Enfilade

New Book | Every Valley

Posted in books by Editor on November 19, 2024

From Penguin Random House:

Charles King, Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah (New York: Doubledy, 2024), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0385548267, $32.

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones. But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope. Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.

Charles King is the author of eight books, most recently Gods of the Upper Air, a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, and winner of the Francis Parkman Prize. His Odessa won a National Jewish Book Award. He is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University.

Exhibition | Sketching Splendor: American Natural History, 1750–1850

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on November 17, 2024

Titian Ramsay Peale, Sunset on Missouri, July 1819
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, NH121 TRP, MSS.B.P31.15d)

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Now on view at the American Philosophical Society Museum:

Sketching Splendor: American Natural History, 1750–1850
American Philosophical Society Museum, Philadelphia, 12 April — 29 December 2024

Sketching Splendor: American Natural History, 1750–1850 explores how William Bartram, Titian Ramsay Peale, and John James Audubon made sense of nature’s complexities through their writings, drawings, and watercolors. It highlights their approaches to capturing the natural world during a time of rapid intellectual, social, and political change.

book coverBartram, Peale, and Audubon relied on natural knowledge established by European, Euro-American, and Native American experts while balancing changing ideas of how reason and emotion impacted science. As both artists and naturalists, they freely expressed their ideas using science, art, and literature. Through a potent mix of scientific ideas, shifting worldviews, and professional freedom, their works embodied both experimentation and certainty. However, their interpretation of the natural world has also raised questions of national importance. Their world was not just one of intellectual excitement, but one of systematic injustice and a complex national history become visible as we peel back the layers. Sketching Splendor draws on the APS’s extensive holdings. Highlights of the exhibition include William Bartram’s map of the Alachua Savanna, Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s Rattlesnake Skeleton, Titian Ramsay Peale’s watercolors from the Long Expedition, and one volume of John James Audubon’s original Birds of America.

Anna Majeski and Michelle Craig McDonald, Sketching Splendor: American Natural History, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), 112 pages, ISBN: 978-1606180402, $30.

Anna Majeski received a PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 2022, where she completed a doctoral dissertation on a remarkable series of astrological fresco cycles completed in Padua between 1300 and 1440. Her research focuses on the intersections of art and science, image and knowledge in the early modern world, and has been supported by pre- and postdoctoral fellowships from the American Academy in Rome and the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti. She joined the American Philosophical Society, Library & Museum, as Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Natural History Exhibition Research Fellow in October 2022.

Michelle Craig McDonald is the Librarian/Director of the Library and Museum at the American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743 and the oldest learned society in North America. The APS has more than 14 million pages of manuscripts and 300,000 printed volumes, with particular strengths in early American history, the history of science, and Native American and Indigenous cultures. McDonald earned her PhD in history from the University of Michigan where she focused on business relationships and consumer behavior between North America and the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries. She is the co-author of Public Drinking in the Early Modern World: Voices from the Tavern (Pickering & Chatto/Routledge Press, 2011), and her current monograph, Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in spring 2025.

New Book | The Gardens of Venice

Posted in books by Editor on November 15, 2024

From Marsilio Arte:

Toto Bergamo Rossi and Marco Bay, with photographs by Marco Valmarana, The Gardens of Venice (Venice: Marsilio Arte, 2024), 296 pages, ISBN: ‎979-1254631973, €65 / $70.

book cover

A lush look into Venice’s verdant gardens, photographed in every season of the year.

Turquoise lagoons and crystalline canals, criss-crossed by romantic bridges and traversed by singing gondoliers on their gondolas: water is considered by many to be Venice’s most enchanting feature. Yet on the little land that constitutes this ancient city, secret and sumptuous gardens lie waiting to cast their captivating spell. This lushly illustrated volume takes readers inside Venice’s most undiscovered and most exclusive green spaces across the city. The gardens of the palazzi that overlook the Grand Canal, along with the more vernacular ones of the lagoon islands, are captured throughout the seasons: the flowering in spring, the opulence of summer, the colors of fall and the frost of winter. Photographer Marco Valmarana’s exquisite images evoke a sense of wanderlust enough to inspire even the most jaded traveler. To walk the reader through the legacy of these special spaces, author Toto Bergamo Rossi recounts the evolution and history of the Venetian garden alongside a glossary of commonly used plants. The Gardens of Venice also includes a special foreword by designer Diane von Furstenberg.

Toto Bergamo Rossi, formerly a specialist in the conservation of stone materials, has restored a number of important monuments in Italy. Since 2010 he has served as the director of Venetian Heritage. He is the author of Inside Venice (Rizzoli, 2016) and Venice and Its Doges (Rizzoli, 2023).

 

New Book | Blue Guide: Venice, 10th Edition

Posted in books by Editor on November 15, 2024

The tenth edition for Venice appeared last year. While I’ve always thought of Blue Guides as reliably informative, this updated edition is also engaging, fun to read, and handsomely designed. If you’ve not tried a Blue Guide recently, it’s worth another look. CH

Alta Macadam, Blue Guide Venice: Tenth Edition (London: Somerset Books, 2024), 495 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1905131945, $25.

Full color throughout, with photographs, diagrams, site plans, and detailed maps.

The 10th edition of this accessible, detailed guide to Venice is an essential handbook for any traveler who wants to fully understand the existence and future challenges of this unique and extraordinary city, as well as its history, art, architecture, cuisine, and culture.

Completely updated, this new edition is in full colour, with photographs, plans, and illustrations, as well as detailed and accurate maps of the labyrinthine streets and canals. There is also a section of practical tips, ideas on food and wine, and how to navigate the transportation system. The depth of information and quality of research make this book the very best guide for the independent cultural traveler, as well as for all students of art history, architecture, and Italian culture. Ideal as an on-site guide or as a desk resource.

Art historian Alta Macadam lives in Fiesole, on the hillside above Florence.

New Book | The Venetian Façade

Posted in books by Editor on November 14, 2024

From ORO Editions:

Michael Dennis, The Venetian Façade (South Bend: Notre Dame School of Architecture / ORO Editions, 2024), 160 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1961856356, $40.

book cover

There are no books that focus on the unique artistic characteristics of the Venetian facade and its potential relevance to contemporary architectural and urban issues, as this book intends.

This book is about architecture. It is not about history, although a bit of history is necessary to set the context. It is not about theory, although, again, a bit is necessary to connect the facade with urbanism. It is also not about structure and technology. And, most definitely, it is not about the plan. All of these topics are well-covered elsewhere. This book is about the facade. It explores the art and typology of the Venetian facade, not only as a high point of architectural literacy and achievement, but as a potentially useful contemporary stimulant.

Michael Dennis is the principal of Michael Dennis & Associates in Boston, and Professor of Architecture Emeritus at MIT. 1986 Thomas Jefferson Professor of Architecture, University of Virginia; 1988 Eero Saarinen Professor of Architecture, Yale University; 2006 Charles Moore Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan.

New Book | Canaletto and Guardi: Views of Venice

Posted in books by Editor on November 13, 2024

Published by Scala and distributed by Rizzoli:

Lelia Packer and Charles Beddington, Canaletto and Guardi: Views of Venice at the Wallace Collection (Milan: Scala, 2024), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1785513206, £25 / $30.

book cover

A celebration of the beauty of Venice that Wallace Collection’s paintings convey and an enjoyable and informative complement to viewing the paintings in the flesh. Among the renowned Old Master paintings at the Wallace Collection in London is an important group of 27 eighteenth-century views of Venice, known as vedute, by Canaletto and his followers, including Francesco Guardi. They hang together in a dedicated gallery known as the Canaletto Room, but the majority had not been cleaned since the nineteenth century and their original beauty was obscured by multiple layers of discoloured varnish.

The paintings have now been restored, following a recent multi-year conservation and research project, and this book presents them in their renewed splendour. It features essays and commentaries by Charles Beddington, the global expert on vedute, and by Wallace Collection curator Lelia Packer, which provide fresh insights into the artists’ creative processes, the dating of pictures and their authorship. Canaletto and Guardi is a gorgeous celebration of the beauty of Venice that these paintings convey.

