17th-Century Dutch Republic

Rembrandt’s Roughness; Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India; Rembrandt’s Holland

By Nicola Suthor; Stephanie Schrader, et al; Larry Silver

Review published March 2019

Nicola Suthor, Rembrandt’s Roughness. Princeton – Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018. 240 pp, 82 color illus, 79 b&w illus. ISBN 978-0-691-17244-6. Stephanie Schrader, ed., with [...] Read More

Rembrandt and his Circle: Insights and Discoveries

By Stephanie S. Dickey, ed.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017, 387 pp, 187 b&w, 29 color illus.
ISBN 978-94-6298-400-4.

Review published January 2019

Stephanie Dickey, editor of Rembrandt and his Circle, dedicated this volume to Dr. Alfred Bader and Dr. Isabel Bader in 2017. The recent, sad passing of Alfred Bader on 23 December 2018, who [...] Read More

Jan Lievens, Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt, with a Catalogue Raisonné of his Early Leiden Work 1623–1632

By Bernhard Schnackenburg

Translated from the German by Kristin Lohse Belkin. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2016. 488 pp, 529 color illustrations. ISBN 978-3-7319-0333-8.
Also available in German: idem., Jan Lievens. Freund und Rivale des jungen Rembrandt mit einem kritischen Katalog des Leidener Frühwerks 1623-1632. ISBN 978-7319-0081-8.

Review published September 2018

This book presents an ambitious and original reappraisal of the early work of Jan Lievens (1607–1674), the Dutch painter, draftsman, and printmaker whose formative period in Leiden was intimately [...] Read More

Netherlandish Art in its Global Context (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek. Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, 66, 2016)

By Thijs Weststeijn, Eric Jorink, Frits Scholten, eds.

Leiden: Brill, 2016. 295 pp. ISBN 978-90-04-33497-7.

Review published June 2018

In a 2006 state-of-the field essay, I wrote that "scholars have recently begun to examine the contact between Europe's art and other regions of the world after 1492."[i] In the dozen years since then, [...] Read More

Dutch and Flemish Paintings: Dulwich Picture Gallery

By Michiel Jonker and Ellinoor Bergvelt

London: Dulwich Picture Gallery in association with D. Giles Limited, 2016. 352 pp, numerous illus. ISBN 978-1-907804-74-8.

Review published May 2018

The collection catalog is an unforgiving literary genre. Its purpose is to serve as a work of reference for scholars seeking information about individual works for their own purposes. At a minimum, it [...] Read More

Jacob Duck c.1600-1667: Catalogue Raisonné (OCULI. Studies in the Arts of the Low Countries, 16)

By Jochai Rosen

Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017. 292 pp, 120 b&w, 151 color illus. ISBN 978-90-272-4968-5.

Review published February 2018

The seventeenth-century Utrecht genre painter Jacob Cornelisz Duck (c 1600-1667) is best known for his depictions of soldiers and prostitutes, but his oeuvre also includes scenes of tranquil [...] Read More

Stories in Gilded Frames: Dutch Seventeenth-Century Paintings with Biblical and Mythological Subjects

By Lyckle de Vries

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. 304 pp, 100 color illus. ISBN 978-94-629-8147-8.

Review published February 2018

Not surprisingly, the most respected genre of art, which appealed to the wealthiest and most educated buyers and fetched the highest prices for Dutch painters in the seventeenth century, was history [...] Read More

Drawing and the Senses. An Early Modern History (Harvey Miller Studies in Baroque Art)

By Caroline O. Fowler

Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016. 178 pp, 119 col. illus. ISBN 978-1-909400-39-9.

Review published January 2018

Caroline O. Fowler’s thoughtful study of early modern printed drawing books through the lens of the senses is a compelling contribution to the study of drawing both north and south of the Alps. The [...] Read More

Adriaen van de Velde: Dutch Master of Landscape

By Bart Cornelis and Marijn Schapelhouman

[Cat. exh. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, June 24 – September 25, 2016; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, October 12, 2016 – 15 January 15, 2017.] London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016. 228 pp, 211 color and 33 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-907372-96-4.

Review published December 2017

Adriaen van de Velde (1636–1672) has long been admired by art historians for his delicate landscapes with their sensitive lighting and exquisite staffage, but the Dutch artist is not known with a [...] Read More

Painting Beauty: Caesar van Everdingen (1616/1617-1678). [Cat. exh. Stedlijk Museum, Alkmaar, September 24, 2016 – January 22, 2017.]

By Christi M. Klinkert and Yvonne Bleyerveld, eds.

Zwolle: Waanders, 2016. 208 pp, 150 colored illus. ISBN 978-94-6262-108-4.

Review published October 2017

Halfway through a painting career spanning nearly forty years Caesar van Everdingen (1616/17 – 1678; active 1636 – 1673) created an unusual portrait historié depicting Diogenes Looking for an Honest [...] Read More

Denkende Körper – Formende Hände: Handeling in Kunst und Kunsttheorie der “Rembrandtisten” (Actus et Imago, Berliner Schriften für Bildaktforschung und Verkörperungsphilosophie, XVIII)

By Yannis Hadjinicolaou

Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016. 410 pp, 50 illus. ISBN 978-3-11-043885-7.

Review published October 2017

Yannis Hadjinicolaou’s book, based on his PhD thesis, is concerned with Rembrandtesque handeling in the works of those students of Rembrandt who adhered to their master’s style after it began to go [...] Read More

Genre Paintings in the Mauritshuis

By Ariane van Suchtelen and Quentin Buvelot

Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2016. 407 pp, 80 b&w, 320 color illus. ISBN 978-94-6262-094-0.

Review published October 2017

This volume is the latest addition to an exemplary series of collection catalogues that the Mauritshuis launched in 1993. It follows the same high standards of scholarship and production as the [...] Read More

Rembrandt’s Rivals. History Painting in Amsterdam 1630–1650

By Eric Jan Sluijter

(Oculi: Studies in the Arts of the Low Countries, vol. 14). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2015. 486 pp, 626 figs. ISBN 978-90-272-4966.

Review published October 2017

Although nearly four decades have passed since the landmark exhibition Gods, Saints and Heroes (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980), history painting as an aspect of art in the Dutch ‘Golden [...] Read More

Michael Sweerts (1618-1664): Shaping the Artist and the Academy in Rome and Brussels

By Lara Yeager-Crasselt

Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2015. 340 pp, 33 color, 67 b&w illus. ISBN 978-2-503-55530-0

Review published October 2017

Modern scholarship has routinely presented the Brussels-born Michael Sweerts as an ally of the Bamboccianti, those mainly Netherlandish genre painters in Rome notorious for disregarding conventional [...] Read More

Hercules Segers: Painter Etcher

By Huigen Leeflang and Pieter Roelofs, eds.

[Cat. exh. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, October 7, 2016 – January 8, 2017; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 13 – May 21, 2017.] 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2016. 700 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-6208-342-4.

Review published September 2017

Hercules Segers: Painter, Etcher does much to advance our understanding of an artist whose work is often described as enigmatic and – as the accompanying exhibition calls it – ‘mysterious.’ Since the [...] Read More