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
Book Reviews
Rubens. Subjects from History: The Decius Mus Series
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Renaissance Illuminators in Paris: Artists & Artisans 1500-1715
As Richard and Mary Rouse explain in their acknowledgments, “the impetus for this book came from Myra Orth,” whose lifework was the study of illuminated manuscripts of the Renaissance period in [...] Read More
Connoisseurship and the Knowledge of Art, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 69, 2019
Half a century ago, when I was a graduate student, art scholarship largely boiled down to connoisseurship; even iconography was considered over-interpretive (and the case can still be made that within [...] Read More
The Invention of the Emblem Book and the Transmission of Knowledge, ca. 1510-1610
With its focus on emblems, the present study directly addresses topics of interest to historians of Netherlandish art. This contribution is due to the significant production of emblem books by Dutch [...] Read More
The Image of the City in Early Netherlandish Painting (1400-1550)
As a religious artifact, The Ghent Altarpiece (1432) radiates the intangible power of Christ’s sacrifice and God’s forgiveness. As a material work of art, Jan van Eyck’s polyptych pulls the narrative [...] Read More