Recently Published Reviews

Philip Steadman presents his case for Johannes Vermeer's use of the camera obscura with prosecutorial flair, bringing in diagrams, reconstructions, and a variety of circumstantial evidence. Vermeer never wrote about his methods, and no physical evidence exists in the form of preparatory drawings or sketches. The inventory of his studio contents lists standard equipment, such as easels and canvases, without a hint about lenses, boxes, or any other unusual objects that might place a camera obscura in the artist's studio. As Steadman himself notes, the sole source of evidence for his conjectures lies within Vermeer's paintings. While… Full Review

Philip Sohm's Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy shines a brilliant new light upon the concept and descriptive terminology of artistic style. A worthy successor to his excellent Pittoresco. Marco Boschini, His Critics and Their Critiques of Painterly Brushwork in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Sohm's new book maintains a high standard of critical sophistication, accurately framing a subtle analysis of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stylistic vocabulary in relation to twentieth-century theories of language. He argues that the art-critical terminology of the period examined in the book was developed in an attempt to… Full Review

It would be difficult to overestimate the significance that has been given to the Florentine Accademia del Disegno in early modern art historiography. Founded in 1563 and generally credited to Giorgio Vasari, the first formal art academy in the West has assumed almost mythic proportions from the start. Its success was measured early, in the powerful influence it exerted on the European imagination, and it has assumed the status of a cultural monument of the first rank. Yet much has remained vague about its conception, its practices, and its functions. As Karen-edis Barzman notes in the concluding paragraph of her… Full Review

Two years after the foundation of the Society of Jesus in 1540, the first Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier disembarked at the Portuguese colony of Goa on the eastern seaboard of India. In rapid sequence, overseas missions were established on every known continent, including Japan (1549), China (1561), Mughal India (1580), and Paraguay (1609). Gauvin Bailey's ambitious study covers the artistic production of these four outer-circle Jesuit enterprises, highlighting their affinities and regional differences over more than two centuries until the Jesuits were expelled, in 1759 from Portuguese territories and 1767 from the Spanish empire. This dense volume, based on broad… Full Review

The exhibition and collection catalogue, Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art, published in conjunction with the exhibition Masterpieces of Japanese Art from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection, is Miyeko Murase's magnum opus. Collector Mary Griggs Burke notes in her introduction that she has been working with Murase for thirty-five years. It is quite clear when reading through this densely packed volume that Murase's many years of research have been poured into its pages. None of the writing appears stale, as essays on each piece have been refreshed with references to recent publications and… Full Review

The sometimes cordial, often contentious relationship of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin has inspired scholars, curators, novelists, and Hollywood filmmakers. Their personal differences and the divergences in their approaches to art, particularly when they shared a studio in Provence, have fascinated art historians and the broader public alike. Debora Silverman's Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art addresses both groups of readers. This ambitious goal may explain both the book's qualities and some of the problems it poses for the specialist. Silverman, a cultural historian, focuses on the religious background of each man… Full Review

During the approximately six centuries of its construction (1296–ca. 1900), Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence, was a focus of Florentine life not only because of its importance as a religious monument, but also because of the monetary expense and the enormous amount of time and energy invested in its building and decoration. Of all of the embellishments commissioned, the Duomo of Florence is most famous for the sculpture carried out for its interior and exterior, façade, and campanile. For hundreds of years, the Opera of Santa Maria del Fiore employed the most gifted sculptors working in Florence… Full Review

Following a symposium held at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, in 1995 that honored Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, director of landscape studies from 1972 to 1988, Mirka Benes and Dianne Harris commissioned an anthology of articles that present diverse methodological approaches to the history of the villa and the garden in France and Italy from ca. 1550 to 1800. Each of the eleven articles in Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France offers a stimulating analysis of specific sites, and the editors provide provocative introductions to important issues in the field. Benes clearly states in her introductory essay, "Italian… Full Review

The Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States 1760–1829 is the third monograph published by Timon Screech since 1996 and completes his panorama of late nineteenth-century Japanese culture. Though the title features both Japan's military ruler and period painting, the primary topics of the book are actually Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758–1829, chief shogunal councillor 1787–92, shogunal regent 1789–92) and the cultural history of his times. Screech covers this ground with great clarity, analyzing a diversity of aspects of Japanese culture from the bicameral nature of Japanese rule to the vagaries of shogunal kite-flying to the destruction of two… Full Review

The value of conserving vestiges of the past for future generations has become naturalized in our evaluation of urban change. Preservation of historic built environments is deemed a good thing, and those who stand in its way are considered mercenary, trading cultural value for short-term monetary return. Or so the argument goes. However, the line between old and new is increasingly hard to draw, as is the definition of cultural value. American historic preservation laws only apply to buildings and sites that are more than fifty years old: The 1950s have now reached "monumental" age, and attempts to preserve utilitarian… Full Review

Brilliant and hermetic, Byzantine art exhibitions have glittered across the millennial decade (1993–2004), leaving us to ponder what they have altered or reclaimed. The groundbreaking exhibition held in Athens in 1964 claimed in its title, Byzantine Art, an European Art. "Why?" rejoined Greek critic Iannes Tsarouches. "Why not call Byzantine art an American art? This isn't paradoxical: from a certain point of view Byzantium has much more in common with America than Europe" ("Parataires Skepseis Enos Episkepte tes Ektheseos vyzantines Technes," E Epitheorese Technes 113 (1964): 388). But in the United States, Byzantine studies seem to Robert Ousterhout "semi-marginalized,"… Full Review

In this monograph, Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada examine kuchi-e, or woodblock print frontispieces, that decorated Japanese magazines between 1890 and 1912. In seven chapters they assess kuchi-e from various perspectives relating to historical novels, Meiji literature, and traditional folklore and customs, as well as social changes, including women's issues. They also explore shifts in pictorial styles to provide a rich synthesis of image and literature. Merritt and Yamada assert that kuchi-e had an independent artistic value that is different from illustrations, and throughout the book they propose that, despite their seemingly minor position in the world of art… Full Review

Among the questions that have piqued the interest of Chinese art historians most in recent years is how painters were paid. Negotiations with patrons and clients were almost never a matter of record; indeed, fiscal transactions were rarely discussed, even by the parties involved, but rather conducted on the basis of mutually understood codes of value, taste, and reciprocity. Compensation might well come in the form of gifts and favors rather than money, further obscuring the outlines of the transaction. Ginger Hsü's A Bushel of Pearls: Painting for Sale in Eighteenth-Century Yangchow joins a number of recent studies that illuminate… Full Review

Time always takes revenge on a critic. Any writer with an acute sense of the contemporary in art is bound to appear dated eventually, so the recent exhibition and catalogue of Clement Greenberg's private collection at the Portland Art Museum necessarily raises the question of taste: Here it is the critic who is up for judgment. It is easy to notice the fallibility of Greenberg's choices, and in a way too obvious. Would Charles Baudelaire or Denis Diderot come off any better if we saw a show of their favorite pictures? Probably not. Would their best judgments seem suspect? The… Full Review

Surrealism: Desire Unbound is an anthology of scholarly essays published to accompany a new travelling exhibition on Surrealism. This large-scale, well-illustrated de facto catalogue features twelve essays by a diversity of scholars, including museum curators, academic art historians, and literary critics. The volume succeeds as a considerable contribution to the ample body of literature dedicated to the movement. As the title suggests, the central theme of the anthology is a reevaluation of the role of desire and eroticism in Surrealist literature, visual art, and political philosophy. Yet, the key terms such as "desire," "erotic," "pornography," and "sexuality"… Full Review