Lelia Packer is the curator of Dutch, Italian, Spanish, German, and pre-1600 paintings at the Wallace Collection.
Charles Beddington is an independent scholar and art dealer based in London.

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More information on the conservation and research project is available here»

New Book | Women Artists and Artisans in Venice

Posted in books by Editor on November 12, 2024

From Amsterdam UP:

Tracy Cooper, ed., Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto, 1400–1750: Uncovering the Female Presence (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024), 292 pages, ISBN: 978-9048559718, €141.

This book of essays highlights the lives, careers, and works of art of women artists and artisans in Venice and its territories from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The collection represents the first fruits of an ongoing research program launched by Save Venice, Inc., Women Artists of Venice, directed by Professor Tracy Cooper of Temple University, in conjunction with a conservation program, led by Melissa Conn, Director of Save Venice, Inc. Inspired by a growing body of research that has resurrected female artists and artisans in Florence and Bologna during the last decade, the Save Venice project seeks to recover the history of women artists and artisans born or active in the Venetian republic in the early modern period. Topics include their contemporary reception—or historical silence—and current scholarship positioning them as individuals and as an underrepresented category in the history of art and cultural heritage.

Tracy E. Cooper is Professor of Art History at Temple University and on the Board of Directors of Save Venice, Inc., where she is director of the Women Artists in Venice research program. She is best known for Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (Yale, 2006), winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize from the Renaissance Society of America.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations

Introduction — Tracy Cooper, Temple University
1  La Serenissima in Context: Women Artists in Venice and Beyond — Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University
2  The Taiapiera in Fourteenth-Century Venice: What’s in a Name? — Louise Bourdua, University of Warwick
3  In Search of Marietta Tintoretta — Robert Echols, Independent Scholar, and Frederick Ilchman, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
4  The ‘Vite’ of Women Artists in Venice (Sixteenth to Eighteeth Century) — Antonis Digalakis, University of Crete
5  Artists and Artisans in the Account Books of Marino Grimani, Patrician and Doge of Venice (Late Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Centuries) — Maria Adank, Università degli Studi di Verona
6  Chiara Varotari (1584/1585–after 1663) — Diana Gisolfi, Pratt Institute
7  Artemisia Gentileschi in Venice: Facts and Suppositions — Davide Gasparotto, J Paul Getty Museum
8  Giovanna Garzoni and Venetian Witchcraft: Still Lifes as Natural Enchantments — Sheila Barker, Medici Archive Project and University of Pennsylvania
9  Caterina Tarabotti Unveiled — Georgios Markou, University of Cambridge
10  Shining a Light on Giulia Lama’s Painting Practice in the San Marziale Four Evangelists — Cleo Nisse, Columbia University
11  Rosalba Carriera Unframed — Xavier Salomon, The Frick Collection

General Bibliography
Archival Abbreviations
Works Cited
Index

Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art | Women, 1500–1950

Posted in books, journal articles by Editor on November 11, 2024

The latest issue of NKJ:

Elizabeth Alice Honig, Judith Noorman, and Thijs Weststeijn, eds., Women: Female Roles in Art and Society of the Netherlands, 1500–1950, Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 74 (2024), ISBN: 978-9004710740, $162.

book coverLong overdue in the history of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, this volume foregrounds women as creators, patrons, buyers, and agents of change in the arts of the Low Countries. Venturing beyond the participation of ‘exceptional’ individuals, chapters investigate how women produced paintings, sculptures, scientific illustrations, and tapestries as well as their role in architectural patronage and personalized art collections. Teasing out a variety of socio-economic, legal, institutional, and art-theoretical dimensions of female agency, the volume highlights the role of visual culture in women’s lived experience and self-representation, asking to what extent women challenged, subverted, or confirmed societal norms in the Netherlands.

