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Patterns in Art: A Closer Look at the Old Masters
A visual delight, and a designer's dream―the decorative details of great European paintings transformed into beautiful two-dimensional patterns
Richly embroidered robes. Intricate lace collars. Elaborately laid floor tiles. Delicately carved and modeled cornices and capitals. These are among the details of decorative art that the Old Masters lovingly rendered in their paintings, to establish a setting, convey a portrait subject's social status, or sometimes just enliven a scene. Together these details―so easy to overlook in the imposing harmony of draftsmanship, color, and composition that makes up a great painting―form a veritable history of ornament.
This inventive book plucks these decorative motifs from the background of paintings by masters like Bronzino, Fra Angelico and Jacques-Louis David, and transforms them into vibrant two-dimensional patterns. Seeing these patterns side-by-side with the original paintings deepens our appreciation of both. Patterns in Art will be a resource for graphic designers, and a revelation for all art lovers.
Richly embroidered robes. Intricate lace collars. Elaborately laid floor tiles. Delicately carved and modeled cornices and capitals. These are among the details of decorative art that the Old Masters lovingly rendered in their paintings, to establish a setting, convey a portrait subject's social status, or sometimes just enliven a scene. Together these details―so easy to overlook in the imposing harmony of draftsmanship, color, and composition that makes up a great painting―form a veritable history of ornament.
This inventive book plucks these decorative motifs from the background of paintings by masters like Bronzino, Fra Angelico and Jacques-Louis David, and transforms them into vibrant two-dimensional patterns. Seeing these patterns side-by-side with the original paintings deepens our appreciation of both. Patterns in Art will be a resource for graphic designers, and a revelation for all art lovers.
- GenresArt
192 pages, Hardcover
Published November 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 21, 2020
A neat selection of art, mostly circa 15-1600s residing at Rijksmuseum and The Met. Fascinating little details ranging from infared reflectography to the cultural milieus of the the early renaissance. The flooring and textiles within master works are always what I find to be the most inspiring when visiting the museum, and this whole collection hones in on just that!
You’ll find a very thoughtful but discreet feature in this book: running down the left edge of each pattern page, you’re provided with the CMYK color codes used in the recreation!! What a glorious detail to make this book a living design tool to play with. I recently took a class on mastering the curvature tool in Illustrator- and using these patterns as practice template inspiration could not be more perfect, with a wide scale of complexity.
You’ll find a very thoughtful but discreet feature in this book: running down the left edge of each pattern page, you’re provided with the CMYK color codes used in the recreation!! What a glorious detail to make this book a living design tool to play with. I recently took a class on mastering the curvature tool in Illustrator- and using these patterns as practice template inspiration could not be more perfect, with a wide scale of complexity.
January 12, 2020
Interesting choice of paintings, and I liked the patterns that were designed as a result. My only complaint was that the source paintings are printed way too small - I wanted to be able to see the details up closer and how they compare to the vectorized versions. The writing was succinct, which helped it avoid becoming a dry textbook. Great concept overall.
May 22, 2025
Due to copyright issues, the artworks presented are mainly by western artists from the 14th to 19th centuries, a limitation the book itself acknowledges.
That said, this book is quite a delightful source of inspiration. It extracts patterns from the folds of fabrics and the curves of buildings and flatten them out for easy reference. It also takes pains to keep these patterns in context by providing both the original paintings and brief explanations of the artists, subjects, and periods. This is more than can be said for many similar books that often provide so little background and context it remains unknown where the patterns and designs come from, how they're originally used, and what the scale of the motifs are.
As with some other reviewers, I do wish the original paintings were bigger. However, this is a minor quibble. The artworks selected come from museums whose collections are available online, which means it only takes a few clicks to view these images in high resolution.
That said, this book is quite a delightful source of inspiration. It extracts patterns from the folds of fabrics and the curves of buildings and flatten them out for easy reference. It also takes pains to keep these patterns in context by providing both the original paintings and brief explanations of the artists, subjects, and periods. This is more than can be said for many similar books that often provide so little background and context it remains unknown where the patterns and designs come from, how they're originally used, and what the scale of the motifs are.
As with some other reviewers, I do wish the original paintings were bigger. However, this is a minor quibble. The artworks selected come from museums whose collections are available online, which means it only takes a few clicks to view these images in high resolution.
December 1, 2022
I loved the concept, but the delivery disappointed me. It could have been much more.
The primary sources needed to be larger. A great deal larger.
I didn’t care for the illustrations of the patterns. They lost something as they flattened out and there was no sense of texture. The colors appeared dull, whereas the originals were vibrant. Why not make large scale details from these “old masters” tell the story? (Sorry to be picky, but a great many of these paintings do not qualified for as “old masters”.)
In addition, the book discussed various topics concerning the paintings, which is all well and good. However, I could find that sort of thing in other books and would have preferred more information on the patterns themselves.
The primary sources needed to be larger. A great deal larger.
I didn’t care for the illustrations of the patterns. They lost something as they flattened out and there was no sense of texture. The colors appeared dull, whereas the originals were vibrant. Why not make large scale details from these “old masters” tell the story? (Sorry to be picky, but a great many of these paintings do not qualified for as “old masters”.)
In addition, the book discussed various topics concerning the paintings, which is all well and good. However, I could find that sort of thing in other books and would have preferred more information on the patterns themselves.
December 13, 2024
This is an interesting idea for a book, but I didn't think it was executed all that well. The book analyzes numerous painting -- each painting has a large full page of the patterns featured in the painting and the CMYK codes for the colors. This part is cool. However, the facing page has a half page of text and TINY images of the painting. The text talks about the painting itself, but you can't see what is being discussed because the images of the painting are so small. The text doesn't seem to discuss the patterns at all.
If you just want to see patterns pulled out of paintings with the CMYK codes, this book is for you. If you want to see any kind of analysis of the patterns or see the patterns in context of the painting as a whole, I would pass.
If you just want to see patterns pulled out of paintings with the CMYK codes, this book is for you. If you want to see any kind of analysis of the patterns or see the patterns in context of the painting as a whole, I would pass.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews