17th-Century Dutch Republic

Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art

By Robert Schindler, Bernd Ebert, and Anna C. Knaap (curators)

Munich, Alte Pinakothek, November 26, 204 – March 16, 2025; Toledo, OH, Toledo Museum of Art, April 13 – July 27, 2025; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, August 23 – December 7, 2025. Exh. cat. edited by Robert Schindler, Bernd Ebert, and Anna C. Knaap. With contributions by Marianne Berardi, Charles C. Davis, Lieke van Deinsen, Josephina de Fouw, Nouchka de Keyser, Jorinda Koenen, Bert van de Roemer, and Katharina Schmidt-Loske. Boston, MA, MFA Publications, 2025. 248 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-0-87846-899-7.

Review published August 2025

Every historian of Dutch art knows of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) but few know much about her. Flower painter, daughter of the famed anatomist Frederik Ruysch… and there it usually stops. There has not [...] Read More

Rembrandt-Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion; Samuel van Hoogstraten: The Illusionist; The Life and Work of the Painter: Dirck van Hoogstraten (1596-1640).

By Sabine Penot; David de Witt, Leonore van Sloten et al.; Michiel Roscam Abbing, Robert Schillemans

Rembrandt-Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, October 8, 2024 – January 12, 2025. Exh. cat. ed. by Sabine Pénot. Veurne (Belgium): Hannibal Books, 2024. 288 pp, fully illustrated. English hardcover: ISBN 978-94-6494-131-9.

Samuel van Hoogstraten: The Illusionist.
Amsterdam, Museum Rembrandthuis, February 1 – May 4, 2025. Exh. cat. by David de Witt, Leonore van Sloten et al. Zwolle: WBOOKS and Museum Rembrandthuis, 2025. English and Dutch editions, 144 pp, fully illustrated. English: ISBN 978-94-6258-68-02; Dutch: ISBN 978-94-6258-67-89

The Life and Work of the Painter: Dirck van Hoogstraten (1596-1640).
By Michiel Roscam Abbing, Robert Schillemans. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2025. English and Dutch editions, 240 pp, illustrated, chiefly in color. Paperback. English: ISBN 978-94-6258-67-960; Dutch: ISBN 978-94-6258-67-72.

Review published August 2025

These three publications, one monograph and two exhibition catalogues, complement one another, celebrating three artists of very distinct characters, abilities, ambitions and generations: Dirck van [...] Read More

Careers by Design: Hendrick Goltzius & Peter Paul Rubens

By Nina Schleif (curator)

Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, June 13 – September 15, 2024
Exh. cat. edited by Nina Schleif. Munich: Hirmer, 2024. 304 pp, 194 color illus. ISBN 978-3-7774-4352-2.

Review published November 2024

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

Trade, Globalization, and Dutch Art and Architecture: Interrogating Dutchness and the Golden Age.

By Marsely Kehoe

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. 244 pp, illus. in color. ISBN 978-9463723633.

Review published September 2024

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

By Tania de Nile

Rome: Officina Libraria: 2023. 336 pp, 307 col. illus. ISBN 9788833672267.

Review published June 2024

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)

By Aneta Georgievska-Shine

London: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd., 2022. 160pp, 93 col. illus. ISBN 978-1848224896.

Review published February 2024

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

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

17th-Century Dutch Republic