It’s unfortunate that Jacques de Gheyn II is not widely known beyond Dutch specialists. He exemplifies the richness of his immediate cultural context and, more broadly, of the period surrounding 1600, when so many paradigms of European art began to change dramatically. New literature on his work is most welcome. The primary book on the de Gheyn family, I. Q. Van Regteren Altena’s Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1983), was based on the author’s dissertation research in the 1930s. Although full of valuable insights and providing a useful catalogue of works by the de Gheyn family, this three-volume publication is difficult to use, not widely available, and out of date. J. Richard Judson’s The Drawings of Jacob de Gheyn II (New York: Grossman, 1973) is similarly dated. Since these earlier publications, both of which show a keen appreciation of de Gheyn’s remarkable oeuvre, his bibliography has been sporadic, but Claudia Swan’s articles have appeared recently with new insights. Her current, concise study, organized around the polar relationship of naturalism and fantasy in de Gheyn’s work, lacks a comprehensive scope but admirably fulfills its more circumscribed aims. Swan’s understanding of early modern art theory, in particular the...