In music history the curse of completing a ninth symphony as a harbinger of a death plagued composers after Beethoven, including Schubert, Bruckner, Dvorak, and Mahler. Working on the earliest Danish [...] Read More
16th Century
Dürer to Van Dyck: Drawings from Chatsworth House
After a period of relative quiet, the last few years have seen a flurry of exhibitions of Northern European drawings across Britain, with more expected in 2026. These exhibitions have showcased the [...] Read More
Little Beasts. Art, Wonder, and the Natural World
Insects have been enjoying increased visibility in early modern art history studies. After the late Janice Neri’s book, The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 [...] Read More
The Allure of Rome: Maarten Van Heemskerck Draws the City; Maarten van Heemskerck: 1498–1574
The books under review here support exhibitions of works by the Haarlem artist Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) on the 450th anniversary of his death. With The Allure of Rome, spearheaded by Tatjana [...] Read More
Actors Carved and Cast: Netherlandish Sculpture of the Sixteenth Century
Netherlandish sculpture of the sixteenth century, as Kavaler notes, has taken a back seat to studies of Netherlandish painting – and to sixteenth-century German sculpture as well. This book forms a [...] Read More
Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe: A Silent Rhetoric
The Lamentation Group in St. Anne’s Church in Augsburg is unusual in many respects. At the center, the haunting, almost levitating Christ confronts the audience with his emaciated body. The emotional [...] Read More