Book Reviews

Pleasure and Piety. The Art of Joachim Wtewael

By James Clifton, Liesbeth M. Helmus, Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., with contributions by Stijn Alsteens and Anne W. Lowenthal

[Exh. cat. Centraal Museum, Utrecht, February 21-May 25, 2015; National Gallery of Art, Washington, June 28-October 4, 2015; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 1, 2015-January 31, 2016]; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 210 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-0-691-16606-3

Review published November 2015

The exhibition dedicated to Joachim Wtewael in Utrecht, Washington and Houston richly illuminates this painter’s work, including surprisingly great differences in scale and subject. Wtewael’s reduced [...] Read More

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Fall of the Rebel Angels. Art, Knowledge and Politics on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt

By Tine Luk Meganck

SilvanaEditoriale/ Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, 2014. 200 pp. 96 figs., numerous details. ISBN 978-8836-62920-6

Review published November 2015

Museum dossier publications on single artists or single artworks hold a special place on the library shelves of Netherlandish art scholars. After Louvre publications set an early standard, the [...] Read More

Death, Torture, and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (Visual Culture in Early Modernity)

By John Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, eds.

Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. xiv, 264 pp, b&w illus. ISBN 9781472433671

Review published November 2015

Conference volumes devoted to big themes in cultural history offer three kinds of opportunities for creating coherence. They may seek, like German Beiträge, to add important new case studies, [...] Read More

Landscape and Religion from Van Eyck to Rembrandt

By Boudewijn Bakker

Trans. Diane Webb. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. Xvii, 348 pp, 28 color pls. ISBN 978-1-4094-0486-6

Review published November 2015

As its title indicates, this book attempts to take a broader view at a much debated topic: the interpretation of landscape representations in northern Europe between ca. 1400 and 1670. Bakker is not [...] Read More

Trading Values in Early Modern Antwerp

By Christine Göttler, Bart Ramakers, and Joanna Woodall, eds.

Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 64 (2014), Leiden: Brill, 2014. 399pp, 180 color illus. ISBN 978-90-04-27215-6

Review published November 2015

Readers of this review need no introduction to the NKJ, which is still publishing important annual volumes on designated themes. This latest volume punningly plays on the term "values" to designate [...] Read More

Frans Halsen’ aan de muur: omgang met familieportretten in Haarlem

By S.A.C. Dudok van Heel and M.J. Bok

The Hague: Koninklijk Nederlandsch Genootschap voor Geslacht- en Wapenkunde 2013. Distributed by Uitgeverij Verloren, Hilversum. 57 pp, with numerous illus. ISBN 978-90-805689-7-6

Review published April 2015

The brief publication under review, richly illustrated in color with drawn and painted portraits, coats of arms and seals, and furnished with family trees and transcripts of archival documents, came [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews