16th Century

Woodland Imagery in Northern Art, c.1500-1800: Poetry and Ecology

By Leopoldine van Hogendorp Prosperetti

London: Lund Humphries, 2022. 160 pp, 72 mostly color ills. ISBN: 978-1-84822-494-0.

Review published April 2023

This important and charming book examines the depiction of woodlands and individual trees in the visual arts and poetry during the long Renaissance and beyond. It posits that in former times human [...] Read More

Images and Indulgences in Early Netherlandish Painting

By Miyako Sugiyama

London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2021. 193 pp, 10 b&w, 126 col. illus. ISBN: 978-1-912554-58-4.

Review published March 2023

Indulgences have had a bad press. Reviled as the epitome of Catholic greed and the lurid practice that sparked the Reformation, to this day they are cast in a negative light. This view overlooks the [...] Read More

Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel

By Emily J. Peters and Laura M. Ritter, eds.

Exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art and Albertina Museum, Vienna. Cleveland venue: October 9, 2022 – January 8, 2023. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022, 322 pp., 252 color ills., ISBN 978-0-300-26669-6.

Review published March 2023

The legendary drawings collection of the Albertina in Vienna, which includes peerless holdings of early Netherlandish drawings, was on glorious display at the Cleveland Museum of Art from October 2022 [...] Read More

Europe Views the World, 1500-1700 (Northern Lights Series)

By Larry Silver

London: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd., 2022. 200 pp, 83 b&w, 16 col illus. ISBN 9781848225473.

Review published March 2023

Larry Silver has long been a prominent advocate for the study of world art. His Art in History, a textbook published three decades ago, was one of the first of its kind to present “views from the [...] Read More

All the King’s Tapestries: Homecomings 2021-1961-1921

By Magdalena Ozga, Magdalena Piwocka, and Jerzy Holc

Exh. cat. Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków, March 18 – October 31, 1021. Kraków: Wawel Royal Castle – State Art Collection, 2021. 199 pp, 142 color, 48 b&w illus. ISBN 978-83-66648-22-7.

Review published February 2023

Around 1547, the Flemish master-weavers, Jan and Willem de Kempeneer, Jan van Tieghem, and Pieter van Aelst the Younger embarked upon a tapestry commission of remarkable scale. Pairing up with other [...] Read More

Tributes to Maryan W. Ainsworth: Collaborative Spirit: Essays on Northern European Art, 1350-1650

By Anna Koopstra, Christine Seidel, and Joshua P. Waterman, eds.

London: Harvey Miller Publishers and Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2022. 346 pp, 250 color illus. ISBN 978-1-912554-75-1.

Review published December 2022

This marvelous Festschrift’s subtitle Collaborative Spirit captures one of the defining characteristics of Maryan Ainsworth’s celebrated career as a curator, teacher, and prolific scholar. The three [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

16th Century