Half a century ago, when I was a graduate student, art scholarship largely boiled down to connoisseurship; even iconography was considered over-interpretive (and the case can still be made that within [...] Read More
Miscellaneous
Condition: The Ageing of Art
Paul Taylor’s Condition: The Ageing of Art provides an invaluable introduction to a topic often overlooked by art historians: how the chemistry of materials collides with the caprices of time, and how [...] Read More
Inganno. The Art of Deception. Imitation, Reception, and Deceit in Early Modern Art
The Italian in its title (inganno means "deception") ought to give away the fact that this book is really not intended for HNA members, despite its otherwise neutral designated subject of "early [...] Read More
“Nach dem Leben und aus der Phantasie”. Niederländische Zeichnungen vom 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert aus dem Städelschen Kunstinstitut
Frankfurt’s Städel has a distinguished history, and it is sensibly offering its own treasures to the public in a series of exhibitions of the permanent collection, including remarkable holdings in [...] Read More
Old Master Prints and Drawings, a Guide to Preservation and Conservation
This beautifully produced book is packed with information that will be of great interest and utility to anyone involved with old prints and drawings. Far from being a narrowly prescriptive manual, the [...] Read More
Zeichnungen von Meisterhand. Die Sammlung Uffenbach aus der Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen
In 1763 the Frankfurt patrician Johann Friedrich Arman Uffenbach bequeathed his collection of books, instruments, about ten thousand prints, including an impressive Rembrandt collection, and one [...] Read More
Gärten und Höfe der Rubenszeit im Spiegel der Malerfamilie Brueghel und der Künstler um Peter Paul Rubens
The transitory nature of gardens certainly does not make them the most obvious subject for a museum exhibition, and indeed many would be hard put to envisage such an undertaking. Those who visit the [...] Read More
Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries, and England
Funerals are for the living, not the dead, conventional wisdom tells us. Anne Morganstern’s book reminds us that funeral monuments are for the living, too. This book identifies and interprets a [...] Read More
Le château de Boussu (Études et Documents, Monuments et Sites, 8.)
Though little known today, Netherlandish châteaux of the Renaissance once enjoyed a formidable reputation, serving as centres of aristocratic culture and illustrious patronage. With Charles V an [...] Read More
Three Volumes New Hollstein: Schnitzer, Groeningen, Van Doetecum
Hollstein’s German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts 1400-1700; volume XLVI: Johann Schnitzer to Lucas Schnitzer. Compiled by Ursula Mielke, edited by Tilman Falk. Rotterdam: Sound and Vision [...] Read More
Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection
One of sixteen catalogues of the extensive Lehman collection of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts and Islamic and Asian art, this volume covers the 153 European drawings that were brought together [...] Read More
Kunst voor de Markt/Art for the Market, 1500-1700 (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek/Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, vol. 50, 1999)
When the author of the first history of Netherlandish art, Karel van Mander, looked back on the origins of his subject, he would note that "in the time of the two Van Eycks, the city of Bruges was [...] Read More
Hof-, Staats- en Stadsceremonies/Court, State and City Ceremonies (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek/Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, vol. 49, 1998)
The Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek stands apart from the majority of art history periodicals by its policy of devising every issue around a single theme. Recent volumes devoted to a single [...] Read More