The Art Bulletin articles from December 2007

The Art Bulletin archives from December 2007

Walking on water: cosmic floors in antiquity and the Middle Ages.(Hagia Sophia church)
December 1, 2007... When Hagia Sophia, the vast cathedral of Byzantium, was completed and dedicated with great fanfare shortly after Christmas 537, the emperor Justinian could rightly say (as a later source claims) that he had outdone Solomon. Such was its...

The body at the funeral: imagery and commemoration at Notre-Dame, Paris, about 1304-18.
December 1, 2007... Necrologies and obituary books were vital to the liturgical life of medieval religious communities. Since at least the ninth century, these lists recorded the names of deceased members of the community and honorary others, such as relatives and...

Quality, demand, and the pressures of reputation: rethinking Perugino.(Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Perugino)
December 1, 2007... According to Giorgio Vasari, the Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Perugino had a particularly shocking experience in November 1507. He installed a huge, double-sided altarpiece in SS. Annunziata, the Florentine church of the Servites, and it...

Men at work in Dutch art, or keeping one's nose to the grindstone.
December 1, 2007... Among the chief delights of leisure is getting away from toil. This is not new. Why would a person at leisure want to look at a person who is working? More particularly, why would a well-to-do and well-educated viewer hang a painting of manual...

By the light of providence: the Glory Altarpiece at St. Paul's Chapel, New York City.
December 1, 2007... Immediately on entering St. Paul's Chapel--a stately Georgian edifice based on James Gibbs's St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London--the visitor's gaze is drawn toward the so-called Glory Altarpiece in the chancel (Fig. 1). (1) This wooden structure,...

"Miss La La's" teeth: reflections on Degas and "race".
December 1, 2007... Race-thinking is its own best refutation.--Jacques Barzun, Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (1) Disgust always bears the imprint of desire. These low domains, apparently expelled as "Other." return as the object of nostalgia,...

Parsifal / Druidess: unfolding a lithographic metamorphosis by Odilon Redon.
December 1, 2007... In 1879, with an album of ten prints and one frontispiece entitled Dans le reve ("In the Dream" or "Dreaming"), Odilon Redon started publishing lithographs. The album format proved congenial and successful: three more followed until, in 1886,...

A New England lament: Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand in the 1940s.
December 1, 2007... Well, there was a place just on the edge of Andover which is old, it goes back to when New England was the great textile center, you've probably (seen) many places where all those places are just, I mean those textile mills are just...

The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... STEPHEN J. CAMPBELL The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 402 pp.; 58 color ills., 77 b/w. $60.00 The scholarship on collecting and...

Albrecht Altdorfer in seiner Zeit: Religiose und profane Themen in der Kunst um 1500.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... THOMAS NOLL Albrecht Altdorfer in seiner Zeit: Religiose und profane Themen in der Kunst um 1500 Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2004. 582 pp.; 202 b/w ills. [euro]98 MAGDALENA BUSHART Sehen und Erkennen: Albrecht Altdorfers...

Poussin and the Poetics of Painting: Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... JONATHAN UNGLAUB Poussin and the Poetics of Painting: Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 305 pp.; 8 color ills., 72 b/w. $90.00 Nicolas Poussin and the painters of his circle...

Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... MIGNON NIXON Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. 352 pp.; 103 b/w ills. $40.00 Suicide. Madness. Institutionalization. Accident. Illness. The biographies of many of the...

Books received (April-June 2007).(Bibliography)
December 1, 2007... ADLER, JEREMY, AND BIRGIT SANDER, EDS. Marie-Louise von Motesiczky: 1906-1996. Exh. cat. New York and Munich: Prestel, 2007. 264 pp.; 140 color ills.; 25 b/w ills. Cloth $60.00 (9783791336930) AICHELE, KATHRYN PORTER. Paul Klee,...

Reviews online (April-June 2007).(Bibliography)
December 1, 2007... caa.reviews, published online by the College Art Association, is an online journal devoted to the peer review of new books, exhibitions, and projects relevant to the fields of art and art history. To access a review, type in the URL...