Enfilade

From the University of California Press:

Carol Armstrong, The Matter of Still Life Between Chardin and Morandi (Oakland: University of California Press, 2026), 150 pages, ISBN: 978-0520416994, £42 / $50.

How does still life ‘matter’? The two essays in this book, based on Carol Armstrong’s lectures as part of the 2020 Franklin D. Murphy Lectureship at the University of Kansas, explore the concept of ‘material thought’ as it relates to still life. Armstrong looks at two major figures of European still-life painting: eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. She discusses their paintings alongside the works of other European painters, philosophers, and critics. These close readings consider the question of how we understand materiality in relation to still-life painting and the material objects this genre represents.

Carol Armstrong is Professor of History of Art at Yale University, where she teaches nineteenth-century European art. Her most recent books are Cézanne’s Gravity and Painting Photography Painting.

c o n t e n t s

Preface
1  Chardin, Diderot, and the Muteness of Made Things: Between Ekphrasis and the Encyclopedia
2  Giorgio Morandi and the Matter of Still Life

Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

From Michael Imhof:

Elisabeth Krebs, Barocke Prälaturen oberdeutscher Zisterzienser: Raumfolgen & Bildprogramme (Petersberg: Michael Imhof-Verlag, 2026), 592 pages, ISBN: 978-3731915904, €99. Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, Band 206

Für die oberdeutschen Zisterzienser der Neuzeit war die weltabge­wandte ­Existenz ihrer mittelalterlichen Vorgänger bereits Geschichte. Im Rahmen der reichs- und ordenspolitischen, wirtschaftlichen, kulturellen und sozialen Randbedingungen des 17./18. Jahrhunderts mussten Beziehungen gepflegt und tradierte Rechte verteidigt werden, einem epochenbedingt steigenden Bauaufwand Rechnung getragen und dem Dekorum von Aus­stattung genügt werden.

Der klausurfreie Wohn- und Amtssitz eines (Reichs-)Abtes — die hier hervorgehobene Prälatur — gewann an Repräsentation. Vesti­büle, Stiegen­häuser, Tafelzimmer, große Säle, die Abtswohnung und ihr zugeordnete ­Gästezimmer boten Möglichkeiten der Äußerung von Bild­programmen mit gezielt unterlegten Botschaften, ob nun reichspolitisch, konfessionell-katholisch, zur Selbstlegitimation oder geistlich-zisterziensisch motiviert. Die Arbeit fragt nach Kategorien, Ordnungen und Qualitäten von Raum und Bild, in denen sich das Selbstverständnis oberdeutscher Zister­zienseräbte zwischen ursprünglich auferlegter Simplicitas und selbsterhaltend notwendiger Außendarstellung reflektierte.

From Penn State UP:

Emily Neumeier, Architectural Revolution on the Ottoman Frontier: Greece and Albania in the Age of Ali Pasha (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025), 232 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-0271097749, $115.

In the early nineteenth century, the most consequential developments in Ottoman architecture were taking place not in Istanbul but in the farthest reaches of imperial territory. Emily Neumeier investigates this wider phenomenon through a consideration of the architecture of Ali Pasha of Ioannina, one of the most prolific patrons in the history of the Ottoman Empire, who undertook a building program so ambitious that it ultimately got him killed.

Ali Pasha is still a household name in present-day Greece and Albania, where he served as Ottoman governor from 1788 to 1822. To consolidate his rule over an incredibly diverse population, the governor set out on a sweeping building program that included mosques, palaces, military fortifications, dervish lodges, and even Orthodox Christian monasteries. Drawing upon a wealth of primary sources, Neumeier reveals how Ali Pasha’s buildings shifted the sociopolitical order by testing the standards of patronage established by the imperial court and relocating administrative authority from center to province. To reconstruct the world that Ali Pasha built, Neumeier draws from both extensive fieldwork and abundant archival material, whose far-flung nature—from Istanbul to London—reflects the impressively wide scope of Ali Pasha’s influence.

Rigorously researched and packed with fascinating stories, this book presents an innovative spatial history of the Ottoman frontier during the age of revolutions, a pivotal period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when there was no obvious blueprint for power. It will be of interest to specialists in art and architectural history, the Ottoman Empire, and Mediterranean, Islamic, and Modern Greek studies.

Emily Neumeier is Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Temple University.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Translations and Transliterations

Introduction
1  ‘Amidst No Common Pomp’: Redefining the Governor’s Palace
2  Revising the Rules of Engagement: Fortifications on a Liquid Frontier
3  Building Local Support: Patronage for Multiconfessional Communities
4  Poetic Justice: Experiments in Architectural Epigraphy
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Distributed by Simon & Schuster:

Genevieve Wheeler Brown, Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic (New York: Pegasus Books, 2025), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1639368914, $35.

An absorbing work of cultural history that reveals the stories behind one of the world’s most coveted and beloved ceramic.

When over seventy-five pieces of rare and intriguing 17th- and 18th-century Delftware are rediscovered in an historic Manhattan townhouse, decorative art advisor and writer Genevieve Wheeler Brown quickly recognizes that, together, these pieces tell an amazing story. What begins as a curatorial exercise quickly evolves not only into an exploration of this colorful, expressive, and sometimes even humorous decorative art, coveted for hundreds of years, but also an unexpected uncovering of forceful female lives yet untold.

Connecting the accounts of women across centuries, Beyond Blue and White allows us to craft a more complete picture of female experience through the lens of material culture. We meet female Delftware makers, including Barbara Rotteveel founder of “The Three Bells” Delftware factory in 1671. We are introduced to female Delftware patrons such as Queen Mary II, who found her means of expression while creating a vogue in the 17th century for Delft blue and white across royal courts. And then there are the female collectors beginning in the 19th century who saw the artistry and craft in these ceramics others had overlooked. Foremost among them was Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II who came together with fellow New York women and laid the groundwork for women in the museum world while preserving decorative arts with an educational mission.

With illustrations of period objects, documents, maps, paintings, prints and drawings, Beyond Blue and White is a colorful celebration of an iconic decorative art and dynamic women living in extraordinary times. Wheeler Brown’s rich narrative encourages us to see beyond the dazzling cobalt glaze of Delftware to consider that these vessels are also our connection to a history with a fascinating group of women at its center.

As a decorative art advisor and writer with over thirty years in the art world, including a decade with Christie’s in New York and London, Genevieve Wheeler Brown has been actively involved in the community of Delftware. She has also participated on the Antiques Roadshow as an appraiser with an eye out for overlooked ‘treasure’. In her role, she has held innumerable objects, from fake Stradivari violins to gold-mounted Faberge eggs, considering their value but also the stories they can tell.