17th-Century Flemish

Anthony van Dyck & the Art of Portraiture

By Christopher White

London: Modern Art Press, distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2021. 295 pp, 261 illus. in color. ISBN 978-0-9568007-9-4.

Review published July 2021

In general, Anthony van Dyck has been better served by catalogues than monographs. Any study of the artist will have as its point of departure the monumental 2004 catalogue raisonné by Susan Barnes, [...] Read More

Mythological Passions: Titian, Veronese, Allori, Rubens, Ribera, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velázquez

By Miguel Falomir and Alejandro Vergara with Sheila Barker and Javier Moscoso

Exh. Cat. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, March 2 – July 4, 2021. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2021. 192 pp, numerous color illus. ISBN 978-84-8480-640-6.

Review published April 2021

It must have been one of the most satisfying and challenging tasks with which a museum curator can be faced. To be presented with six of the finest pictures ever executed, namely Titian’s poesie [...] Read More

Peter Paul Rubens und der Barock im Norden

By Christoph Stiegemann, ed.

Cat. exh. Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, Paderborn, July 24, 2020 – October 25, 2020. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2020. 576 pp, numerous illus., mostly in color. ISBN 978-3-7319-0956-9.

Review published March 2021

The occasion for this exhibition, organized under the direction of Christoph Stiegemann, the actual director of the Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum in the Westphalian city of Paderborn, was the fact [...] Read More

Rubens. Genre Scenes (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XVII)

By Nils Büttner

London: Harvey Miller. An Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2019. 462 pp, 196 b&w and col. illustrations, 20 text ill. ISBN 978-0-905203-73-7.

Review published January 2021

This latest volume in the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard is dedicated to Rubens’s genre pictures. It was only in the late eighteenth century that today’s generic term genre gradually was becoming [...] Read More

Theodoor van Loon

By Sabine van Sprang et al.

Exh. Cat. Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels (BOZAR), October 10, 2018 – January 13, 2019; Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg (MNHA), February 15 – May 26, 2019. Brussels: BOZAR Books, Mercatorfonds, 2018. 236 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-6230-237-2. In Dutch and French.

Review published January 2021

Despite the high esteem in which he was held by contemporaries in Italy and the Netherlands, the Brussels painter Theodoor van Loon (1581/82–1649) had until recently been largely ignored by modern [...] Read More

Rubens. Architectural Sculpture (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XXII: Architecture and Sculpture, 4)

By Valerie Herremans

Translated from the Dutch by Ted Alkins and Irene Schaudies. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2019). 379 pp, 129 col. and b&w illus, 32 text. ill. ISBN 978-1-912554-31-7.

Review published August 2020

The most recent addition to the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard by Valerie Herremans examines Rubens’s engagement with architectural sculpture. This book complements the previous volume of the [...] Read More

Rubens. Subjects from History: The Decius Mus Series (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII, 2)

By Reinhold Baumstark and Guy Delmarcel

Translated from the German by Kristin Lohse Belkin and from the Dutch by Jantien Black. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2019, 2 vols.: 778 pp. 161 b&w illus., 99 col. illus. ISBN 978-1-912554-23-2.

Review published July 2020

Rubens’s first commission for a monumental cycle of decoration was the Decius Mus series, the first of his four tapestry cycles and the subject of this two-volume study of monumental scope. The [...] Read More

Inspiration and Emulation: Selected Studies on Rubens and Rembrandt

By Toshiharu Nakamura

Edited by Kayo Hirakawa. Bern: Peter Lang, 2019. 320 pp, 161 b&w illus., 9 col. pls. ISBN 978-3-0343-3373-3 (Print). E-ISBN 978-3-0343-3374-0 (PDF). E-ISBN 978-3-0343-3375-7 (EPUB).

Review published July 2020

Although the literature on Rubens and Rembrandt is prolific, most publications arise from scholarship conducted in North America or Europe. It is thus a pleasure to welcome this book of essays by [...] Read More

Alexander Keirincx (1600-1652). Der Baummaler – Die Gemälde

By Ursula Härting, with contributions by Richard P. Townsend and Rick C. Coone

Wommelgem: BAI, 2018. 200 pp, 284 illus. ISBN 978-90-8586-761-6.

Review published June 2020

The landscape painter Alexander Keirincx deserves our attention with regard to various aspects. Firstly, in his time the development of landscape painting achieves its definitive recognition as an [...] Read More

The Value of Taste: Auction Prices and the Evolution of Taste in Dutch and Flemish Golden Age Painting 1642-2011

By Peter Carpreau

London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2017. 295 pp, 83 b&w tables. ISBN 978-1-909400-48-1.

Review published December 2019

While a unique artwork cannot be easily reduced to objective data, Peter Carpreau effectively argues that the price paid for a work at auction is a data point that “reflect(s) taste at a certain time [...] Read More

Jacob Jordaens y España

By Matías Díaz Padrón

Madrid: Instituto Moll. Center for Research in Flemish Painting, 2018. 2 vols. ISBN 978-84-948585-0-5. (Now available in English translation, Brepols Publishers, ISBN 978-84-948585-3-6).

Review published December 2019

This is a welcome addition to the body of literature on Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), an artist still insufficiently scrutinized, notwithstanding a flurry of publications during the present decade. [...] Read More

Van Dyck’s Hosts in Genoa: Lucas and Cornelis de Wael’s Lives, Business Activities and Works

By Alison Stoesser

Pictura Nova, Studies in 16th- and 17th-century Flemish Painting and Drawing XIX. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2018. 2 vols., 1028 pp, 683 b&w illus., 45 colour illus. ISBN: 978-2-503-53175-5 (set), ISBN 978-2-503-56906-2 (Volume 1), ISBN 978-2-503-56907-9 (Volume 2).

Review published November 2019

In a recent discussion of Flemish art dealers and agents who were active in seventeenth-century Italy, Isabella Cecchini claimed that scholars have paid far more attention to the presence of these [...] Read More

Rubens. The Jesuit Church of Antwerp (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XXII: Architecture and Sculpture, 3)

By Ria Fabri and Piet Lombaerde

Based on a manuscript by Frans Baudouin (1920-2005). Translated by Jantien Black and Ted Alkins. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2018. 370 pp, 109 b&w illus, 45 color illus. ISBN 978-1-909400-97-9.

Review published May 2019

Peter Paul Rubens’s extensive engagement with the Jesuit Church of Antwerp is the subject of the new book by Ria Fabri and Piet Lombarde, the latest addition to the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. [...] Read More

Rubens. Allegories and Subjects from Literature (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XII)

By Nils Büttner

Translated from the German by Michael Foster, Lance Anderson and Orla Ambrose. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2018. 2 vols. ISBN 978-1-912554-11-9.

Review published April 2019

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to read for review purposes Part XI of Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard dedicated to paintings based on mythological narratives (Achilles to the Graces). That [...] Read More

Rubens. The Henri IV Series (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XIV, 2)

By Alexis Merle du Bourg

Translated from the French by Jane MacAvock and Abigail Newman. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2017. 483 pp, fully illus. in color and b&w. ISBN 978-1-909400-96-2.

Review published February 2019

Artistic failures can make for successful art history. In his magisterial new contribution to the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Alexis Merle du Bourg charts the inception, development, and [...] Read More