Recently Published Reviews

The American public has not given works by Barbizon artists star billing in a little over a century. Where once Americans were proud of themselves for having recognized Millet's talents early, they are now harder to please. Since Impressionist art has risen to blockbuster fame, it takes a monumental effort to call attention to the considerable but subtle charm of what Millet referred to as "rustic art." The subtitle of this exhibition, "Drawn into the Light," implies that Millet could... Full Review

Most Americans will know about Tilman Riemenschneider from the wonderful 1980 publication, Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, by Michael Baxandall, one of the rare discussions of German wood sculpture in English, or perhaps from the scattered fragments of the artist's works in American museums, such as Cleveland or Raleigh (an essay by William Wixom in the present catalogue chronicles "Riemenschneider in America" and offers a useful checklist). Now viewers have the opportunity... Full Review

The most substantial exhibition devoted to Gustave Courbet's paintings since the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Courbet Reconsidered a decade ago was presented at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne last winter from November through March. It then traveled to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, where it closed on May 30. Titled Courbet: Artiste et Promoteur de Son Oeuvre, it was organized by Lausanne's director, Jürg Zutter, in collaboration with the noted Courbet scholar Petra... Full Review

Most art historians seem to consider Genoa a quiet, provincial backwater that has little to offer to an inquisitive mind. One reason for this misconception may be that the Genoese purportedly guard their privacy and are said to keep their artistic treasures to themselves rather than sharing them with a wider public. However, as any visitor to this city can attest, there is more than just a glimpse to catch of the rich trove of artworks, many of which are readily accessible in churches,... Full Review

The prevailing tone of Icons of the Left: Benjamin and Eisenstein, Picasso and Kafka After the Fall of Communism is exasperation. "The predicament of leftist intellectuals working in capitalist society, like myself," says Otto Karl Werckmeister, "has been that their principled critique of capitalism has nearly always been advanced in a hypothetical mode" (p. 5). Arguing for a solution to this problem, which--consistent with his Marxism--he believes to have been caused by the separation... Full Review

With A. E. Popham's publication in 1932 of Abraham Ortelius's epitaph on Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the traditional figure of Droll Bruegel, of Peasant Bruegel, was soon replaced by Bruegel the peintre philosophe, as Charles de Tolnay characterized him in his monograph of 1935. It is thus understandable that scholars have sought to locate Bruegel's "audience" among the intellectual circles of Antwerp, especially Ortelius and his colleagues, the classical scholars around Christophe... Full Review

In his long-awaited monograph on the Tempietto del Clitunno, Judson Emerick seeks to dispel the myths surrounding this enigmatic building. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanists who discovered the building saw it as a Roman temple converted to Christian purpose. Thus, Leon Battista Alberti observed, "I myself have seen in Umbria a small ancient temple..." (book 1, chapter 8). Modern scholars however, have concluded that the structure was built in the medieval period, principally... Full Review

The reverberations of Saint Louis's oath to embark on his first crusade to the Holy Land were acutely felt throughout the royal domain. In examining this period, Daniel Weiss draws a connection between the iconographic program of the Ste-Chapelle in Paris (1244–48) and the Old Testament manuscript produced in Acre shortly after 1250, now in the Bibliothèque d'Arsenal in Paris (MS 5211) (8). This bold confederacy of monuments is based on the common themes of sacred kingship, holy war, wisdom,... Full Review

In eighteenth-century Britain, expanding mercantile enterprise, supported through rapid colonial expansion, yielded broad cultural expectations concerning access not only to wealth, but also to the status traditionally accorded to the aristocratic elite. A burgeoning material economy confused the visual economy producing status. Customary signs of wealth and standing were devalued, awash in a flood of luxury goods. Simultaneously, these very markers, desired for their power to project an... Full Review

As suggested by the title Pacific Arcadia: Images of California, 1600-1915, this exhibition and the book that accompanies it study the changing and inducible imagery of the "California Dream" as presented by Claire Perry, curator of American art at Stanford's Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Perry traces how, over a period of centuries, a variety of pictorial imagery was used to market California as the golden land of opportunity. Perry's text, based on her doctoral dissertation, not... Full Review