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Many congratulations to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, on its wonderful recent acquisitions. They include works by Mati...
03/07/2025

Many congratulations to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, on its wonderful recent acquisitions. They include works by Matisse, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard and Cassatt, as well as Van Gogh himself, all of which are celebrated in a Supplement exclusively published in our July issue.

This month’s articles share important new research on Northern European art. Close analysis of inventories establishes that Jan Van Eyck’s exquisite 'Virgin in the church' (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) formed the left wing of a diptych made for Duke Philip the Good. Sixteenth-century studies feature a rediscovered page from an important tournament book, which prompts an analysis of the chivalric tradition of jousting. Also included is an article that identifies Sibylla von Freyberg as the patron of a richly illuminated German prayer book in the British Library, London. In addition, the subject and artist of an intriguing 'Portrait of a Lady' at Parham House, Sussex, are confirmed, following technical and stylistic analysis. Meanwhile, seventeenth-century research includes the correct naming of two sitters in pendant portraits by Frans Hals in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This sheds fresh light on the question of whether Hals and Rembrandt worked side-by-side.

Reviews are led by an in-depth analysis of the way in which German museums have celebrated Caspar David Friedrich’s 250th anniversary.

Other reviews feature exhibitions on Christian Krohg, the 1st Duke of Wellington’s taste for Dutch painting and Feminist chinoiserie, as well as the Mamluks and Medardo Rosso. Books scrutinised include major collection catalogues of German paintings at the National Gallery in London, of Netherlandish paintings at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, and of medals in the Bargello, Florence. Monographs on Lucas Cranach, Étienne-Barthélemy Garnier and Richard Smith are all also discussed.

Discover the full list of content: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202507?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo
July's Editorial: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/editorial/the-gallery-of-honour?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo+editorial
This month's free review: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/exhibition-review/dor-et-declat-le-bijou-a-la-renaissance?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo+free+rev

The introverted art of Jan Mankes (1889–1920) has a strong following in the Netherlands. His paintings, which were admir...
30/06/2025

The introverted art of Jan Mankes (1889–1920) has a strong following in the Netherlands. His paintings, which were admired and sold well during his lifetime – as they continue to do – have been the subject of numerous publications and retrospectives. This exhibition, which is divided between the Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen (‘Jan Mankes: Expressions of Spiritual Life’), and the Museum Arnhem (‘Jan Mankes: Silence and Struggle’), includes one hundred paintings by Mankes, more than half of his known work in oil. In addition, a few dozen of his delicate drawings and other fine examples of his graphic art are on show in both venues.

Read Luuk Pijl’s review of both shows, exhibiting until the 22nd of June and 4th of August 2025 respectively, in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo

Image: ‘Self-portrait with owl’, by Jan Mankes. 1911. Oil on canvas, 20.5 by 17 cm. (Museum Arnhem).

In the influential ‘World Encyclopedia of Naive Art’, the Serbian art historian Oto Bihalji- Merin described Nikolai Pir...
29/06/2025

In the influential ‘World Encyclopedia of Naive Art’, the Serbian art historian Oto Bihalji- Merin described Nikolai Pirosmanashvíli (c.1862–1918) as ‘the best known primitive artist of the USSR, both inside and outside the country’. The old Eastern Bloc lauded many self-taught artists, but only Pirosmanashvíli, he claimed, achieved ‘universal fame’, as well as widespread critical attention and international exhibitions. As is typical of self-taught artists from this period, Pirosmanashvíli’s subjects were bound to the geography and culture he inhabited. As such, they provide a compelling visual record of a particular time and place that seems all the more authentic because of the artist’s lack of technical guile. However, as the authors in ‘Niko Pirosmanashvíli: A Study of his Life and Art’ point out, the artist was far from uninfluenced by external models. ⁠
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Read Colin Rhodes’s review of this publication in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: ‘Family feast’, by Nikolai Pirosmanashvíli. 1907. Oil on oilcloth, 115 by 180 cm. (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; Bridgeman, London).

