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The Parthenon frieze has stimulated more discussion and controversy than any other monument of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Resistant to verifiable interpretation, the frieze continues to generate scholarly effort and stir interest among the general populace, for not only its aesthetic appeal but also its powerful potential as a cultural and political icon. Anyone who writes about the Parthenon frieze invites criticism and controversy, so it is to Jenifer Neils’s great credit that she takes on this behemoth. In a lively written and highly intelligent book, Neils lays out all that is known or hypothesized about… Full Review

An impressive and fascinating book about paintings and prints, atlases and travelers’ tales, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793 spans three hundred years and covers a vast geographic and visual landscape. It surveys civic spaces from the manicured parks in Mexico City and Lima to the Cerro Rico of Potosí and public works in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Richard Kagan’s perspective on urban forms differs from much of the traditional literature on Spanish American architecture. Urban Images says little about the daily experience of civic life, and even less about bricks and mortar or the planning and building of… Full Review

In Jacopo Bassano’s Nativity with Shepherds and Saints Victor and Corona altarpiece of 1568 for San Giuseppe in Bassano del Grappa (now Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa), Joseph is depicted nodding off in the lower left corner of the composition. Or is he? In one of the many subtle and erudite analyses in this magnificent book, Carolyn Wilson reconsiders the meaning of the sleeping Joseph in Bassano’s painting and, by extension, in Renaissance iconography in general. Rather than showing him as doddering or decrepit, Joseph’s recumbent pose is interpreted as indicating his reception of divine messages… Full Review

Samuel Edgerton has collaborated with photographer Jorge Pérez de Lara to produce a compelling book on the large mission complexes (conventos) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial Mexico. A chance trip to Mexico in 1987 introduced Renaissance scholar Edgerton to Mexico’s rich artistic and architectural heritage, and he quickly immersed himself in its study. Bringing his extensive knowledge of medieval and Renaissance European history, philosophy, theology, art, and architecture to bear on this topic, Edgerton offers a provocative approach to colonial Mexican art and architecture in a field that is entering a period of substantive growth. His primary purpose is to… Full Review

These three publications are among the latest of a surfeit of Cistercian titles published in recent years: Terryl Kinder surveys Cistercian life and architecture throughout Europe with emphasis on the medieval period, Peter Fergusson and Stuart Harrison chronicle one of the earliest Cistercian houses in England from its founding through the twentieth century, while Megan Cassidy-Welch speculates on the use of monastic spaces in thirteenth-century Yorkshire. Though each work has its own focus, they all benefit from the comparatively voluminous, readily available primary documents on Cistercian history, such as the statutes decreed at the annual General Chapter meetings, the Rule… Full Review

Textbooks are lightning rods for criticism. The purpose of a textbook is to distill the latest scholarship in a wide array of fields for a nonspecialist, usually undergraduate audience. But because it must sacrifice depth for breadth, the textbook is easily criticized by area specialists. Therefore, in an effort to appease as many scholars as possible, it ends up presenting a bricolage of perspectives and thus loses any sense of a single authorial intent. Moreover, no matter how hard the revisionist author might try, the textbook usually remains conservative, muting the impact of new scholarship and, in trying to please… Full Review

Probably everyone acquainted with Japanese art knows the two most famous anecdotes about the creation of painting. In the first, a master vexed by his student’s inability to depict a bamboo enjoins him to “become a bamboo.” No doubt apocryphal, there is nevertheless more than a grain in truth here, and this story constitutes one of the dominant myths of art production all across East Asia. This strain of thought is associated with the nanga (literati) movement, which held that there was little of value to be gleaned in the studio. Rather, aspirants should look about them and study, or… Full Review

In early February of 1891, shortly before the grand opening of his lavish Tampa Bay Hotel, Henry Plant received an affable, jokingly naïve telegram from Henry Flagler, the well-known railroad magnate who already owned three successful resort hotels in St. Augustine. “Friend Plant,” the wire read, “where is this place I’ve heard about called Tampa?” In turn, Plant sent a brief but confident reply: “Friend Flagler, just follow the crowds.” In the late nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, American tourists were only beginning to discover Florida, and it was Flagler and Plant who shaped, to a… Full Review

Diane Wolfthal’s Images of Rape: The “Heroic” Tradition and Its Alternatives is a difficult and necessary book to read; indeed, this should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding the visual cultures of Western traditions. The author examines a vast body of work through a feminist lens to explore the realities of rape for women—as well as for men—in late medieval and early modern Europe. Informed by her own feminist convictions and a comprehensive knowledge of the material, Wolfthal aims “to recapture the muted or silenced voices of the rape victims, to see the violation from their point of… Full Review

In St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology, Jeffrey Hamburger investigates the complex relationships forged in the later Middle Ages among art, mysticism, and visionary experience. In so doing, he continues the stimulating work he began in earlier, groundbreaking studies such as The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland ca. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) and The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998). The specific task Hamburger sets for himself in this newest effort is to… Full Review