Book Reviews

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

Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance

By Suzanne Kathleen Karr Schmidt

(Brill's Studies in Intellectual History). Leiden: Brill, 2017, xxvii, 439 pp. ISBN 978-90-04-35413-5.

Review published March 2019

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

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

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

Colard Mansion. Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges

By Evelien Hauwaerts, Evelien de Wilde and Ludo Vandamme, eds.

[Exh. cat. Groeningemuseum, Bruges, March 1 – June 3, 2018.] Ghent: Snoeck, 2018. 256 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-6161-439-1.

Review published February 2019

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

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

Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe. Continuity and Expansion

By Dagmar Eichberger and Shelley Perlove, eds.

Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2018. 371 pp, 58 color plates. ISBN 978-2-503-54550-9

Review published January 2019

Many anthologies stray widely from their topics and lack coherence. However, in this case, a gathering of essays has been tightly coordinated by two distinguished scholars of early modern art in [...] Read More