Book Reviews

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

Into the White: The Renaissance Arctic and the End of the Image

By Christopher Heuer

New York: Zone Books, 2019. 262 pp, 69 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1942-13014-7.

Review published June 2020

A frustrated attempt to describe an iceberg opens Into the White, Christopher P. Heuer’s fascinating book on the Arctic as seen and imagined during the European Renaissance. In a pamphlet produced [...] Read More

Alexander Keirincx (1600-1652). Der Baummaler – Die Gemälde

By Ursula Härting, with contributions by Richard P. Townsend and Rick C. Coone

Wommelgem: BAI, 2018. 200 pp, 284 illus. ISBN 978-90-8586-761-6.

Review published June 2020

The landscape painter Alexander Keirincx deserves our attention with regard to various aspects. Firstly, in his time the development of landscape painting achieves its definitive recognition as an [...] Read More

Borman. A Family of Northern Renaissance Sculptors

By Marjan Debaene, ed.

[Exh. Cat. M – Museum, Leuven, September 20, 2019 – January 26, 2020.] London / Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers. An Imprint of Brepols Publishers, 2019. 312 pp, 560 color illus. ISBN 978-1-912554-41-6.

Review published June 2020

This edited volume was produced to accompany the much anticipated exhibition Borman and Sons: The Best Sculptors, held at M-Museum Leuven from September 20th, 2019 to January 26th, 2020. Like the [...] Read More

Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300-1550

By Anne L. Williams

(Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. 244 pp, 10 col. plates, 54 b&w illus. ISBN 978-94-6298-374-8 (hardback), 978-90-4853-411-1 (e-book).

Review published June 2020

As Anne Williams astutely identifies, depictions of Saint Joseph in works of art of the fourteenth to sixteenth century are rife with paradox, a seemingly conflicting combination of ridicule and [...] Read More

‘Truly Bright and Memorable’: Jan de Beer’s Renaissance Altarpieces

By Dan Ewing, Peter van den Brink, and Robert Wenley

Exh. cat. Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham University, October 25, 2019 – January 19, 2020. London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2019. 95 pp, 62 color illus. ISBN 978-1-911300-72-4.

Review published April 2020

This slim volume is a catalogue of an “in focus” exhibition, centered around Jan de Beer’s double-sided panel of Joseph and the Suitors and The Nativity in The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, [...] Read More

Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish Painting

By Ingrid Falque

Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 38. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xxiv, 336 pp, 111 color illus. ISBN: 978-90-04-36975-7 (hardback); 978-90-04-39760-6 (e-book).

Review published April 2020

Lucidly written and clearly organized, Ingrid Falque’s study focuses on the portraits integrated into religious pictures from the Low Countries between circa 1400 and 1550. The corpus of works [...] Read More