Book Reviews

Looking East. Rubens’s Encounter with Asia

By Stephanie Schrader, ed.

With contributions by Burglind Jungmann, Kim Young-Jae, and Christine Göttler. [Exh. publication, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, March 5 – June 9, 2013.] Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum 2013. 116 pp, 46 color illus. ISBN 978-1-60606-131-2

Review published November 2013

The present publication accompanied a small but exquisite exhibition on Rubens's so-called Man in Korean Costume of 1617 in the J. Paul Getty Museum whose goal was to establish, one: whether the [...] Read More

De Geboorte van Rubens/ The Birth of Rubens

By Carl Van de Velde and Prisca Valkeneers

Ghent/Kortrijk: Uitgeverij Snoeck; Antwerp: Centrum Rubenianum VZW 2013. 112 pp, 9 color, 12 b&w illus. ISBN 978-94-6161-098-0

Review published November 2013

This most welcome paperback publication in both Dutch and English (translated by Jantien Black) aims to settle the question once and for all as to when and where Rubens was born. Recorded in [...] Read More

Frans Pourbus le jeune (1569-1622): Le portrait d’apparat à l’aube du Grand Siècle. Entre Habsbourg, Médicis et Bourbons

By Blaise Ducos

Dijon: Faton 2011. 400 pp, more than 300 col. pls. ISBN: 978-2-878-44151-2

Review published November 2013

Studying artists in Rubens’s shadow is notoriously difficult for it takes time, empathy and a thorough understanding of Northern Baroque to distinguish between the inventions of the omnivorous Rubens [...] Read More

Brueghel: Gemälde von Jan Brueghel d. Ä

By Mirjam Neumeister, ed.

[Cat. exh. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, March 22 – June 16, 2013.] Munich: Hirmer 2013. 448 pp, all col. pls. ISBN 978-3-7774-2036-3

Review published November 2013

Members of the Wittelsbach family were keen on the work of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and by the eighteenth century they had accumulated significant numbers of his works, and ones by members of his [...] Read More

The Bloemaert Effect: Colour and Composition in the Golden Age

By Liesbeth M. Helmus and Gero Seelig, eds.

With contributions by Marten Jan Bok, Albert J. Elen, Ghislain Kieft, and Elizabeth Nogrady. [Exh. cat. Centraal Museum, Utrecht, November 11, 2011 – January 29, 2012; Staatliches Museum, Schwerin, February 24 – May 28, 2012.] Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag 2011. 192pp. ISBN 978-3-8656-8731-9

Review published April 2013

If anybody deserves to be designated “the father of the Utrecht school,” it is Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651). A wildly successful teacher, Bloemaert attracted scores of students and shop assistants, [...] Read More

The Slave in European Art. From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem (Warburg Institute Colloquia, 20)

By Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, eds.

London/Turin: Warburg Institute/Nino Aragno, 2012. 386 pp, 15 color, 157 b&w illus. ISBN 978-1-908590-43-5

Review published April 2013

Yet another of the splendid consequences for scholarship of the revival of the dormant project, The Image of the Black in Western Art, was the association of its images with the iconographic library [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews