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
Book Reviews
Turning Heads (Krasse Koppen): Rubens, Rembrandt and (en) Vermeer
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
Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art
Every historian of Dutch art knows of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) but few know much about her. Flower painter, daughter of the famed anatomist Frederik Ruysch… and there it usually stops. There has not [...] Read More
Rembrandt-Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion; Samuel van Hoogstraten: The Illusionist; The Life and Work of the Painter: Dirck van Hoogstraten (1596-1640).
These three publications, one monograph and two exhibition catalogues, complement one another, celebrating three artists of very distinct characters, abilities, ambitions and generations: Dirck van [...] Read More
Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting at the Museo Nacional del Prado: Catalogue Raisonné
In his introduction explaining the organizing principles of this catalogue raisonné, José Juan Pérez Preciado discloses a crucial detail about the fifteenth-century Netherlandish paintings in the [...] Read More
Rubens and the Dominican Church in Antwerp: Art and Political Economy in an Age of Religious Conflict. (Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 67)
This book is the revised publication of a PhD thesis, defended by the author in 2021 at the University of York. Actually, it is about two very important painting commissions for the decoration of [...] Read More