Book Reviews

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

The Library of the Dukes of Burgundy

By Bernard Bousmanne and Elena Savini, eds.

Brussels: Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) / London: Harvey Miller. An Imprint of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2020. 205 pp, 134 color illus. ISBN 978-1-912554-24-9.

Review published January 2021

In September of 2020, the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels opened a state-of-the-art museum to great fanfare. Its purpose is to offer the public the opportunity to enjoy a rotating exhibit of [...] 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

Van Eyck

By Maximiliaan Martens, Till-Holger Borchert, Jan Dumolyn, Johan De Smet, and Frederica Van Dam, eds.

Exh. Cat. Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, February 1 – March 12, 2020. London – New York: Thames & Hudson, 2020. 490 pp, 350 color illus. ISBN 978-0-500-02345-7.

Review published December 2020

Many readers will have shared my disappointment at having missed the exhibition Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution, which opened at Ghent’s Museum voor Schone Kunsten on February 1st, 2020, and was [...] Read More

Antwerp in the Renaissance

By Bruno Blondé and Jeroen Puttevils, eds.

Studies in European Urban History, 49. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2020. 315 pp, 61 illus. ISBN 978-2-503-58833-9.

Review published November 2020

Students of visual culture in the cities of the Netherlands have learned to attend to a variety of imagery that formerly were omitted from consideration as "art," especially printed images that also [...] Read More

Hans Holbein. The Artist in a Changing World

By Jeanne Nuechterlein

London: Reaktion Books, 2020, 280 pp., 70 illus., some in color. ISBN 978-1-78914-211-2.

Review published November 2020

Hans Holbein (c. 1497/98–1543) has generated plenty of scholarship in the form of catalogues of paintings, drawings and prints as well as serious exhibition catalogues and scholarly monographs. But he [...] Read More

The Ghent Altarpiece: Research and Conservation of the Exterior

By Bart Fransen and Cyriel Stroo, eds.

Contributions to the Study of the Flemish Primitives, 14. Brussels: Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), Brussels, 2020. 430 pp, 300 color illus. ISBN 978-2-930054-38-4.

Review published October 2020

As the first in a series about Jan (and Hubert?) van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (1432), this volume documents the research and conservation treatment of the exterior panels. It is undoubtedly an [...] Read More

Leiden circa 1630. Rembrandt Emerges

By Jacquelyn N. Coutré, ed., with contributions by Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Stephanie S. Dickey, Piet Bakker, and Janet M. Brooke

Exh. Cat. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON, August 24 – December 1, 2019; The Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, March 7 – September 27, 2020; The McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, December 5, 2020 – February 21, 2021; The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, ON, March 13 – May 30, 2021. Kingston, ON: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2019. 359 pp, 205 illus., mostly in color. ISBN 978-1-55339-419-8. In English and French.

Review published September 2020

The Agnes Etherington Art Centre joined the celebrations of the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death (or immortality, if you will) with a traveling exhibition combining collection works and loans [...] Read More

Black in Rembrandt’s Time

By Elmer Kolfin and Epco Runia, eds., with contributions by Stefanie Archangel, Mark Ponte, Marieke de Winkel, and David de Witt

Exh. Cat., The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, March 5 – May 31, 2020, extended to September 10, 2020. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2020. 135 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-625-8372-6 (English), 978-94-625-8371-9 (Dutch).

Review published August 2020

In recent decades, art museums in Europe and North America have increasingly staged exhibitions contextualizing the multi-dimensional nature of our shared cultural heritage. The decision to mount [...] 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

Die Gemälde des Spätmittelalters im Germanischen Nationalmuseum. Vol. 1: Franken, Parts 1 and 2.

By Daniel Hess, Dagmar Hirschfelder and Katja von Baum, eds.

Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019, 2 vols., 1,126 pp, richly illustrated. ISBN: 978-3-7954-3398-7.

Review published August 2020

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg possesses around 250 German and Austrian paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Most pictures are by now anonymous masters who are, not [...] 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

Painted Alchemists: Early Modern Artistry and Experiment in the Work of Thomas Wijck

By Elisabeth Berry Drago

Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. 320 pp, 32 color and numerous b&w illus. ISBN: 978-94-6298-649-7.

Review published July 2020

The interiors inhabited by the alchemists in the work of the Dutch artist Thomas Wijck (1616–1677) are fascinating and complex. Scattered with the tools and props of the alchemist’s trade, Wijck’s [...] 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

Art, Honor and Success in the Dutch Republic: The Life and Career of Jacob van Loo

By Judith Noorman

Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 312 pp, 110 color illus. ISBN: 978-94-6298-798-2.

Review published July 2020

Judith Noorman’s ambitious new book provides an in-depth look at the life and career of Jacob van Loo (1614–1670), the mid seventeenth-century Dutch painter who is perhaps best remembered today for [...] Read More