Ingrid Falque, Walter S. Melion, Frits Scholten, and Michel Weemans (eds), announce the publication of Speculative Imagemaking in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art. Festschrift in Honor of Reindert L. Falkenburg (Leiden, Brill: 2026).
This book in honor of Reindert Falkenburg’s major contribution in the field of visual studies gathers twenty-four essays of scholars willing to engage with key aspects of his scholarship. Falkenburg has dedicated his scholarship to the study of late medieval and early modern images as machina—in its instrumental sense but also, as a figurative trope—that instigated speculative thought, which is to say, reflective and imaginative speculation on key themes geared toward changing persons for the better. This collaborative volume conveys the authors’ sense of how impactful Falkenburg’s scholarship has been, both in intensity and scope, over the last four decades in the field of late medieval and early modern visual studies.
With contributions of Mariët Westermann, Larry Silver, Bertram Kaschek, Frits Scholten, Bret L. Rothstein and Michel Weemans, Elliott D. Wise, Herman Roodenburg, Mitchell Merback, Ralph Dekoninck, Stijn Bussels and Caroline van Eck, Walter S. Melion, Barbara Baert, Klaus Krüger, Tine Luk Meganck, Bernard Aikema, Mark A. Meadow, Jürgen Müller, Elizabeth Alice Honig, James Clifton, Bertrand Prévost, Joost Keizer, Christine Göttler, Denis Ribouillault, Mia M. Mochizuki