Book Reviews

Le ‘Ci nous dit’: L’image médiévale et la culture des laïcs au XIVe siècle : les enluminures du manuscrit de Chantilly

By Christian Heck

Turnhout: Brepols 2011. 358 pp, 824 color illus. ISBN 978-2-503-54220-1

Review published April 2013

Ci nous dit, originally known as Une composition de la Sainte Ecriture, was written around 1320 by an anonymous author perhaps in the region around Soissons, and survives today in 18 exemplars. The [...] Read More

Pygmalion in Bavaria. The Sculptor Ignaz Günther and Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory

By Christiane Hertel

University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2011, 270 pp, 89 b&w and 27 color illus. ISBN 978-0-271-03737-0

Review published November 2012

Rococo remains an art historical stepchild, the more so for Bavarian Rococo. Seldom taught even in survey classes, let alone in stand-alone courses, its richly decorated surfaces may fascinate, but [...] Read More

Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence

By Marjorie Wieseman

With contributions by H. Perry Chapman and Wayne E. Franits. [Cat. exh. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, October 5, 2011 – January 15, 2012.] Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum; New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2011. 227 pp, 111 color plates, 10 b&w illus. ISBN 978-03-0017-899-9

Review published November 2012

This exquisite volume is as enticing as its title implies, exploring much more than the works which were on view in the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The additional paintings provide a [...] Read More

Bartholomeus van der Helst (ca. 1613-1670). Een studie naar zijn leven en werk

By Judith van Gent

Zwolle: WBooks, 2011. 448 pp, 270 illus. ISBN 978-90-400-7805-7

Review published November 2012

When Joshua Reynolds visited Amsterdam he admired a famous group portrait of the city’s Civic Guards: “the first picture ... in the world, comprehending more of those qualities which make a perfect [...] Read More

Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen (Studien zur interna-tionalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, 77)

By Anne Charlotte Steland

Peters-berg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2010, 2 vols, vol. 1: text, 384 pp, 13 illus; vol. 2: images, 328 pp, 648 illus. ISBN 978-3-86568-388-5

Review published November 2012

Anne Charlotte Steland’s monograph and catalogue raisonné of the Dutch Italianate painter and draughtsman Herman van Swanevelt’s large oeuvre of paintings and drawings is the impressive result of [...] Read More

The Eye of the Connoisseur: Authenticating Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries (Amsterdam Studies in Dutch Golden Age)

By Anna Tummers

Los Angeles: Getty Publications; Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011. 349 pp, 155 color illus., 7 full-page details. ISBN 978-1-60606-084-1

Review published November 2012

Connoisseurship is a methodology that continues to befuddle and, depending on opinions, to infuriate parties involved – art dealers, collectors, curators, and researchers. Representing an inexact [...] Read More