Exhibition and Exhibition Catalogue Reviews

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

2016 Publications on Hieronymus Bosch

By various authors

Review published November 2016

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

Fantastische Welten. Albrecht Altdorfer und das Expressive in der Kunst um 1500

By Stefan Roller and Jochen Sander

Cat. exh. Städel Museum and Liebighaus, Frankfurt, November 5, 2014 – February 8, 2015; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, March 17 – June 14, 2015; in conjunction with the University of Leipzig. Munich: Hirmer 2014. 288 pp, 255 color illus. ISBN 978-3-777-42266-4

Review published April 2016

I always thought that the term "expressive" was a modernist or twentieth-century concept, in which the depiction of figure types and formal elements conjured up a peculiar state of mind or conveyed [...] Read More

Emotions. Pain and Pleasure in Dutch Painting of the Golden Age

By Gary Schwartz, with contributions by Ann Demeester and Machiel Keestra

Cat. exh. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, October 11 – February 15, 2015. Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2014. 152 pp, 80 col. illus. ISBN 978-94-6208-170-3.

Review published November 2015

The 2010 issue of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, edited by Stephanie Dickey and Herman Roodenburg and devoted to ‘The Passions in the Arts of the Netherlands’ and several other recent [...] Read More

Two Exhibition Catalogs on Rembrandt

By various authors

Review published November 2015

Jonathan Bikker and Gregor J.M. Weber, Marjorie E. Wieseman and Erik Hinterding, with contributions by Marijn Schapelhouman and Anna Krekeler. Editorial Consultant Christopher White, Rembrandt: The [...] Read More

Rubens in Private: The Master Portrays his Family

By Ben van Beneden, ed.

Cat. exh. The Rubenshuis, Antwerp, March 28 – June 28, 2015. London: Thames & Hudson, 2015. 280 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-0-500-09396-2

Review published November 2015

This beautifully produced and much anticipated book is the companion to the first-ever exhibition focusing on the more private side of Rubens’s genius – a selection of self-portraits and portraits of [...] Read More