I argue that King James VII used the foundation of a monarchical order and subsequently a building project to reintroduce Catholic visual culture to post-Reformation Scotland. In 1687 the king issued a royal warrant for the ‘revival’ of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle. A fictional narrative was established by the Crown to validate the institution of the king's chivalric knighthood as an ancient religious Scottish tradition, and a habit was conceptualised and realised that connected the monarchy with the Roman Catholic faith. This link would ultimately be strengthened through a Catholic building project, which saw the construction of three new churches in Edinburgh and Perth between 1687–1688. Through church design, the king and a knight companion had the opportunity to create a visual reintroduction of Catholicism to be promoted in late-seventeenth century Scotland.

This richly illustrated volume, organized both chronologically and thematically, is a comprehensive examination of the life and career of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. In particular, Troy Thomas's treatment of Caravaggio's mature Roman period (1599-1606) offers a detailed investigation of the compositional innovation of Caravaggio's work that has distinguished his unique style and established his reputation as a master of modernity.Thomas's book identifies a major compositional innovation of Caravaggio's work: uncompromising realism. Although a formulaic pattern of representation was often used in pre-modern religious painting, Caravaggio deliberately avoided traditional religious visual rhetoric. In approaching art from an unconventional angle, Caravaggio could reimagine almost any religious narrative as a genre scene. This novel approach to subject matter is best illustrated in his Penitent Magdalene (ca. 1595-96). In the sixteenth-century, Mary Magdalene was customarily painted nude and with a religious accessory. Yet Caravaggio, departing from traditional Magdalene iconography, painted the Christian figure as an ordinary and modest woman in contemporary dress. Sitting before an ointment jar and jewellery, she is the visual realization of a scene from a religious text recast as a living drama.Caravaggio's keen sense of realism is further evidenced in his Calling of St. Matthew (1599-1600. Here again, we see how a religious drama is imaginatively reinterpreted as a contemporary event. Since the conceptualization of a sacred event from an earthly and realistic view was widely recognized as new at the time, Thomas has argued that Caravaggio was successful in introducing modernity and sophistication to his work while simultaneously transforming

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