3 August 2011 | Books, Medieval, Renaissance
Three new books on medieval and Renaissance Venice and Florence caught my attention recently. Most significantly: Blake de Maria’s Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice. The famous social stability of the multicultural Republic of Venice he calls partly a myth and credits partly to its “ethos of mediocritas, a state dictum [...]
11 June 2011 | Renaissance, Teaching, Uncategorized
As a regular teacher of survey courses in Western Art, I find it very satisfying when new scholarship addresses its problems and offers solutions. In the June 2011 Art Bulletin, Margaret A. Sullivan writes: “For artists, whose calling required careful observation of the world around them, this heightened appreciation of the spectator elevated their own [...]
7 June 2011 | Books, Career, Renaissance
When I learned of John T. Spike’s Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine after it was published last year, I immediately thought of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s 2008 book Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, and Ross King’s Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling of 2003. While I admit that much of the publishing world remains obscure to [...]
14 April 2011 | Renaissance
The Renaissance art historian Creighton Gilbert died on April 6, 2011. On his life and career see the entry in the Dictionary of Art Historians. We will post an obituary when it appears in the press.
14 April 2011 | Modern, Renaissance
The great art historian and critic Leo Steinberg died in New York City on March 13, 2011. Steinberg, more than any other historian of Renaissance art, believed in the power of pictorial structure to generate meaning. On Steinberg’s life and work see the New York Times obituary and the entry in the online Dictionary of [...]
28 January 2011 | Books, Renaissance
Among the new books I’ve received lately are two on Renaissance art written by distinguished scholars of literature: Michelangelo: A Life on Paper by Leonard Barkan and Blessed and Beautiful by Robert Kiely. I once took a graduate course on the Renaissance revival of antiquity with Barkan, a talented teacher who had us read classic [...]
1 December 2010 | Renaissance
In the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Woman’s Art Journal, the editors write: Even with the rising presence of art by women in museums and on bookstore shelves, Woman’s Art Journal continues to find a receptive audience for its mission: recognition of women artists of the past and present. From the overwhelming number of books and [...]
29 November 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Renaissance
The final issue of Decorative Arts includes reviews of two recent books by the new Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell. Hans Hubach considers the exhibition catalogue to Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor: Following the great success of his Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002), Thomas Campbell has once again succeeded in [...]
11 November 2010 | Books, Renaissance
In the Summer 2010 Representations Christopher Pye writes: In their introduction to the recent volume Renaissance Florence: A Social History, the editors offer a reflection on their own methodological moment … We are poised at an exciting moment in the history of our disciplines when we can with profit consider the ways in which the [...]
14 October 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books, Modern, Photography, Renaissance
Recently in the papers: In the Economist, reviews of Eadweard Muybridge at the Tate, and Bronzino at the Palazzo Strossi. In the FT, Jackie Wullschlager on four books on Caravaggio (Strinati, Fried, Graham-Dixon, Schütze). At the NYRBlog, a teaser of Willibald Sauerländer’s article on Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. In the Guardian, Rosemary Hill on the pre-Raphaelites [...]
7 October 2010 | Books, Renaissance, Theory
Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood have recently published Anachronic Renaissance, an expansion of their 2005 Art Bulletin “intervention” (pdf), a “reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance”: While a work of art does bear witness to the moment of its fabrication … it is equally important to understand its temporal instability: how it [...]
18 September 2010 | Africa, Ancient, Baroque/Neoclassical, Contemporary, Modern, Renaissance, Theory
Recently in the papers: Kaelen Wilson Goldie on Routes d’Arabie at the Louvre (The National) On Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art from Ancient Nigeria, previously in Santander, Madrid and London, now in Houston, and later in Indianapolis, Richmond and New York: Douglas Britt (Houston Chronicle); The Economist; Itziar Reyero (ABC.es); Richard Dorment (The Telegraph); Jonathan [...]
13 August 2010 | Architecture, Books, Renaissance
In caa.reviews, Roy Eriksen considers Christoph Luitpold Frommel’s 2007 book The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance: The publisher of The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance describes it as “a landmark survey and analysis of Italian Renaissance architecture by an internationally renowned expert in the field.” The claims are true … He channels into the volume [...]
9 August 2010 | Books, Renaissance
Diane Wolfthal, author of the widely reviewed books The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting, 1400-1530 (1989) and Images of Rape: The “Heroic Tradition” and its Alternatives (1999), now has a new book out – In and Out of the Marital Bed: Seeing Sex in Renaissance Europe. “This book explores images whose sexual content has all [...]
5 August 2010 | Museums, Renaissance, Teaching, Theory
A show at the Yale University Art Museum points to an issues that many graduate programs seems to be addressing in one way or another. Laurence Kanter says: “Original works of art have been forgotten. They’re being used as data, without any sense of whether they’re good, bad or indifferent.” He added: “No one wants [...]
22 July 2010 | Awards, Books, Renaissance
A Virginia newspaper, The News Leader, profiles UVA professor Cammy Brothers, whose book Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture recently won the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians: Michelangelo stands apart from his contemporaries. But is he [...]
1 July 2010 | Conferences, Islamic, Pre-Columbian, Renaissance
On July 9th, the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris will present “1500-1600. Entre Islam et Nouveaux Mondes: les réformes dans un contexte global,” in the Salle Walter Benjamin of the Galerie Colbert. The event aims to extend the Reformation’s questions of “idolatry” beyond the European context, and consider well-known Reformation images within a broader frame [...]
28 June 2010 | Architecture, Medieval, Renaissance
In the Wall Street Journal, Jay Pridmore considers Florence’s Ponte Vecchio: When the morning sun reaches across the Arno and hits the varied ochre tones, the whole bridge glows as one in the hazeless Florentine light. Visually, distinct elements weave together like immutable strands— genius, commerce and tyranny, to name three big ones—of the Florentine [...]
27 May 2010 | Renaissance
Plants in renaissance paintings usually have religious associations, but seldom if ever connections with mind-expanding drugs. Now, David Bellamy of Sotheby’s has decided that a plant held by a satyr in Botticelli’s canonical ‘Venus and Mars’ has hallucinogenic properties. After consulting with horticultural experts at Kew Gardens, Bellamy maintains that it is Datura stramonium – [...]
12 May 2010 | Books, Modern, Renaissance, Theory
I am fascinated by the systems through which art is deemed legitimate, and I taught a course on fakes and frauds this past January. The premise was that we can learn about how art is produced, controlled, and valued by focusing on taboo objects. Sometimes such scrutiny will result in a reattribution, such as the one [...]
