Book Reviews

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry

By Mathieu Deldicque and Marie-Pierre Dion (curators)

Château de Chantilly, June 7 – October 5, 2025.
Exh. cat. ed. by Mathieu Deldicque, English edition: Antwerp: Hannibal Books, 2025. 416 pp. ISBN-13: 978-9464941920 (distributed in the U.S. by Rizzoli). French edition: In Fine éditions d'art; Musée Condé, 2025. 496 pp, 460 color illus. EAN/ISBN: 978-2382032237.

Review published November 2025

The Château de Chantilly justifiably billed its exhibition as a landmark show, and for early modernists and medievalists, it was the most anticipated exhibit of the year. The famous manuscript has [...] Read More

Melchior Lorck. Catalogue Raisonné. Volume Five, Part Two.

By Erik Fischer, Ernst Jonas Bencard, and Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen

Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2025.
507 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-87-7597-407-8.

Review published October 2025

In music history the curse of completing a ninth symphony as a harbinger of a death plagued composers after Beethoven, including Schubert, Bruckner, Dvorak, and Mahler. Working on the earliest Danish [...] Read More

Dürer to Van Dyck: Drawings from Chatsworth House

By Tico Seifert (curator)

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, November 9, 2024 – February 23, 2025.

Exh. cat. by Charles Noble, Gregory Rubinstein and Christian Tico Seifert. Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland, 2024. 120 pp, 140 color illus. ISBN 9781911054672.

Review published September 2025

After a period of relative quiet, the last few years have seen a flurry of exhibitions of Northern European drawings across Britain, with more expected in 2026. These exhibitions have showcased the [...] Read More

Rubens’s Workshop

By Alejandro Vergara (curator)

Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, October 15, 2024 – February 16, 2025. Exh. cat. edited by Alejandro Vergara. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2024. 168 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-84-8480-622-6.

Review published September 2025

This is the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Prado between October 2024 and February 2025. It was organized by the Curator of Flemish paintings at the Museum, Alejandro Vergara, and is the [...] Read More

The Monument’s End. Public Art and the Modern Republic

By Marisa Anne Bass

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. 240 pp, incl. 33 color & 88 b/w illus.
ISBN 9780691238807 (hardback); 9780691240053 (ebook).

Review published September 2025

Monuments are surprisingly shaky. Usually built to last and designed to convey an unambiguous message, the monument’s capacity to provoke responses that range from boredom to hatred creates the [...] Read More

Turning Heads (Krasse Koppen): Rubens, Rembrandt and (en) Vermeer

By Nico Van Hout, Koen Bulckens, Michael W. Kwakkelstein, Lizzie Marx, and Friederike Schütt, with Vicki Bruce & Andy Young, Sara de Bosschere, Cian McLoughlin, Elvis Pompilio, and Stephan Vanfleteren.

Exh. cat. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, October 20, 2023 – January 21, 2024; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, February 24 – May 26, 2024. Antwerp: Hannibal Books and KMSKA, 2023. 191 pp, 136 color illus. ISBN 978 94 6466 664 9.
English and Dutch editions (English reviewed here)

Review published September 2025

As psychologists have long known, there is no visual experience more powerful than coming face-to-face with another human being. It is not surprising, then, that human physiognomy has occupied artists [...] Read More

Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

Book Reviews