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[NB: All translations from the text are by the reviewers.] As summarized on the book’s back cover, the authors, Pierre Colman, professor emeritus at the Université de Liège, member of the Classe des Beaux-Arts of the Belgian Acedémie royale d'archéologie, and honorary member of the Commission royale des monuments, sites et fouilles, and his wife, Berthe Lhoist-Colman, art historian, include texts from twenty years of research on the study of the beautiful metal font of Saint-Barthélemy, in Liège, Belgium, a masterpiece of medieval art and probably the best-known baptismal font in the world. The book gathers ten of their… Full Review

From 1803 to 1805 the English watercolorist John Sell Cotman spent much time in the north of England and Wales under the patronage of a highly agreeable family of landed gentry, the Cholmeleys. In his early twenties at the time, the son of a wigmaker from Norwich, Cotman was eager to continue his sketching tours in the scenic north and Wales, tours that were considered de rigueur for young landscape painters of the day. Previously thought of as a medium for intimate, small-scale, personal, and spontaneous work, watercolor was emerging as a genre worthy of serious attention and respect. Cotman’s… Full Review

Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India offers a welcome examination of the work of the many British artists active in India during the late eighteenth and into the nineteenth century—including Johann Zoffany, William Hodges, Thomas and William Daniell, Tilly Kettle, James Baillie Fraser, Arthur William Devis, and Robert Home—as well as a double-barreled thesis. The art that these men produced on the subcontinent stimulated the Romantic Movement in England, the authors believe, and, in turn, was transformed into the “cultural imperatives” of the Victorian era in Great Britain, these assertions thereby necessitating a look at artists… Full Review

Hotei Publishing is a commercial press established in Leiden in the mid-1990s as a specialized publisher of finely designed and beautifully illustrated English language books on Japanese ukiyo-e prints. In recent years it has expanded to publish books on various Japanese arts, mainly of the Edo (1615–1868), Meiji (1868–1912), and Taishō (1912–26) periods. Catering at first primarily to the large numbers of ukiyo-e print collectors in the West, its ukiyo-e publications are nevertheless distinguished by the rigorous scholarship of its authors, both collectors and academics. Consequently, its publications have immensely enriched scholarly understanding of the ukiyo-e tradition. Building on… Full Review

Of the diverse artistic specialties that developed in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century, architectural painting was the last, fully emerging only during the 1650s. Interior and exterior views of major local buildings—real or imagined—along with depictions of the larger built environment of the rapidly growing Dutch cities allowed artists to celebrate national power and prosperity while examining aspects of visual experience also explored in many landscapes and genre paintings of the period: space and the interaction of solids and voids as revealed within varying conditions of natural light. Particular artistic problems are posed, however, by the need to… Full Review

Of the myriad exhibitions mounted worldwide to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth, Rembrandt and the Aesthetics of Technique at Harvard University’s Busch-Reisinger Museum stands out for its serious consideration of the very basis for such celebrations: the category of genius. Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator in the Department of Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts; William Robinson, Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings at the Fogg Art Museum; and their assistants deserve praise for resisting the temptation merely to trot out the museum’s Rembrandt holdings, or to organize yet another exhibition fixated on discriminating the hand of… Full Review

If large-scale exhibitions are a measure of an artist’s lasting success, then Yves Klein has admittedly fared better than some of his more neglected French peers. This is the third major exhibition of Klein’s work in a Paris museum since his death in 1962, and the second exhibition the Pompidou Center has devoted to the artist. Perhaps best known for his signature International Klein Blue (IKB) two-and-three dimensional works and his Anthropométries (1960–61), paintings resulting from his use of the nude female model as a “human paintbrush,” Klein still remains a contested figure despite the recognition he has received in… Full Review

Over the last few years, our knowledge of Tuscan painting in the late duecento has expanded considerably. In Siena, the recent unveiling of frescoes in the crypt of the cathedral has challenged our assumptions about late medieval Italian art. Previously unknown panel paintings have come to light as well, among them a dazzling small panel of the Enthroned Virgin and Child, recently acquired from a private collection by the National Gallery in London, and attributed to Cimabue by the National Gallery’s curator of early Italian art, Dillian Gordon. Gordon went on to associate the new acquisition with the closely related… Full Review

Conservation of the Last Judgment Mosaic, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague consists of a selection of papers presented at a symposium organized by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Office of the President of the Czech Republic. The theme centered on the completion of a twelve-year collaborative project to restore and preserve the Last Judgment mosaic in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral. The volume is divided into three sections: The first section contains seven chapters describing the art-historical context of the mosaic. In chapter 1, Marie Kostílková analyzes the documentation available on the making and repair of the mosaic between… Full Review

In today’s litigious ownership society, there are more visual arts permissions hurdles than ever before for both publishing and artistic expression. Publishers or individual authors are confronted with astronomical fees for copyright permissions and use fees for photo reproductions provided by museums or image providers. There are also enormous costs in time and in administering the photo research process. Living artists who draw on popular culture may face lawsuits from corporations or from other artists. Artists who strive to have their works published and documented may be excluded from publications because their rights managers have requested huge sums from a… Full Review