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A hypothetical reader familiar with the history of twentieth-century Europe but unfamiliar with the art produced in that period would be baffled by the leading survey texts of our day. The three major totalitarian regimes of the century—Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Stalinist Soviet Communism—brought down upon humanity the most severe cataclysm in recorded history. Even the aftermath lasted through the end of the century. Yet our imaginary reader would find little evidence for that in textbooks on art and architectural history. Except for Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third Internationall (1919–20) and an occasional reference to the… Full Review

Because the appreciation of illustrated books requires direct contact between the object and the viewer, it is difficult to make the experience of viewing these books accessible to a wide audience—notwithstanding recent advances in digital “page turning.” Viewing a book is usually a solitary act; at most two people might be able to appreciate a volume at the same time. The images in them are encountered one by one in the sequence determined by the artist but at a pace set by the viewer. When a book is exhibited in a gallery, only one opening per volume may be displayed… Full Review

[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

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

The figure of Diego Velázquez has dominated discourse on painting at Philip IV’s court since at least the late seventeenth century. Jusepe Martínez (ca. 1675), Antonio Palomino (1724), and other writers emphasized and reinforced Velázquez’s preeminence in the decades following his death. Yet in the 1620s, when Velázquez was a recent arrival in Madrid, fellow artists and connoisseurs often compared his works unfavorably with those of other painters. Scholars have recently shown that the rivalries surrounding Velázquez shed broader light on artistic theory and practice in Madrid. William Jordan’s Juan van der Hamen y León and the Court of Madrid… Full Review

Published in 1832, Fanny Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans was a sensation in England and a scandal in the United States. Basing her remarks on observations she made during the two years she spent in Cincinnati, Trollope claimed that "in America that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of." The greatest difference between England and America, according to Trollope, was "the want of refinement." By all appearances, Cincinnati's aspiring middle class took Trollope's criticism to heart. Wendy Jean Katz argues that during the antebellum period Cincinnati artists participated "in… Full Review