Book Reviews

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

The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths

By Angela Vanhaelen

University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022. 211 pp, 13 col., 47 b&w illus. ISBN 978-0271091402.

Review published February 2023

Among the cultural developments in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the city’s doolhoven – planned environments containing moving sculptures, fountains, automata, waxworks, and clockworks – have [...] Read More

All the King’s Tapestries: Homecomings 2021-1961-1921

By Magdalena Ozga, Magdalena Piwocka, and Jerzy Holc

Exh. cat. Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków, March 18 – October 31, 1021. Kraków: Wawel Royal Castle – State Art Collection, 2021. 199 pp, 142 color, 48 b&w illus. ISBN 978-83-66648-22-7.

Review published February 2023

Around 1547, the Flemish master-weavers, Jan and Willem de Kempeneer, Jan van Tieghem, and Pieter van Aelst the Younger embarked upon a tapestry commission of remarkable scale. Pairing up with other [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews