowed corridors, for in him light and darkness remain forever married, and from that marriage arises the most human and the most sublime art the Northern world ever gave.

Vincent

A Life of Color and Darkness

In the shadowed cradle of a Dutch parsonage, where sermons of restraint echoed against walls that had already known the silence of a stillborn namesake, a restless spirit first drew breath. Vincent van Gogh entered the world already marked by absence, and that early vacancy would expand into a lifelong contest between luminous vision and the darkness that sought to claim him. His path was never the measured progress of ordinary men; it was a Romantic storm of passion, rejection, and uncompromising intensity that left conventional success shattered in its wake. Youth offered no gentle apprenticeship. The young man drifted through roles that promised stability yet delivered only estrangement—art dealing in the polished salons of Europe, teaching, preaching among the coal-blackened miners of the Borinage. There, amid the soot and suffering of the Belgian earth, he tried to live the Gospel with a fervor that alarmed the very church he served. Cast out from the pulpit, stripped of romantic hopes that had once seemed possible, he turned at last to the solitary discipline of drawing and paint. What began as consolation became compulsion. The canvas became the only ground firm enough to bear the weight of his seeing. Paris taught him the modern language of color, the broken strokes and pure pigments of the new schools, yet the city itself proved too crowded, too clever, too indifferent. He fled south, chasing the sun that blazed over Arles like a second revelation. Under that relentless light the paintings erupted—sunflowers that seemed to burn from within, night skies that whirled with private constellations, cypresses that rose like dark flames against the gold. Yet the same intensity that flooded the work also fractured the man. Friendship turned violent. The razor found flesh. The asylum doors closed, and still the brush moved, recording wheat fields and olive groves with a clarity that outlasted the mind that guided it. Romanticism has always honored the exceptional soul crushed beneath the weight of an uncomprehending age, and Vincent embodied that archetype without mercy or half-measure. He was the wanderer who could not rest, the lover of creation who remained forever outside its domestic circle, the prophet whose prophecies arrived too soon for any marketplace to value. Letters to his brother remain the most intimate map of this ordeal—pages where hope and despair wrestle in the same sentence, where the promise of recognition flickers against the certainty of present isolation. Recognition did come, but only after the final act in the wheat field at Auvers, only after the earth had already closed over the unmarked grave. This book follows that turbulent arc without softening its edges. It traces the troublesome life in which color and darkness were never symbols alone but lived realities—the yellow that refused to fade even in madness, the black hours that no hospital could fully dispel. Here the reader will meet the full measure of a man who felt too deeply, saw too intensely, and paid for both gifts with everything he possessed. The pages ahead offer no tidy resolution, only the raw continuum of radiance and shadow that defined Vincent van Gogh and, in the end, outlived him.

Leonardo

Art, Science and the Infinite

In the heart of the Italian Renaissance, when the boundaries of art, science, and imagination were being redrawn, one man embodied their union more fully than any other: Leonardo da Vinci. Artist, inventor, anatomist, engineer, dreamer-Leonardo was a mind that transcended the limits of his time. This historical novel is an intimate journey into the life of a genius whose curiosity knew no bounds and whose legacy continues to illuminate centuries after his death. Born in 1452 near the small Tuscan town of Vinci, Leonardo entered the world as the illegitimate son of a notary Ser Pietro da Vinci and a peasant woman Caterina, his early life marked by social ambiguity and quiet observation. From a young age, he saw the world differently-sketching birds in flight, tracing the curves of water, questioning the mechanics of nature, and seeking beauty not only in art but in truth. Florence, the vibrant cradle of Renaissance thought, became the forge of his talents. Under the guidance of Andrea del Verrocchio, he honed his skills as a painter while his insatiable mind wandered into uncharted territories of anatomy, optics, mathematics, and engineering. This novel follows Leonardo through the winding path of his extraordinary life: the bustling workshops of Florence, the grandeur and intrigues of Milan under Ludovico Sforza, the battlefields and engineering projects that tested his intellect, and the final years in France under the patronage of a king who recognized the rarity of his genius. It is a story of unfinished masterpieces and unyielding questions, of notebooks filled with sketches and ideas far ahead of their time. The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, the Vitruvian Man-these are not merely artworks but windows into a restless mind that saw art as a science and science as an art. Yet beyond the legend, this novel seeks to uncover the man: solitary yet surrounded by pupils and patrons, brilliant yet often misunderstood, driven by wonder and haunted by self-doubt. It imagines the passions, friendships, losses, and quiet moments of reflection that shaped a life deeply human beneath its immortal achievements. Leonardo da Vinci lived five centuries ago, but his spirit feels timeless. In an age much like his own-filled with discovery, turmoil, and transformation —his life reminds us of the power of curiosity, the courage to question, and the beauty of seeing the world with fresh eyes. This is not only the story of a painter or inventor; it is the story of a mind that dared to imagine endlessly.

