Book Reviews

Images and Indulgences in Early Netherlandish Painting

By Miyako Sugiyama

London: Harvey Miller Publishers, an Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2021. 193 pp, 10 b&w, 126 col. illus. ISBN: 978-1-912554-58-4.

Review published March 2023

Indulgences have had a bad press. Reviled as the epitome of Catholic greed and the lurid practice that sparked the Reformation, to this day they are cast in a negative light. This view overlooks the [...] Read More

Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection

By Gregor J. M. Weber

Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2023. 168 pp. 121 col., 1 b&w ills. ISBN 978-9462087583.

Review published March 2023

Over the past forty years, a veritable avalanche of Vermeer studies has been published, culminating with the catalogue of the Rijksmuseum’s recent blockbuster exhibition on the artist. By now, many [...] Read More

Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel

By Emily J. Peters and Laura M. Ritter, eds.

Exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art and Albertina Museum, Vienna. Cleveland venue: October 9, 2022 – January 8, 2023. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022, 322 pp., 252 color ills., ISBN 978-0-300-26669-6.

Review published March 2023

The legendary drawings collection of the Albertina in Vienna, which includes peerless holdings of early Netherlandish drawings, was on glorious display at the Cleveland Museum of Art from October 2022 [...] Read More

Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe

By Marisa Anne Bass, Anne Goldgar, Hanneke Grootenboer, and Claudia Swan, with contributions by Stephanie S. Dickey, Anna Grasskamp, and Róisín Watson

Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021. 214 pp, 84+ color illus. ISBN 9780691215761.

Review published March 2023

A very handsome book replete with full-color photographs, Conchophilia is a joy to read, as appealing and stimulating as the curiosities it considers. Comprising an introduction and six chapters, the [...] Read More

Europe Views the World, 1500-1700 (Northern Lights Series)

By Larry Silver

London: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd., 2022. 200 pp, 83 b&w, 16 col illus. ISBN 9781848225473.

Review published March 2023

Larry Silver has long been a prominent advocate for the study of world art. His Art in History, a textbook published three decades ago, was one of the first of its kind to present “views from the [...] Read More

Drawn to Life. Master Drawings from the Age of Rembrandt in the Peck Collection at the Ackland Art Museum

By Robert Fucci

[Exh. Cat. Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, September 22 – December 31, 2022; The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, March 18 – June 11, 2023]. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2022. 288 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-1-913645-32-8.

Review published February 2023

This excellent catalogue was designed to accompany the exhibition of 67 of 134 Dutch drawings donated recently by Leena and Sheldon Peck to the Ackland Art Museum at UNC Chapel Hill. The book [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews