Book Reviews

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

By Kathryn M. Rudy

Library of the Written Word, The Manuscript World, Volume 55. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xxii, 308 pp, 152 color illus. ISBN 978-90-04-32695-8 (hardback); 978-90-04-32696-5 (e-book).

Review published October 2019

Kathryn Rudy has added a new and beautifully illustrated study to her already extensive bibliography on readers’ interactions with early Netherlandish manuscripts. It is a monumental undertaking. She [...] Read More

The Renaissance Nude

By Thomas Kren with Jill Burke and Stephen J. Campbell, eds.

Cat. exh. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, October 30, 2018 – January 27, 2019; Royal Academy of Arts, London, March 2 – June 2, 2019. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018. xiii, 417 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-1-6060-6584-6.

Review published September 2019

This handsomely produced and beautifully illustrated catalogue considers the development of the naturalistic nude in various media produced in northern and southern Europe, c. 1400-1530. It [...] Read More

A Knight for the Ages: Jacques de Lalaing and the Art of Chivalry

By Elizabeth Morrison, ed.

Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2018. xi, 180 pp, 18 pls, 60 figs. ISBN 978-1-606-06575-4.

Review published September 2019

Jacques de Lalaing, the bon chevalier, a renowned jouster and military commander in the service of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, died in 1453, aged only thirty-two, at the siege of Poeke during [...] Read More

Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a Reunited Altarpiece

By John Marciari, ed.

Exh. Cat. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, September 2, 2016 – January 8, 2017. London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016. 112 pp, 55 illus. in color. ISBN 978-1-911300-08-3.

Review published September 2019

New York is a city fortunate enough to contain a significant group of paintings by Hans Memling. From portraiture (the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Tommaso di Folco Portinari and Maria Portinari are [...] Read More

Gardens of Love and the Limits of Morality in Early Netherlandish Art

By Andrea Pearson

Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 296; Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 37. Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2019. xxii, 356 pp, 148 illus., mostly color. ISBN 978-90-04-39295-3 (hardback); 978-90-04-39310—3 (e-book).

Review published August 2019

Pearson sets out to expand and recalibrate the ways that art historians conceptualize early modern garden imagery. Specifically, she challenges an overemphasis on interiority that she sees in modern [...] Read More

Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer: Parallel Visions / Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer: Miradas afines

By Alejandro Vergara, ed.

Exh. cat. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, June 24 – September 29, 2019. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2019. 252 pp, illustrated in color. ISBN 978-96-8167-048-3.

Review published August 2019

The title of the exhibition might suggest a gathering of crowd-pleasing Old Masters to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Prado. Instead, the curator Alejandro Vergara tackles an intellectually [...] Read More

Women. The Art of Power. Three Women from the House of Habsburg

By Sabine Haag, Dagmar Eichberger and Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, eds.

Exh. Cat. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck, June 14 – October 7, 2018. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2018. 190 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-3-99020-178-7.

Review published August 2019

Women, the Art of Power. Three Women from the House of Habsburg translates into English the German catalogue to an exhibition at Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck in 2018. The catalogue explores the [...] Read More

Perfection’s Therapy. An Essay on Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I

By Mitchell B. Merback

New York: Zone Books, 2017. 357 pp, 91 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-942130-00-0.

Review published August 2019

Mitchell B. Merback’s most recent book, Perfection’s Therapy: An Essay on Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I, argues that this celebrated and much-discussed engraving incites a therapeutic or healing [...] Read More

Niederländische Maler in Italien: Künstlerreisen und Kunstrezeption im 16. Jahrhundert

By Maria Harnack

Reflexe der immateriellen und materiellen Kultur, 6. Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. 332 pp, fully illustrated, ISBN 978-3-11-0557428-8.

Review published July 2019

Maria Harnack offers a broad-view examination of sixteenth-century Netherlandish artists in Italy. She begins Chapter One’s first section, travel to the Eternal City, by citing a few key contributors [...] Read More

Prints in Translation, 1450-1750. Image, Materiality, Space

By Suzanne Karr Schmidt and Edward H. Wouk, eds.

London and New York: Routledge, 2017. 252 pp, 21 color pls., 93 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-4724-8012-5.

Review published June 2019

Prints in Translation, 1450-1750, is a wide-ranging volume that aims to mark a fundamental shift in print scholarship. Edited by Suzanne Karr Schmidt and Edward H. Wouk, the volume grew out of a [...] Read More

A Suspect Paradise: Studies on the Left Panel and Detail Symbolism of Hieronymus Bosch’s So-Called “Garden of Earthly Delights.”

By Paul Vandenbroeck

Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 2017-2018. 260 pp, 149 color illustrations. ISBN 978-90-441-3624-1.

Review published June 2019

The 2017–2018 Annual of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is completely devoted to Paul Vandenbroeck’s writings on Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The Annual is divided into two parts; the [...] Read More

Creating Distinctions in Dutch Genre Painting: Repetition and Invention

By Angela K. Ho

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. 272 pp, 86 illus. ISBN 978-94-6298-297-0

Review published June 2019

When Swedish Ambassador Pieter Spiering agreed to pay young Gerrit Dou 500 guilders annually for the right of first refusal of the painter’s panels, the aristocrat effectively purchased social capital [...] Read More

Cut in Alabaster. A Material of Sculpture and its European Traditions 1330-1530

By Kim W. Woods

Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. 418 pp, 170 color illus., 2 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-909400-26-9.

Review published May 2019

Kim Woods’s book on alabaster sculpture of the Late Medieval and early modern periods is an important, welcome addition to recent writings on sculpture. Remarkably comprehensive, this is a [...] 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