14th and 15th Centuries

Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300-1550

By Anne L. Williams

(Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. 244 pp, 10 col. plates, 54 b&w illus. ISBN 978-94-6298-374-8 (hardback), 978-90-4853-411-1 (e-book).

Review published June 2020

As Anne Williams astutely identifies, depictions of Saint Joseph in works of art of the fourteenth to sixteenth century are rife with paradox, a seemingly conflicting combination of ridicule and [...] Read More

Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish Painting

By Ingrid Falque

Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 38. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xxiv, 336 pp, 111 color illus. ISBN: 978-90-04-36975-7 (hardback); 978-90-04-39760-6 (e-book).

Review published April 2020

Lucidly written and clearly organized, Ingrid Falque’s study focuses on the portraits integrated into religious pictures from the Low Countries between circa 1400 and 1550. The corpus of works [...] Read More

The Image of the City in Early Netherlandish Painting (1400-1550)

By Jelle De Rock

Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), 44. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2019. 356 pp, 95 b&w illus., 17 col. pls., 14 tables. ISBN 978-2-503-57982-5.

Review published March 2020

As a religious artifact, The Ghent Altarpiece (1432) radiates the intangible power of Christ’s sacrifice and God’s forgiveness. As a material work of art, Jan van Eyck’s polyptych pulls the narrative [...] Read More

Moving with the Magdalen: Late Medieval Art and Devotion in the Alps

By Joanne W. Anderson

New York – London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. xvi, 248 pp, 44 b&w illus., 40 color illus. ISBN 978-1-5013-3468-9 (hardback); 978-1-5013-3470-2 (ePDF); 978-1-5013-3469-6 (eBook).

Review published February 2020

Joanne Anderson expands our knowledge of Mary Magdalen imagery by analyzing little known Alpine fresco cycles and altarpieces of the saint produced between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth [...] Read More

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

By Kathryn M. Rudy

Library of the Written Word, The Manuscript World, Volume 55. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xxii, 308 pp, 152 color illus. ISBN 978-90-04-32695-8 (hardback); 978-90-04-32696-5 (e-book).

Review published October 2019

Kathryn Rudy has added a new and beautifully illustrated study to her already extensive bibliography on readers’ interactions with early Netherlandish manuscripts. It is a monumental undertaking. She [...] Read More

The Renaissance Nude

By Thomas Kren with Jill Burke and Stephen J. Campbell, eds.

Cat. exh. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, October 30, 2018 – January 27, 2019; Royal Academy of Arts, London, March 2 – June 2, 2019. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018. xiii, 417 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-1-6060-6584-6.

Review published September 2019

This handsomely produced and beautifully illustrated catalogue considers the development of the naturalistic nude in various media produced in northern and southern Europe, c. 1400-1530. It [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

14th and 15th Centuries