Recently Published Reviews

In the past several decades, major art exhibitions and significant scholarly publications on seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and prints of daily life have manifested the enthusiastic scrutiny of such imagery by scholars and the public alike. The thousands of seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings offer seemingly accurate views of daily life; however, as numerous scholars have addressed, the subject matter of such scenes has been selectively determined, resulting in the omission of many ordinary aspects of Dutch life. Scholars have posited various methodological approaches to recover the meaning and function of such images for their seventeenth-century middle- and upper-class viewers. In Dutch… Full Review

Building on recent scholarship that has revealed the degree to which the printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi was not a simple copyist but an independently minded artist, Lisa Pon’s book, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print, argues that his works are products of collaboration: among the engraver, the inventor, and the publisher on the one hand, and between the viewer and the image on the other. Pon situates Marcantonio’s engravings against the rise during the sixteenth century of what she describes as the “artist-author”—celebrated most memorably in Giorgio Vasari’s description of Michelangelo’s heroic single-handed paintings of… Full Review

By now it should be evident to artists that making art is not without some risk of exposure to harmful substances. But it is also evident that many artists do not pay much attention to the risk. Art students—even senior undergraduate and graduate students—are often wholly unprepared and uninformed about how to reduce their exposure to toxic materials, or even about what the risks are. This must mean that their teachers, who are also artists, do not discuss these issues with them and, perhaps, are relatively uninformed themselves. Mention health and safety issues to your colleagues… Full Review

As a first exposure to the subject of health hazards in the studio, Michael McCann’s book provides an excellent overview of the subject. His catchy chapter titles, such as “Is Your Art Killing You?” and “How Art Materials Can Hurt You,” are exactly the type of attention grabbers needed to encourage the artist or student to read more. As McCann notes in the introductory section, part 1, entitled “Chemical and Physical Hazards,” is meant as a general introduction, to be read first; part 2, “Art and Craft Techniques,” provides specific information organized by particular mediums and practices. … Full Review

Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada was produced to celebrate the recent promised gift to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa of a group of Dutch and Flemish drawings assembled by collectors residing in Toronto.[1] In the exhibition, works from this generous gift have been supplemented with sheets from the National Gallery’s own collection. Ottawa already owns several outstanding drawings from this region, including Gerard David’s small metalpoint copies of heads from the Ghent Altarpiece (cat. no. 1). The private-collection pieces will add substantially to the existing holdings of eighty Dutch and Flemish drawings. … Full Review