16th Century

Maarten van Heemskerck. Das Römische Zeichnungsbuch (facsimile edition).

By Tatjana Bartsch and Christien Melzer (eds.)

Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2024. 184 pp, 134 color illus. ISBN 978-3-7757-5788-1.
English edition, Maarten van Heemskerck. The Roman Sketchbook. ISBN 978-3-7757-5798-0.*

Review published August 2026

Introduction: Few objects are more compelling to the art historian than artists' drawing books. Their particular appeal is the direct access these books provide to private artistic practice: how [...] Read More

Willem Key and Adriaen Thomasz. Key: Fresh Perspectives on Their Oeuvres (Pictura Nova: Studies in 16th- and 17th-Century Flemish Painting and Drawing, XXVIII)

By Lien Vandenberghe, in collaboration with Gijs Key. Edited by Koenraad Jonckheere.

Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2025. 256 pp, 102 color, 1 b&w illus. ISBN 978-2-503-61926-2.

Review published June 2026

In 2007, Koenraad Jonckheere published a monograph on the relatively little-known, under-studied Antwerp painter, Adriaen Thomasz. Key: Adriaen Thomasz. Key (c. 1545 - c. 1589): Portrait of a [...] Read More

Early Netherlandish Drawings 1400-1600

By Olenka Horbatsch and Charlotte Wytema (curators)

London, The British Museum, April 16 – September 20, 2026.
Exh. cat. ed. by Olenka Horbatsch and Charlotte Wytema, London: The British Museum Press, 2026, 368 pp, 320 illus. ISBN 978-0-7141-3651-6.

Review published June 2026

Accompanying an exhibition of its spectacular holdings of Netherlandish drawings, the British Museum has issued its richly illustrated definitive catalogue of collection highlights, the first in [...] Read More

Beached Whale Images in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp. Symbols of Humanity’s Dominion over the Earth

By Ryan E. Gregg

Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2026. 185 pp, 9 color, 54 b&w illus. ISBN 978-90-485-6624-2.

Review published June 2026

Today, when a whale of any kind (what Ryan Gregg often calls “cetaceous units”) gets stranded on a beach, support is mobilized to keep the animal hydrated and to prepare the creature for return to the [...] Read More

Borman in Context; Un trésor dévoilé: Le Retable de l’Adoration des Mages du xve siècle conservé à la Basilique San Nazaro Maggiore à Milan. Un chef-d’œuvre bruxellois de Jan Borman; Borman. A Family of Northern Renaissance Sculptors

By Marjan Debaene and Hannah De Moor (eds.); Emmanuelle Mercier, Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren, and Sacha Zdanov (eds); Marjan Debaene (ed)

Borman in Context
Edited by Marjan Debaene and Hannah De Moor
Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2025, 326 pp, 189 color illus & 28 b & w illus. ISBN 978-2-503-60799-3.

Un trésor dévoilé: Le Retable de l’Adoration des Mages du xve siècle conservé à la Basilique San Nazaro Maggiore à Milan. Un chef-d’œuvre bruxellois de Jan Borman
Edited by Emmanuelle Mercier, Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren, and Sacha Zdanov
Brussels: Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, 2025, 277 pp, 237 color illus & 13 b & w illus. ISBN 978-2-930054-46-9.

Borman. A Family of Northern Renaissance Sculptors
Edited by Marjan Debaene
London – Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers. An Imprint of Brepols Publishers, 2019, 312 pp, 363 color illus & 132 b & w illus. ISBN 978-1-912554-41-6 (hardcover) & 978-1-912554-46-2 (paperback).

Review published April 2026

The Bormans were a family of sculptors who dominated sculptural production in Brussels from the late fifteenth century through the first third of the sixteenth century. Their works significantly [...] Read More

Early Modern Print Media and the Art of Observation: Training the Literate Eye

By Stephanie Leitch

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 360 pp. ‎ISBN 978-1009444521.

Review published March 2026

Few topics have attracted more attention in recent literature on the intersections of early modern art, science, and intellectual history than the “epistemic image.” This is a type of visual culture [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

16th Century