Monet

Rebellion and Mastery Volume 1

Light first claimed Oscar-Claude Monet not in a salon but on the wind-scoured quays of Le Havre, where the Seine meets the Channel and the sky never holds still. Volume I of Monet, Rebellion and Mastery opens in that collision of water and weather. Born in Paris in 1840, the boy was carried at five to the Norman coast. There his earliest fame arrived not through landscapes but through charcoal: swift, merciless caricatures of local worthies that sold for a few francs and already announced an eye that refused to flatter. The turning came with Eugène Boudin. The older painter led the teenager out of the studio and onto the beaches, teaching him that the true subject was not the figure but the trembling envelope of air around it. Sunlight on wet sand, the shifting gray-green of the estuary, the sudden flare of a sail—these became the only academy Monet would ever trust. By 1859 he had abandoned caricature and gone to Paris, already marked as a man who would paint what the moment actually looked like rather than what convention demanded it should. Book II follows that refusal into its first public cost. In Charles Gleyre’s studio Monet found his brothers-in-arms—Renoir, Bazille, Sisley—young men equally impatient with the polished historical machines of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Together they walked out of the classroom and into the fields and riverbanks, laying down paint in visible, hurried strokes that recorded not eternity but the hour. Poverty shadowed every canvas. Camille Doncieux, his model and companion, bore him a son; they married in 1870 even as war closed around them. Monet fled the Prussian advance to London, returning to settle at Argenteuil on the Seine, where the river itself became both subject and laboratory. There the mature method crystallized: color broken into flickering notes, atmosphere treated as the true protagonist, the fleeting condition of light seized before it vanished. This volume traces the years in which a provincial caricaturist became the most radical landscape painter of his generation—the years when rebellion and mastery were still the same unfinished act.

Vidocq Mastermind!

The Early Years Volume 1

The Eternal Observer does not blink when a baker’s son in Arras learns that a lock is only an opinion. Eugène-François Vidocq is born into the smell of yeast and iron in 1775, under a sky that already knows the blade. The shop door slams. The father’s fist is a calendar. The boy answers with forged papers, stolen uniforms, and a talent for vanishing that would shame a ghost. Prisons become rooms he briefly rents. Brest, Toulon, Bicêtre—each wall is a sentence he edits with a file, a rope, a borrowed face. France is tearing itself apart; he treats the tear as a doorway. By the time the Directory grows tired of its own blood, Vidocq has already died several official deaths and walked out of them in other men’s coats. Then the miracle no one expected: the thief offers the state his memory. He founds the Sûreté with twelve men who once shared his chains. He invents the card index, the plaster cast of a boot, the quiet interrogation that begins with a shared cigarette. Paris learns that crime now has a shadow that knows its streets better than the criminals do. He is mastermind twice over—first of the underworld that raised him, then of the machine that hunts it. Disguise is not costume; it is theology. He becomes the beggar, the clerk, the old woman selling apples, and the city confesses to him without knowing it has spoken. Victor Hugo will later split him into two men—one who steals bread, one who never forgets a face—but the living Vidocq contains both without apology. This book does not ask whether a criminal can become the law. It watches the moment the law discovers it needs the criminal’s eyes. The ovens of Arras are cold. The files in the Prefecture are warm. Between them walks a man who has already escaped every ending written for him, and who now writes the endings of others.

Holmes & Watson

The Vanished Brigantine

In foggy November 1880, Mr. Alistair Vance of Lloyd’s of London seeks Sherlock Holmes’s aid. The 400-ton brigantine The Northern Star allegedly foundered off the Isle of Wight, prompting a £35,000 insurance claim. However, British naval patrols recently intercepted a Portuguese schooner carrying missing government-marked Martini-Henry rifles—weapons stolen from an Ordnance barge bound for Transvaal Boer insurgents on the eve of the First Boer War. Analyzing ship ledgers, Holmes notices the Northern Star drew far less water than a vessel carrying heavy machinery should, proving she left London loaded with light ballast. She rendezvoused at Gravesend to take on 2,000 illicit rifles. Holmes and Watson trace the conspiracy down the Thames into Limehouse’s shadowy docks, untangling a web of murdered dockworkers and altered customs manifests. They uncover a dual plot engineered by shipping magnate Sir Arthur Pendelton and Captain Nathaniel Scupper: collect a colossal insurance payout on a "sunk" ship while secretly smuggling arms to South Africa. The conspirators scuttled a decoy vessel near the treacherous Goodwin Sands, while repainting and reregistering the original ship as The Vanguard. Tracing missing rifle serial numbers back to a BSA gunsmith in Birmingham and deciphering telegraph ciphers between London and Antwerp, Holmes pinpoints Pendelton’s location. In a tense midnight climax off the Dorset coast, Holmes, Watson, and an Admiralty launch intercept The Vanguard during a ship-to-ship arms transfer. After a sharp skirmish on the Channel waters, Pendelton is arrested, the rifles are secured, and British diplomatic neutrality in South Africa is preserved. Back at Baker Street, Holmes closes another successful case, having untangled a web of maritime fraud, murder, and high-stakes international treason.