Elizabeth Alice Honig is Professor of Northern European Art at the University of Maryland, and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. She works on Dutch, Flemish, and British art.
Judith Noorman is Associate Professor in Early Modern Art History at the University of Amsterdam. From 2021 to 2026, she is Principal Investigator of The Female Impact, a research project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Thijs Weststeijn is Professor of Art History before 1800 at Utrecht University, where he chairs the research project The Dutch Global Age (2023–2028).

c o n t e n t s

• Introduction
• Dynamic Partnership: The Work of Married Women in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Artists’ Households — Marleen Puyenbroek
• The Sculptor and the Sculptress: Gendering Sculpture Production in the Early Modern Low Countries —Elizabeth Rice Mattison
• The Images and the Interventions of Adriana Perez in the Rockox Collection — Kendra Grimmett
• Household Heroines: Maria van Nesse’s Memory-Book and the Interplay between the Art Market and Household Consumption — Judith Noorman
• Weaving a Business: Clara de Hont’s (1664–1751) Tapestry Workshop in Amsterdam — Rudy Jos Beerens
• Situational Awareness and Practices of Exchange in the Art of Johanna Helena Herolt and Alida Withoos — Catherine Powell-Warren
• Cultivating a Female Presence in the Early Eighteenth-Century Learned Community: The Printed Portraits of Maria de Wilde (1682–1729) — Lieke van Deinsen
• Unmarried, Married, Widowed, and Dead: Female Patrons of Architecture in Amsterdam (1680–1800) —Pieter Vlaardingerbroek
• Caretaker of a Collection: The Case of Jo van Bilderbeek-Lamaison — Bert-Jaap Koops
• We Could Hardly Refuse Them: Alida Pott and the Women of De Ploeg, 1918–1931 — Anneke de Vries

New Book | Campaspe Talks Back

Posted in books by Editor on November 11, 2024

From Brepols:

Lieke van Deinsen, Bert Schepers, Marjan Sterckx, Hans Vlieghe, and Bert Watteeuw, eds., Campaspe Talks Back: Women Who Made a Difference in Early Modern Art (Turnhout: Brepols: 2024), 436 pages, ISBN: 978-2503613055, €125.

book coverWith forty-three contributions this book pays homage to Katlijne Van der Stighelen, who has shown exceptional range in her own contributions to the history of art in the Southern Netherlands and beyond. With monographs on Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, she has considerably expanded scholarship on canonical artists. Yet early on, a catalogue raisonné of the portraits of the lesser-known Cornelis de Vos revealed that Van der Stighelen was not one to preserve the status quo but to challenge it. Mindful of protagonists and their historiographical pull, she has consistently rehabilitated artists relegated to the background, in some cases by single-handedly saving them from total oblivion and—remarkable feat—having them added to the canon.

Portraiture, supposedly a sijd-wegh der consten, was paved into a central avenue of inquiry in Van der Stighelen’s work. Her approach to the genre made it into a pathway for the introduction of women artists. What was a sijd-wegh became a zij-weg. From seminal publications on Anna-Maria van Schurman to revelatory exhibitions on Michaelina Wautier, Van der Stighelen’s particular brand of feminism has impacted scholarship as deeply as it has touched the museum-going public.

Women and portraiture are the core themes of the essays assembled in this book. The resulting group portrait is crowded and rambunctious and reflects the varied subject matter that has attracted Van der Stighelen’s professional attention. It also paints a partial portrait of the community of scholars that she has so generously fostered. In trying to summarize the motivations of authors to contribute to this volume or the gratitude of generations of art historians trained by her, it is best to quote the title of the first exhibition on women artists in Belgium and The Netherlands, which Van der Stighelen curated in 1999: Elck zijn waerom.

