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
Book Reviews
Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance
When I first received this book, it fell open at pages 18 and 19, where identical illustrations had been reproduced on each page. I must confess that my first reaction (typical of an academic author [...] Read More
Rembrandt’s Roughness; Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India; Rembrandt’s Holland
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
Rubens. The Henri IV Series
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
Colard Mansion. Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges
This catalogue accompanied the exhibition Haute Lecture by Colard Mansion: Innovating Text and Image in Medieval Bruges, co-organized by Musea Brugge and Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge. Devoting an [...] Read More
Rembrandt and his Circle: Insights and Discoveries
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
Pieter Bruegel. The Complete Works.
The year 2019 has already become the Year of Bruegel, to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the artist's death (ca. 1525-1569). The once-in-a lifetime show in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum [...] Read More
Erudite Eyes: Friendship, Art and Erudition in the Network of Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History, 14)
Erudite Eyes considers a range of objects – prints, maps, drawings, poems and paintings – produced by a network of artists, merchants, and humanists around geographer Abraham Ortelius. Foregrounding [...] Read More
Netherlandish Culture of the Sixteenth Century (Studies in European Urban History, 41)
Part of a series about urban history and culture (Bruaene of Ghent University is one of the series’ editors), this new anthology (based on a 2012 conference) offers nineteen impressive articles on a [...] Read More
Jan Lievens, Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt, with a Catalogue Raisonné of his Early Leiden Work 1623–1632
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
Rubens and the Human Body (The Body in Art)
The book under review is the third in a series of Brepols monographs addressing the human body in early modern visual arts. Given the stated aim of this series – to explore new approaches and [...] Read More
Gender, Otherness, and Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Art
In a new blog on intersectionality posted by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, literature historian Christina Luckyj confronted tensions that she identified between a contemporary, [...] Read More
Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel: Art and Science around 1600
No scholar has devoted more of her career to the works of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600) than Thea Vignau-Wilberg. Nearly a half a century ago, she published her dissertation on the manuscripts that [...] Read More
Thresholds and Boundaries. Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385-1530) (Visual Culture in Early Modernity)
As points of transition, thresholds offer new possibilities, but they also mark boundaries, divisions of time and space. Employing the anthropological theories of Arnold Gennep and Victor Turner, who [...] Read More
Michel Sittow. Estonian Painter at the Courts of Renaissance Europe. [Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, January 28 – May 13, 2018.]
This recent Washington exhibition, jointly organized with the Art Museum of Estonia and its curator Greta Koppel, offers a fitting moment to pay tribute to John Hand, its long-time curator (since [...] Read More