Philippine Selection

The Weave of Intramuros

Set against the fiery backdrop of the 1896 Philippine Revolution, The Weave of Intramuros tells the story of Talang “Tala” Dimagiba, a fiercely independent piña weaver from Lumban, Laguna, and Mateo Ruiz de Luzuriaga, an idealistic mestizo clerk working within the walls of Spanish colonial power in Manila. Tala turns her family’s traditional textile trade into a weapon of resistance, embedding secret Katipunan troop coordinates and revolutionary messages into the delicate embroidery of luxury garments. When she travels to Manila to distribute her woven goods along the busy market corridors of Escolta and Calle Rosario, she meets Mateo. Torn between his Spanish heritage and his Tagalog roots, Mateo grows appalled by the colonial government's systemic corruption and public executions. Choosing conscience over comfort, he begins leaking high-level Spanish troop movements and administrative secrets directly to Tala. Together, they establish a high-stakes espionage lifeline between the underground Katipunan leadership and the guarded halls of Intramuros. As war erupts across Luzon, tragedy strikes home. Spanish forces raid Laguna, arresting Tala’s father and destroying local workshops. Meanwhile, Mateo’s betrayal is uncovered by the ruthless Padre Severino, forcing him to flee into the revolutionary ranks just as Spanish authority buckles under local uprisings and the sudden arrival of American warships. Navigating separation, political turmoil, and the false promises of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato, Tala and Mateo keep their network alive through sheer resilience. When General Emilio Aguinaldo declares Philippine independence on June 12, 1898, in Kawit, Cavite, the two reunite amidst a changing landscape. Though new foreign shadows gather over the archipelago, they look toward the future together—ready to rebuild their lives and prove that the nation's fabric, woven from sacrifice, art, and enduring love, cannot be unravelled.

Beethoven

What Silence Composed

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) transformed Western music, bridging Classical form with Romantic expression. Born in Bonn to an abusive, alcoholic father who forced his musical training, Beethoven studied under Neefe and published his first works by age 11. In 1792, he moved to Vienna, studying under Haydn and gaining fame as a virtuoso pianist and bold composer. By his late twenties, Beethoven began suffering progressive hearing loss. Retreaving to Heiligenstadt in 1802, he wrote a desperate letter confessing his suicidal despair, ultimately vowing to live for his art. This crisis launched his Heroic Period, marked by grand, dramatic works reflecting triumph over adversity—most notably his Eroica Symphony, the famous Fifth Symphony, the Pastoral Sixth, and his opera Fidelio. Personal turmoil marked his later years, including a bitter legal battle over the custody of his nephew Karl, severe health problems, and complete deafness. Isolated from society, he communicated through conversation books. Yet, his final Late Period produced some of history’s most visionary masterpieces, including the monumentally complex Missa Solemnis, his groundbreaking late string quartets, and the monumental Ninth Symphony—the first major symphony to incorporate vocal solos and chorus, featuring the iconic "Ode to Joy." When Beethoven died in Vienna in 1827 at age 56, over 20,000 mourners attended his funeral. He left behind a legacy that permanently reshaped classical music from courtly entertainment into a profound medium for human emotion and spiritual depth.

Batavia

The Devil's Son

The Batavia, The Devil's Son chronicles the tragic 1629 shipwreck of the Dutch East India Company flagship Batavia and the horrific reign of terror that followed. Set sail in 1628, the flagship carries a volatile crew: Francisco Pelsaert, the ailing upper merchant; Ariaen Jacobsz, the resentful captain; and Jeronimus Cornelisz, a bankrupt, radical apothecary from Haarlem fleeing heresy charges. Driven by an intense belief in his own moral immunity, Cornelisz conspires with Jacobsz to launch a mutiny. Before their plot can fully materialize, the Batavia strikes Morning Reef off Western Australia, stranding over 300 survivors on the desolate Houtman Abrolhos islands. When Pelsaert and Jacobsz depart in an open longboat to seek help in Jakarta, Cornelisz assumes absolute command over the isolated survivors. Driven by ideological fanaticism and a desire to secure the ship's massive wealth, he establishes a totalitarian cult. Believing he is divine and beyond human sin, he forms a loyal cadre of mutineers and initiates a systematic purge to preserve rations, slaughtering over 110 men, women, and children under the guise of "resource management." However, a group of soldiers led by Wiebbe Hayes—marooned on a nearby island and expected to die—finds fresh water and food. Recognizing Cornelisz's murderous intent, Hayes constructs makeshift coral weapons and repels several amphibious assaults launched by the mutineers. In a failed attempt at trickery, Cornelisz travels to the island to negotiate, but Hayes's disciplined forces outmaneuver the cult leader and capture him alive. When Pelsaert returns months later aboard a rescue ship, Hayes warns him just in time. The mutineers are captured, tried, and executed on the islands—with Cornelisz having his hands severed before hanging. The Apothecary of Abrolhos is a haunting exploration of human resilience, religious delusion, and the terrifying speed with which society unravels when isolated at the edge of the world.