Browse Recent Book Reviews

Cynthia Hahn’s new study of illustrated saints’ Lives offers its readers a penetrating account of a highly important category of medieval imagery, as well as a thoughtful treatment of topics of interest to scholars working in a wide range of fields within art history. On its most basic level, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century lucidly describes how the concept invoked by its title—the belief that visual images are “portrayed on the heart” as a result of their viewers’ devout attention—underlay the importance assigned to narrative imagery within… Full Review

Keith L. Eggener’s recent book, Luis Barragán’s Gardens of El Pedregal, published by Princeton Architectural Press, is a welcome in-depth study of the urban design, landscape, and architecture of Barragán’s 1,250 acre Gardens of El Pedregal residential subdivision, sited in the El Pedregal lava fields in the southern part of Mexico City. This well-researched book provides much-needed critical commentary on this elusive project, which is now mostly destroyed and is primarily known to us through the evocative photographs of Armando Salas Portugal. Luis Barragán is probably Mexico’s best-known architect and landscape architect of the twentieth… Full Review

The South Indian beach town of Mahabalipuram, once known as Mamallapuram, was the primary seaport of the Pallava kings who claimed authority over the surrounding Tamil-speaking region from the sixth to ninth centuries C.E. While the Pallavas reigned, artisans carved the site’s natural granite outcroppings into elegant sculptures and many architectural forms. The most dramatic of these, an entire cliff sculpted with dozens of colossal yet graceful figures of humans, animals, and deities, is the focus of this book. The subject of this composition has been a matter of extensive scholarly debate for over a century. Does it describe celebrations… Full Review

Making Culture Visible: The Public Display of Photography at Fairs, Expositions, and Exhibitions in the United States, 1847–1900 addresses the changing reception of photography from its early days up to the turn of the century as a function of expanding exhibition opportunities and strategies. It is the eighth volume in the Gordon and Breach series “Documenting the Image” (now distributed by Routledge) intended to promote visual collections from around the world and to bring out the influences and implications of visual documentation and communication. Julie K. Brown’s study is a worthy addition to… Full Review

More than a generation ago, Anthony Blunt and Denis Mahon developed ways of thinking about Nicholas Poussin and his art that, although recently the subject of prolonged scrutiny and occasional criticism, still remain canonical. Poussin, the French-born philosopher-painter, returned to his native country as an adult only briefly, when commanded by Cardinal Richelieu to organize the renovation of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. This great painter was by choice a lifelong resident of Rome--and all the essential sources of his art were Italian. Poussin’s stylistic development was mapped out with care by Mahon, and a great deal was said… Full Review

A History of Art in Africa is the product of two decades of research and writing by a team of scholars who represent Africanist art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and other teachers of African visual culture in the United States. Led by Monica Visonà and Robin Poynor, the team includes Herbert M. Cole and Michael D. Harris. The book is intended to be a general undergraduate text on African art and so fills a gap that has plagued Africanists for years. Until recently, they were forced by the lack of such a book to make do with occasional exhibition catalogues and… Full Review

In her latest book, Joan B. Landes tackles one of the French Revolution’s most recalcitrant iconographic paradoxes. How is it, she asks, that popular prints relied so heavily on female figures to embody notions of liberty, justice, and the French Republic at a time when the flesh-and-blood women of France were decisively drummed out of public political activity? She finds her answer in a deeply divided realm that she terms “graphic politics,” where visual and political rhetoric interacted to produce citizens of the newly imagined French republic. Visualizing the Nation: Gender, Representation, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France… Full Review

Several publications released in the past decade have reinvigorated studies of Leonardo da Vinci and, more specifically, have spurred an ongoing critical reappraisal of his early work. Thorny matters, including the nature of his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, the range of his experience before entering into that master’s workshop, his delayed matriculation in the Florentine painters’ guild, and--perhaps the slipperiest question of all--how the young artist struggled to find his own style, have been addressed in a groundswell of articles, exhibitions, and monographic studies. Even as the exotic legends surrounding his biography are debunked and the theme of his… Full Review

While a number of recent exhibitions have examined Symbolist art in a European context, Kingdom of the Soul: Symbolist Art in Germany 1870–1920 was the first international show to focus exclusively on German art from the turn-of-the-century period.[1] Despite the inclusive parameters in its title, most of works included date from the Wilhelmine period (1890–1914). Coorganized by the English art historian, Simon Reynolds, and Ingrid Ehrhardt, curator at Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, Kingdom of the Soul presented almost two hundred works of painting, sculpture, and graphic arts to audiences in Germany, England, and Sweden. Since many of these nearly seventy artists… Full Review

The “Pagan Fables” in Dutch Painting of the Golden Age: Narrative Subject Matter from Classical Mythology in the Northern Netherlands, ca. 1590–1670 is not the first publication of Eric Jan Sluijter’s groundbreaking dissertation on the representation of Ovid’s fables in Dutch painting. Many cherish their copy of the privately produced 1986 edition, with its stamp-size images and unglued pages. Even then Ivan Gaskell expressed the wish that this low-cost issue would soon be followed by a commercial edition, preferably in English. With the present volume this desideratum has been partially fulfilled. Its large format accommodates the original text and leaves… Full Review