Joos van Cleve : the complete paintings /

This authoritative monograph confirms Joos van Cleve (1485/1490-1541) as a foremost artist of Antwerp in the later Renaissance. His large workshop produced portraits, Madonnas, and grand altarpieces for a local and international clientele. Replicas and some overall repetition in many of the smaller paintings indicate both the popularity of these types and the use of templates for their production. Ongoing technical study of the underdrawings reveals alterations and the creative process. Continuing the delicate features, symbolism, and meticulous painting methods of Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes, Joos appropriated perspective, contrapposto, and chiaroscuro from Italian artists, especially Leonardo. In turn, Italian artists quoted from his paintings that were in Genoa. Joos's work thus offers a case study of the reception of Italian art in the north and northern art in Italy. Hand (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) skillfully defines the oeuvre and analyzes the few surviving documents. Further critical approaches may offer reconciliation of the seeming disjunction of Joos's Netherlandish detail and Italian spatial arrangement and bold figures. As the major resource for this artist in recent decades and in English, this fully illustrated volume would be better served with larger plates of the altarpieces. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. A. Golahny Lycoming College

Joos van Cleve was one of the most successful and influential Netherlandish painters of the first half of the 16th century-a superb technician and sensitive colorist who was often identified with the Master of the Death of the Virgin (altarpieces now in Cologne and Munich). This adequately illustrated (132 black-and-white and 50 color), well-documented, and lucidly written book is the first major monograph on the artist since Ludwig Baldass's Joos van Cleve, published in German in 1925. A foremost authority on van Cleve, having written his dissertation and numerous journal articles on the artist, Hand (curator, Northern Renaissance paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) reviews the scholarly bases for his study and provides an updated, mostly chronological art historical examination. In addition to covering specific paintings and a wide range of topics (e.g., the artist's style, iconography, influences, patrons, and social milieu), Hand includes a complementary, comprehensive catalog of 370 paintings by the artist, doubtful attributions, workshop versions, and copies; entries on principal pictures include commentary and bibliographic references as well as information pertaining to inscriptions, provenance, and exhibitions. Although its reproductions are poor, the monograph still makes for a significant addition to academic and large public libraries collecting books on French, Italian, and Northern European Renaissance art. Highly recommended.-Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.