16th Century

In Search of Utopia. Art and Science in the Era of Thomas More

By Jan Van der Stock

[Cat. exh. M - Museum, Leuven, October 20, 2016 – January 17, 2017.] Leuven: Davidsfonds; Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2016. 416 pp. ISBN 978-9-059-08811-5

Review published April 2017

At a time when the largest municipal museums in Belgium, both Antwerp and Brussels, are undergoing repairs and are withdrawn from major exhibitions, M, the Leuven Museum, has stepped up with important [...] Read More

Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination

By Stephanie Porras

University Park: Penn State University Press, 2016. 200 pp, 80 illus., ISBN 978-0-271-07089-6

Review published April 2017

The works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder transfix viewers and vex interpreters. When Karel van Mander wrote that one could not look at Bruegel’s works without laughing, he spoke to the immersive [...] Read More

The Neptune Fountain in Bologna: Bronze, Marble, & Water in the Making of a Papal City

By Richard J. Tuttle

Edited by Nadja Aksamija and Francesco Ceccarelli (VISTAS, Virtual Images of Sculpture in Time and Space, 2). London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2015. 248 pp, 150 color illus. ISBN 978-1-909400-24-5

Review published November 2016

Published posthumously, Richard Tuttle’s excellent analysis of Giambologna’s Neptune Fountain in Bologna is insightful, well written, and beautifully illustrated. Its focus on a single monument, [...] Read More

The Seventh Window: The King’s Window Donated by Philip II and Mary Tudor to Sint Janskerk in Gouda (1557)

By Wim de Groot, ed.

Hilversum: Verloren Publishers, 2005. 304 pp, numerous color illus. ISBN 978-90-6550-822-8

Review published November 2016

The Seventh Window is an anthology conceptualized and edited by Wim de Groot, which brings together twenty-one scholars from various fields and countries to ruminate over one of King Philip II of [...] Read More

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (ca. 1475-1533). De Renaissance in Amsterdam en Alkmaar

By Daantje Meuwissen

With contributions by Peter van den Brink et al. Cat. exh. Amsterdam Museum; Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar; Sint Laurenskerk, Alkmaar, March 15 – June 29, 2014. Zwolle: Waanders, 2014. 319 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-94-91196-96-6

Review published November 2016

In northern Europe, the early sixteenth-century art world was crowded with artists of extraordinary talent: Jan Gossart, Bernaert van Orley, and Lucas van Leyden in the Low Countries, as well as [...] Read More

Genre Imagery in Early Modern Northern Europe: New Perspectives (Visual Culture in Early Modernity)

By Arthur J. DiFuria, ed.

London/New York: Routledge (Ashgate), 2016. xx, 216 pp, 64 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-4724-4914-6

Review published November 2016

Genre Imagery in Early Modern Northern Europe: New Perspectivesarrives at a rich moment in the study of the playful, complex pictures best known as genre scenes. Several current and upcoming [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

16th Century