Browse Recent Book Reviews

In addition to providing refuge for Europe's oppressed Jewry, seventeenth-century Amsterdam served as the hub of a theological movement devoted to effecting rapprochement between Jews and Christians. This program, known today as "philosemitism," was mainly the brainchild of Dutch and English Protestant millenarians who, inspired by their interpretation of biblical prophecy, held such reconciliation to be a precondition of messianic redemption. Also central to the effort was a leading member of Amsterdam's Jewish community, the Sephardic rabbi and publisher Menasseh ben Israel (1604–57). A devoted messianist who saw redemption as the reward for the good actions of all peoples, Menasseh… Full Review

If the standard exhibition catalogue of Chinese art is a collection of topical essays and entries that describe individual items, then Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is both more and less than what we normally expect. Wen C. Fong's book neither provides sufficient description of the exhibition's contents, allowing the reader to know what was in it, nor tells him or her what proportion of the exhibition is represented in the catalogue. In its 114 color plates, Between Two Cultures, one of the few published works… Full Review

Ebba Koch's Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays contains eleven essays published between 1982 and 1997 on the art and architecture produced under the Mughals (1526–1858), the longest-surviving and richest of all the dynasties to rule the Indian subcontinent. The texts range in length from a short, eleven-page reflection on the impact of the Jesuit Missions on the depictions of the Mughal emperors to a seventy-page, near book-length study of the decoration on the throne made for the emperor Shah Jahan in the Red Fort at Delhi. To meld the essays into a coherent whole, the illustrations from the… Full Review

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