Lieke van Deinsen is assistant research professor Dutch literature at KU Leuven.
Bert Schepers is senior editor of the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard.
Marjan Sterckx is associate professor in the histories of art and interior design 1750–1950 at Ghent University.
Hans Vlieghe is emeritus professor history of early modern art at Leuven University.
Bert Watteeuw is director of the Antwerp Rubenshuis.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
Campaspe, Apelles, and Alexander the Great
• Hans Vlieghe — Katlijne: Portrait of an Art Historian

I | Sitters & Subjects
• Barbara Baert — Cutting the Gaze: Salome in Andrea Solario’s Oeuvre, c. 1465–1524
• Nils Büttner — Rubens, the Capaio Ladies, and Their Niece
• Hans Cools — Why Margaret of Parma Should Make It to the Next Version of the Flemish Canon
• Liesbeth De Belie — Concerning Orbs and the Value of a Destroyed Portrait
• Guy Delmarcel — The Virtuous Women of the Bible: A Series of Baroque Tapestries from Bruges and Their Mysteries
• Gerlinde Gruber — Brave (if Brazen) Women: Spartans, not Amazons, by Otto van Veen (1556–1629)
• Karen Hearn — Portrait of a Poisoner? An Early Seventeenth-Century British Female Portrait Reconsidered
• Fiona Healy — Sacred History Imitating Real Life: How a Curious Portrayal of the Birth of the Virgin Reflects Childbirth Practices in the Early Modern Period
• Koenraad Jonckheere — Rubens’s Verwe: Head Studies and Complexion
• Elizabeth McGrath — The Girls in Rubens’s Allegory of Peace
• Hubert Meeus — Judith’s Maid
• Bert Schepers — Lifting the Veil on Justus van Egmont (1602–1674): On Cleopatra Approaching Alexandria and Some Other Newly Identified Designs for Tapestries
• Lieke van Deinsen — The Voiceless Virgin and the Speaking Likeness: Anna Maria van Schurman’s Portrait as a Labadist
• Hans Vlieghe — Portrait of a Young Woman in Triplicate: On a ‘Rubensian’ Head Study

II | Artists & Artisans
• Rudy Jos Beerens — Unravelling the Story of Jannetje Laurensd. Wouters (c. 1640–1722), Tapitsierster
• Ralph Dekoninck — Pausias and Glycera by Rubens and Beert: Amorous Emulation and/or Mimetic Rivalry
• Kirsten Derks — Leaving Her Mark: Michaelina Wautier’s Signing Practice
• Inez De Prekel — Female Artists and Artisans in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, 1629–1719
• Ad Leerintveld — Constantijn Huygens and Louise Hollandine, Princess of the Palatinate, or How High a Highness Could Rise in the Arts
• Fred G. Meijer — All in the Family: A Previously Unrecorded Landscape Painter: Catrina Tieling, 1670-?
• Judith Noorman — ‘Elck heeft sijn eijgen pop’: Dollmaker Drawings by Leonart Bramer and Dolls as Indicators of Class and Identity
• Anna Orlando — Sofonisba and van Dyck: A Matter of Style
• Marjan Sterckx — Talent and Sentiment: A Portrait of the Artist Marie-Anne Collot (1748–1821) as a Young Woman
• Jan Van der Stock — Women Who Stood Their Ground in the Guild of St Luke at the Beginning of Antwerp’s ‘Golden Age’, 1453–1552
• Francisca van Vloten — From ‘Russian Rembrandt’ to ‘Baronin’ and ‘Nonna’: Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938), Evolution and Appreciation
• Wendy Wiertz — Craft, Gender, and Humanitarian Aid: The Representation of Belgian Lacemakers in the Era of World War I
• Beatrijs Wolters van der Wey — Catharina Pepyn, Rising Star

III | Partners & Patrons
• Rudi Ekkart and Claire van den Donk — In the Lead: Another Look at the Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century Family Portraits
• Valerie Herremans — Arte et Marte: Countess Maria-Anna Mulert-van den Tympel and Ian-Christiaen Hansche’s Pioneering Stucco Ceilings in Horst Castle (1655)
• Corina Kleinert — Hidden in the Footnotes: The Collection of Anna-Isabella van den Berghe, 1677–1754
Hannelore Magnus, ‘Periculum in Mora’: Frans Langhemans the Younger (1661–c.1720) and the Scandalous Elopement of Maria Cecilia de Wille
• Volker Manuth and Marieke de Winkel — The Marital Misfortunes and Messy Divorce of a Mennonite Woman: Catharina Hoogsaet
• Sarah Joan Moran — Court Beguinage Mistresses as Art Curators
• Erik Muls — Isabella and Catharina Ondermarck: Spiritual Daughters on a Mission
• Eric Jan Sluijter — Rembrandt’s Saskia Laughing (1633): The Affect and Effect of Reciprocal Love
• Bert Timmermans — Art Patronage in an Unequal Playing Field: Women’s Convents during the Building Boom of the Antwerp ‘Invasion Conventuelle’
• Ben van Beneden — A Flemish Shepherd for Amalia? Some Thoughts on a Newly Discovered Painting by Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert
• Carla van de Puttelaar — Marriage in Painting: Painterly Collaborations between Juriaan Pool and Rachel Ruysch and a Newly Discovered Portrait of a Girl
• Martine van Elk — ‘The Name Gives Lustre’: Anna Maria van Schurman’s Glass Engravings
• Bert Watteeuw and Klara Alen —Dealing with Helena
• Jeremy Wood — In the Shadow of the ‘Proud Duke’? Elizabeth Percy, Duchess of Somerset (1667–1722), as Patron
• Lara Yeager-Crasselt — Painting Margherita: Louis Cousin and Flemish Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Italy
• Leen Huet — Epilogue: Reading between the Lines, Reading between the Brushstrokes – Two letters

Bibliography of Katlijne Van der Stighelen — Compiled by Lies De Strooper and Koen Brosens

 

The Burlington Magazine, October 2024

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions, journal articles, obituaries, reviews by Editor on November 5, 2024

The long 18th century in the October issue of The Burlington:

The Burlington Magazine 166 (October 2024)

e d i t o r i a l

• “Restoring the ‘belle époque’,” pp. 995–96.
The Musee Jacquemart-André is a treasure house that graces the Haussmann boulevards in Paris and is perhaps not nearly as well-known as it should be. The recent re-opening of the museum on 6th September, following a period of closure for conservation, therefore provides a welcome opportunity to draw fresh attention to this most romantic and beguiling of collections and the elegant building that houses it.

a r t i c l e s

• Jacob Willer, “Annibale Carracci and the Forgotten Magdalene,” pp. 1028–35.
A painting the collection of the National Trust at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, is published here as a work of Annibale Carracci’s maturity. Related to comparable compositions which derive from it, in collections in Rome and Cambridge, it was acquired in Florence in 1758 for the 1st Baron Scarsdale.

• Samantha Happé, “Portable Diplomacy: Louis XIV’s ‘boîtes à portrait’,” pp. 1036–43.
Louix XIV’s ambitious and carefully orchestrated diplomatic programme included gifts of jewelled miniature portraits known as ‘boîtes à portrait’. Using the ‘Présents du Roi’, the circumstances around the commissioning and creation of these precious objects can be explored and a possible recipient suggested for a well-preserved example now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

r e v i e w s

• Alexander Collins, Review of the exhibition André Charles Boulle (Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly, 2024), pp. 1056–59.

• Claudia Tobin, Review of the exhibition The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain (Pallant House Gallery, 2024), pp. 1067–69.

Helen Hillyard, Review of of the recently renovated galleries of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, pp. 1077–79.

• Colin Thom, Review of Steven Brindle, Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530–1830 (Paul Mellon Centre, 2024), pp. 1080–81.

• Christopher Baker, Review of Bruce Boucher, John Soane’s Cabinet of Curiosities: Reflections on an Architect and His Collection (Yale University Press, 2024), pp. 1087–88.

o b i t u a r y

• Christopher Rowell, Obituary for Alastair David Laing (1944–2024), pp. 1094–96.
Although renowned in particular for his expertise on the art of François Boucher, Alastair Laing had very wide-ranging art historical taste and knowledge, which he shared with great generosity of spirit. He curated some important exhibitions and brought scholarly rigour to his inspired custodianship of the art collections of the National Trust.