Book Reviews

St Jacob’s: Antwerp Art and Counter Reformation in Rubens’s Parish Church (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 253; Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 13)

By Jeffrey M. Muller

Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016. xxiv, 631 pp, ill. in color and b&w. ISBN 978-90-04-31186-2.

Review published February 2018

This book is as monumental and rich as the church that is its subject. In fact, rather than a study of a building, it is a wide-ranging narrative of the community that built it over a period of two [...] Read More

In neuem Glanz. Das Schächer-Fragment des Meisters von Flémalle im Kontext / With New Splendour. The Crucified Thief by the Master of Flémalle in Context

By Jochen Sander, editor

[Cat. exh. Liebieghaus, Frankfurt/M, Nov. 15, 2017 – February 18, 2018.] Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2017. 176 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-3-7954-3251-5.

Review published January 2018

This book is the catalogue for a 2017-2018 exhibition at the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt. The exhibition (which, sadly, I have not seen) is a small one, highlighting a single painting, [...] Read More

Drawing and the Senses. An Early Modern History (Harvey Miller Studies in Baroque Art)

By Caroline O. Fowler

Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016. 178 pp, 119 col. illus. ISBN 978-1-909400-39-9.

Review published January 2018

Caroline O. Fowler’s thoughtful study of early modern printed drawing books through the lens of the senses is a compelling contribution to the study of drawing both north and south of the Alps. The [...] Read More

Studies in Western Tapestry

By Iain Buchanan and Jacqueline Thibault Schaefer

Iain Buchanan, Habsburg Tapestries (Studies in Western Tapestry, vol. 4). Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. 373 pp, color and b&w illus. ISBN 978-2-503-51670-7.

Jacqueline Thibault Schaefer, The Brussels Tristan Tapestries: Myth Regenerated in Wool, Silk & Precious Threads (Studies in Western Tapestry, vol. 6). Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. 147 pp, color and b&w illus. ISBN 978-2-503-45982-8.

Review published January 2018

These entries in the Studies in Western Tapestry series testify to the variety of approaches to their subject. Iain Buchanan is an art historian with numerous tapestry publications, while Jacqueline [...] Read More

Adriaen van de Velde: Dutch Master of Landscape

By Bart Cornelis and Marijn Schapelhouman

[Cat. exh. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, June 24 – September 25, 2016; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, October 12, 2016 – 15 January 15, 2017.] London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016. 228 pp, 211 color and 33 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-907372-96-4.

Review published December 2017

Adriaen van de Velde (1636–1672) has long been admired by art historians for his delicate landscapes with their sensitive lighting and exquisite staffage, but the Dutch artist is not known with a [...] Read More

De l’expertise artistique à la vulgarisation au siècle des Lumières: Jean-Baptiste Descamps (1715-1791) et la peinture flamande, hollandaise et allemande

By Gaëtane Maës

Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016, 608 pp, 89 b&w, 20 color illus. ISBN 978-2-503-56770-9.

Review published December 2017

Jean-Baptiste Descamps was born in 1715 in Dunkirk, formerly a Flemish city which in 1662 had become annexed by France. He sought a profession as a painter and clearly wanted to orient himself towards [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews