16th Century

Little Beasts. Art, Wonder, and the Natural World

By Alexandra Libby, Brooks Rich, and Stacey Sell (curators)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, May 18 – November 2, 2025 Exh. Cat. edited by Alexandra Libby, Brooks Rich, and Stacey Sell. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2025. 224 pp, 105 color illus. ISBN 978-0-69127-130-9.

Review published May 2025

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

By Tatjana Bartsch, Christien Melzer and Hans-Ulrich Kessler (curators); Ilja M. Veldman (guest curator)

The Allure of Rome: Maarten Van Heemskerck Draws the City
By Tatjana Bartsch, Christien Melzer and Hans-Ulrich Kessler (curators)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, April 26 – August 4, 2024
Exhibition catalogue edited by Tatjana Bartsch and Christien Melzer. Munich: Hirmer, 2024. 352 pp, cat. fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-3-7774-4344-7.

Maarten van Heemskerck: 1498–1574
By Ilja M. Veldman (guest curator)
Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar and Teylers Museum and Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, September 28, 2024 – January 19, 2025
Accompanying book by Ilja M. Veldman. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2024. 303 pp, cat. fully illustrated in color. ISBN 9789462586567.

Review published March 2025

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

By Ethan Matt Kavaler

University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024. 264 pp, 107 illus. (45 in color). ISBN 9780271097152.

Review published February 2025

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

By Kim W. Woods

London: Lund Humphries (Northern Lights Series), 2024. 144 pp, 65 color illus. ISBN 978 1 84822 673 9.

Review published January 2025

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

Margaret Duchess of Parma. The Emperor’s Daughter between Power and Image

By Katrien Lichtert (curator)

MOU, Museum Oudenaarde, September 21, 2024 – January 1, 2025
Companion volume to exhibition edited by Katrien Lichtert. Veurne: Hannibal Books, 2024. 240 pp, 131 color images + details. ISBN 978-94-6494-133-3.

Review published January 2025

Three decades have lapsed since the pioneering exhibition about Mary of Hungary, Habsburg regent of the Netherlands (1993).[1] Along with their dominant imperial relatives, Maximilian I and Charles V, [...] Read More

Das Große Stammbuch Philipp Hainhofers. Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 355 Noviss. 8°.

By Sabine Jagodzinski, Assisted by Peter Burschel, Markus Hilgert, and Falko Mohrs.

Berlin/Wolfenbüttel: HAB Patrimonia 405, 2024. 108pp, 39 color illus. ISBN 978-3-447-12116-3.

Review published January 2025

Sabine Jagodzinski’s Das Große Stammbuch Philipp Hainhofers addresses one of the most significant extant alba amicorum (friendship albums) collections of signatures, inscriptions, poems, drawings, [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

16th Century