The life and career of Peter Paul Rubens were defined by his foreign travels, both artistic and diplomatic. In a near-constant to and fro across Europe, two seemingly essential journeys and exchanges [...] Read More
17th-Century Dutch Republic
Trade, Globalization, and Dutch Art and Architecture: Interrogating Dutchness and the Golden Age.
Marsely Kehoe begins her recent monograph, Trade, Globalization, and Dutch Art and Architecture, with two big claims: that the Dutch Republic’s global reach was key to the cultural as well as the [...] Read More
Fantasmagorie. Streghe, demoni e tentazioni nell’arte fiamminga e olandese del Seicento
The European fascination with the various manifestations of witches, demons and evil temptations seems endless; it generated a flourishing production of imagery that was supported by literary culture. [...] Read More
Vermeer and the Art of Love (Northern Lights)
When one looks deeply at a Vermeer, one often borrows – however contingently – a lover’s rapt gaze. As Edward Snow observed, the painter’s “most profoundly dialectical”[1] tendencies hold the viewer’s [...] Read More
Godefridus Schalcken: A Late 17th-Century Dutch Painter in Pursuit of Fame and Fortune (Northern Lights)
Wayne Franits’s second monograph on Godefridus Schalcken (1643-1706) reads as an ardent love letter to the late seventeenth-century Dutch artist. A meticulous analysis of a selection of paintings from [...] Read More
Landscape and Earth in Early Modernity: Picturing Unruly Nature
This multi-author volume edited by Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki is a welcome addition to the environmental humanities. As its title suggests, the book draws our attention to differences [...] Read More