At a time when many art museums are reluctant to organise exhibitions of Early Modern art for fear of low attendance, it...
28/06/2025

At a time when many art museums are reluctant to organise exhibitions of Early Modern art for fear of low attendance, it is perhaps reassuring that Artemisia Gentileschi (1593– c.1656) has become a name with proven visitor appeal. Over the last ten years, there have been numerous retrospectives and exhibitions that include her work. 'Artemisia: Heroine of Art' at Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, is organised thematically and includes thirty-nine works – twenty-six of which are attributed to Artemisia – divided between eight rooms.⁠
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Read Judith Mann’s review of the show, exhibiting until the 3rd of August 2025, for free in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/exhibition-review/artemisia-heroine-of-art?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo+free+rev
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Image: Detail of ‘Allegory of inclination’, by Artemisia Gentileschi. 1615– 16. Oil on canvas, 152 by 61 cm. (Casa Buonarroti, Florence; exh. Musée Jacquemart- André, Paris).

A previously unknown early portrait photograph of the renowned French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864–1943) has been disc...
26/06/2025

A previously unknown early portrait photograph of the renowned French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864–1943) has been discovered in Frome, Somerset.1 The portrait, made using the wet collodion process on glass, shows Claudel in strict profile, her hair pinned back, wearing a dress with prominent buttons and a small shawl drawn closely around her neck. Claudel visited her friend, the sculptor Amy Mary Singer (1862–1941), in Somerset in 1886 and it is thought that the portrait dates from the time of her visit, when she would have been twenty-two years old. ⁠
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Read Sue Bucklow’s shorter notice ‘A newly discovered early photograph of Camille Claudel’ in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: Camille Claudel. 1886. Wet plate collodion photograph on glass, 17.8 by 12.7 cm. (Frome Museum, Somerset).

In the catalogue of the 1976 exhibition ‘Women Artists 1550–1950’, Ann Sutherland Harris signaled the existence of a pho...
24/06/2025

In the catalogue of the 1976 exhibition ‘Women Artists 1550–1950’, Ann Sutherland Harris signaled the existence of a photograph in the Frick Reference Library, New York, which documents an apparently lost painting by Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625) depicting a ‘Dominican priest’. Sutherland Harris drew attention to the work because of a note in the Frick’s file on the painting, on which someone from the library had recorded an inscription, allegedly visible on the painting but impossible to see in the photograph. Although the painting in the photograph was in some ways unusual, the spelling of the artist’s surname – ‘Angussola’ rather than the now commonly used ‘Anguissola’ – conformed with other authentic signatures by the artist, as did the use of the word ‘virgo’ and the date rendered in Roman numerals. ⁠
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As fortune has it, the painting survives in a private collection, and it is presented in our current issue in colour. Inspection of the extant work leaves no doubt that it is a major early painting by Sofonisba’s hand. ⁠
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Read Michael Cole’s shorter notice ‘A rediscovered painting by Sofonisba Anguissola’ in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: Portrait of a canon, by Sofonisba Anguissola. 1552. Oil on canvas, 90.2 by 69.9 cm. (Private collection).

David Rosand (1938–2014) was surely the most thoughtful American Venetianist of his generation. He is probably best know...
22/06/2025

David Rosand (1938–2014) was surely the most thoughtful American Venetianist of his generation. He is probably best known for his magisterial ‘Painting in Cinquecento Venice’ (1982), but he published an innovative monograph on Titian in 1978, as well as a host of essays on his painter of predilection, of which twenty-one are reprinted in ‘Titian’s Poetics: Selected essays by David Rosand’, arranged into five thematic sections. ⁠
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Read Paul Joannides’s review of this publication in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: ‘Presentation of the Virgin in the temple’, by Titian. 1534–38. Oil on canvas, 345 by 775 cm. (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice).

