Book Reviews

The Northern Renaissance (Art & Ideas)

By Jeffrey Chipps Smith

London/ New York: Phaidon, 2004. 447 pp, 241 illus. (many in color), ISBN 0-7148-3867-5

Review published November 2005

In line with the aims of Phaidon’s “Art & Ideas” series, Jeffrey Chipps Smith has written a portable and reasonably priced introduction to the period for students and the general reader. His [...] Read More

Layers of Illusion: The Mayer van den Bergh Breviary

By Brigitte Dekeyzer

Published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Het Breviarium Mayer van den Bergh, Vorstelijke luxe en devotie’ at the Mayer van den Bergh Museum, Antwerp, October 16, 2004 – January 6, 2005. [Ghent]: Ludion, 2004. 208pp. ISBN 90-5544-534-7

Review published November 2005

In 1994, the Mayer van den Bergh Breviary was loosed by conservators from the restrictive neo-Gothic binding that had discouraged both scholarly perusal and photography and carefully dismantled. Its [...] Read More

Carel Fabritius 1622-1654

By Frederik J. Duparc

With contributions by Ariane van Suchtelen and Gero Seelig. [Cat. exh. Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague, September 24, 2004 – January 9, 2005; Staatliches Museum, Schwerin, January 28 – May 16, 2005.] Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2004. 160 pp, 80 col. illus., 35 b&w illus. German ed: ISBN 90-400-9029-7 (pb); Dutch ed: ISBN 90-400-8987-6 (pb); English ed. ISBN 90-400-95-8989-2 (hb)/ 90-400-95-8988-4 (pb)

Review published November 2005

On the morning of Monday, October 12, 1654, the former sexton of the Oude Kerk in Delft was sitting to Carel Fabritius for his portrait in the latter’s studio on the Doelenstraat. Between 10 and 10:30 [...] Read More

Am Anfang war das Wort. Das Ende der “stommen schilderkonst” am Beispiel Rembrandts

By Christiane Häslein

Weimar: VDG, Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2004. 317 pp, 13 b&w illus. ISBN 3-89739-427-8

Review published November 2005

The point of departure for Christiane Häslein is the observation that in many of his works, Rembrandt attempts to visualize the intangible: the spoken word. She explains this phenomenon as the [...] Read More

Time and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

By Susan Donahue Kuretsky

With contributions by Walter S. Gibson, Catherine Levesque, Erik P. Löffler, Lynn Federle Orr, and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. [Cat. exh. Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, April 8 – June 19, 2005; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, August 20 – October 30, 2005; J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, KY, January 10 – March 16, 2006.] Poughkeepsie, NY: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 2005; distributed by the University of Washington Press, Seattle. 299 pp, 161 b&w illus., 81 color plates. ISBN 0-964426-37-4

Review published November 2005

Scholarship on seventeenth-century Dutch art has tended to be conservative, for the most part sticking to the well-trodden paths of archival research, iconography, and Stilgeschichte. On the rare [...] Read More

Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution

By Wayne Franits

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 328 pp, 247 illus. ISBN 0-3001-0237-2

Review published November 2005

Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution represents a publishing event: a new survey devoted solely to the eponymous phenomenon, “from its first manifestations in [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews