Exhibition and Exhibition Catalogue Reviews

Rembrandt in Amsterdam: Creativity and Competition

By Stephanie S. Dickey and Jochen Sander, eds.

[Cat. exh. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, July 16 – September 6, 2021; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, October 6, 2021 – January 30, 2022.] New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 2021. 384 pp, 250 color & b&w illus. ISBN 9780300249934.

Review published September 2021

That such a major exhibition dedicated to situating Rembrandt in the competitive art market of Amsterdam could be successfully presented this year, after delays due to the world health crisis and its [...] Read More

Mythological Passions: Titian, Veronese, Allori, Rubens, Ribera, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velázquez

By Miguel Falomir and Alejandro Vergara with Sheila Barker and Javier Moscoso

Exh. Cat. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, March 2 – July 4, 2021. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2021. 192 pp, numerous color illus. ISBN 978-84-8480-640-6.

Review published April 2021

It must have been one of the most satisfying and challenging tasks with which a museum curator can be faced. To be presented with six of the finest pictures ever executed, namely Titian’s poesie [...] Read More

Leiden circa 1630. Rembrandt Emerges

By Jacquelyn N. Coutré, ed., with contributions by Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Stephanie S. Dickey, Piet Bakker, and Janet M. Brooke

Exh. Cat. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON, August 24 – December 1, 2019; The Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, March 7 – September 27, 2020; The McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, December 5, 2020 – February 21, 2021; The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, ON, March 13 – May 30, 2021. Kingston, ON: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2019. 359 pp, 205 illus., mostly in color. ISBN 978-1-55339-419-8. In English and French.

Review published September 2020

The Agnes Etherington Art Centre joined the celebrations of the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death (or immortality, if you will) with a traveling exhibition combining collection works and loans [...] Read More

Black in Rembrandt’s Time

By Elmer Kolfin and Epco Runia, eds., with contributions by Stefanie Archangel, Mark Ponte, Marieke de Winkel, and David de Witt

Exh. Cat., The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, March 5 – May 31, 2020, extended to September 10, 2020. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2020. 135 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-625-8372-6 (English), 978-94-625-8371-9 (Dutch).

Review published August 2020

In recent decades, art museums in Europe and North America have increasingly staged exhibitions contextualizing the multi-dimensional nature of our shared cultural heritage. The decision to mount [...] Read More

Pieter de Hooch in Delft. From the Shadow of Vermeer

By Anita Jansen

Exh. cat. Museum Prinsenhof, Delft, October 11, 2019 – February 16, 2020. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2020. 224 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-6258327-6.

Review published January 2020

Somewhat surprisingly, the present exhibition is the first ever devoted to Pieter de Hooch in The Netherlands. There have been exhibitions that featured his work in numbers among other Delft Masters, [...] Read More

Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer: Parallel Visions / Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer: Miradas afines

By Alejandro Vergara, ed.

Exh. cat. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, June 24 – September 29, 2019. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2019. 252 pp, illustrated in color. ISBN 978-96-8167-048-3.

Review published August 2019

The title of the exhibition might suggest a gathering of crowd-pleasing Old Masters to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Prado. Instead, the curator Alejandro Vergara tackles an intellectually [...] Read More

Early Rubens

By Sasha Suda and Kirk Nickel, eds.

Exh. cat. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, April 6 – September 2, 2019; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, October 12, 2019 – January 5, 2020. Munich – London – New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2019. 293 pp, illustrated in color. ISBN 978-1-988788-10-4 (Art Gallery of Ontario); ISBN 978-3-7913-5844-4 (DelMonico Books).

Review published August 2019

Peter Paul Rubens towers over seventeenth-century Baroque painting as only Bernini does in sculpture. Both matched artistic productivity, versatility, technique, and genius with supreme talents as [...] Read More

Rubens. The Power of Transformation

By Gerlinde Gruber, Sabine Haag, Stefan Weppelmann and Jochen Sander, eds.

(Exh. cat. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, October 17, 2017 – January 21, 2018; Städel Museum, Frankfurt a. M., February 8 – May 21, 2018.) Munich: Hirmer, 2017. 312 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-3-7774-2858-1 (English).

Review published August 2018

Rubens. The Power of Transformation at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, was a truly opulent show about the creative processes of Peter Paul Rubens. The KHM [...] Read More

François Ier et l’art des Pays-Bas

By Cécile Scailliérez, ed.

Cat. exh. Musée du Louvre, Paris, October 18, 2017 – January 15, 2018. Paris: Somogy éditions d’Art, 2017. 479 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-27572-1304-9.

Review published June 2018

Leonardo da Vinci, Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio: these are the names are traditionally associated with the patronage of Francis I, who is chiefly [...] Read More

Painting Beauty: Caesar van Everdingen (1616/1617-1678)

By Christi M. Klinkert and Yvonne Bleyerveld, eds.

Cat. exh. Stedlijk Museum, Alkmaar, September 24, 2016 – January 22, 2017. Zwolle: Waanders, 2016. 208 pp, 150 colored illus. ISBN 978-94-6262-108-4.

Review published October 2017

Halfway through a painting career spanning nearly forty years Caesar van Everdingen (1616/17 – 1678; active 1636 – 1673) created an unusual portrait historié depicting Diogenes Looking for an Honest [...] Read More

Hercules Segers: Painter Etcher

By Huigen Leeflang and Pieter Roelofs, eds.

Cat. exh. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, October 7, 2016 – January 8, 2017; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 13 – May 21, 2017. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2016. 700 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-94-6208-342-4.

Review published September 2017

Hercules Segers: Painter, Etcher does much to advance our understanding of an artist whose work is often described as enigmatic and – as the accompanying exhibition calls it – ‘mysterious.’ Since the [...] Read More

Hieronymus Bosch, Visions of Genius / Bosch. The 5th Centenary Exhibition

By Larry Silver

Het Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, February 13 – May 8, 2016. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, May 31 – September 11, 2016.

Review published April 2017

Matthijs Ilsink and Jos Koldeweij, Hieronymus Bosch, Visions of Genius. [Cat. exh. Het Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, February 13 – May 8, 2016.] Brussels: Mercatorfonds, distributed by Yale [...] Read More

The Art of Clara Peeters

By Alejandro Vergara, ed.

With essays by Alejandro Vergara and Anne Lenders. Cat. exh. Museum Rockoxhuis, Antwerp, June 16 – October 2, 2016; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, October 25, 2016 – February 19, 2017. Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten; Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016. 136 pp, fully illus. in color. ISBN 978-84-8480-324-9

Review published April 2017

The Art of Clara Peeters was an especially welcome exhibition shown at the Rockoxhuis in Antwerp and the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid not only because of the attraction generally held by [...] Read More

Das Paradies auf Erden. Flämische Landschaften von Bruegel bis Rubens

By Uta Neidhardt and Konstanze Krüger, eds.

Cat. exh. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, October 1, 2016 – January 15, 2017. Translations from Dutch by Susanne Henriette Karau and Rolf Erdorf. Dresden: Sandstein Verlag; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2016. 368 pp, fully illustrated in color. ISBN 978-3-95498-252-3

Review published April 2017

The Gemäldegalerie in Dresden has a rich collection of Flemish landscape paintings of the highest quality. Of the approximately 150 works from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, roughly [...] Read More

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (ca. 1475-1533). De Renaissance in Amsterdam en Alkmaar

By Daantje Meuwissen

With contributions by Peter van den Brink et al. Cat. exh. Amsterdam Museum; Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar; Sint Laurenskerk, Alkmaar, March 15 – June 29, 2014. Zwolle: Waanders, 2014. 319 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-94-91196-96-6

Review published November 2016

In northern Europe, the early sixteenth-century art world was crowded with artists of extraordinary talent: Jan Gossart, Bernaert van Orley, and Lucas van Leyden in the Low Countries, as well as [...] Read More