Few of the numerous pottery painters practising the istoriato style in Urbino around 1530 signed their work, most of whi...
20/06/2025

Few of the numerous pottery painters practising the istoriato style in Urbino around 1530 signed their work, most of which was long credited to just a small number of leading practitioners. For example, in his 1940 catalogue of the collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A), Bernard Rackham attributed nearly thirty works to a single painter then known as Nicola Pellipario but now recognised as Nicola da Urbino (or Nicola di Gabriele Sbraghe), who is documented in Urbino from 1520 onwards and had died by February 1538. More recently it has been suggested by J.V.G. Mallet that the number of Nicola’s works in the museum can be reduced to as few as eight. In an article on another influential istoriato painter, Francesco Xanto Avelli (active c.1522–1542), Mallet added some clarity to the issue by disentangling the hands of nine anonymous pottery painters working at Urbino in the shadow of Xanto and Nicola. ⁠
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The subject of the book ‘Le Peintre du Marsyas de Milan: La majolique historiée à Urbino en 1530’ is one of these anonymous followers, many of whose works have been attributed over the years either to Nicola or to Xanto. ⁠
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Read Elisa Paola Sanis review of this publication in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: Bowl showing birth scene, by the Milan Marsyas painter. Urbino, c.1530–35. Tin-glazed earthenware, diameter 18.1 cm.; height 9.5 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

In the historical archive of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, there is an autograph letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds ...
18/06/2025

In the historical archive of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, there is an autograph letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds dated 20th May 1785 that was sent from London. It has not been published and, until now, has remained unknown.

Read Giovanna Perini Folesani’s shorter notice ‘An unpublished letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds’ in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo

Image: ‘Giuseppe Baretti’, after Joshua Reynolds. Early 1770s. Oil on canvas, 75 cm by 63 cm. (National Portrait Gallery, London).

What Richard Spear once dubbed ‘Caravaggio mania’ continues apace with ‘Caravaggio 2025’ at Palazzo Barberini, Rome, sch...
17/06/2025

What Richard Spear once dubbed ‘Caravaggio mania’ continues apace with ‘Caravaggio 2025’ at Palazzo Barberini, Rome, scheduled to coincide with the Church’s Jubilee Year. It contains twenty-four paintings, over one third of Caravaggio’s known surviving production, and provides an opportunity to evaluate attributions, dating and the Lombard master’s stylistic trajectory. With two exceptions, all of the works exhibited have been shown at previous exhibitions in the past twenty years, but the intelligent hang helps provoke thoughts about chronology as well as Caravaggio’s pictorial practice and maturing language of expression. ⁠
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Read John Gash’s review of the exhibition, showing until the 6th of July 2025, in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: ‘Ecce Homo’, by Caravaggio. c.1608–10. Oil on canvas, 111 by 85 cm. (Private collection; exh. Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome).

Two paintings in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel, are here identified as portraits by Joshua Reynolds of Princes...
16/06/2025

Two paintings in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel, are here identified as portraits by Joshua Reynolds of Princess Amelia, second daughter of George II, and her brother William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. Both were gifts from the sitters to their sister Mary, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, a provenance that sheds new light on the cultural links between England and the landgraviate in the mid-eighteenth century.

Read Justus Lange and Martin Spies’s article ‘Two royal portraits by Reynolds rediscovered in Kassel’ in our June issue – link in bio

Images: Detail of portrait here identified as Princess Amelia of Great Britain, by Joshua Reynolds. 1763/65. Oil on canvas, 257 by 162 cm. (Hessen Kassel Heritage, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel).

Detail of portrait here identified as William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, by Joshua Reynolds. 1764–65. Oil on canvas, 260 by 165 cm. (Hessen Kassel Heritage; Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel).

Some three decades ago this writer sought to demonstrate in this Magazine that the early evolution of Francesco Guardi (...
14/06/2025

Some three decades ago this writer sought to demonstrate in this Magazine that the early evolution of Francesco Guardi (1712–93) as a 'vedutista' could be followed in a number of pictures supplied to English patrons who were in Venice from the late 1750s. Other pieces of the jigsaw now fall into place. ⁠
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A distinguished pair of medium-sized canvases by Guardi – a view of the Piazza S. Marco from the west now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and that of the Piazzetta looking towards S. Giorgio Maggiore now in a private collection, respectively signed and initialled, is known to have been lent by Richard Wilson Fitzpatrick (1811–50) to the British Institution, London, in 1844. On stylistic grounds they can be assigned to the early 1760s, a period when there are rather few fixed points in Guardi’s chronology.⁠
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Read Francis Russell’s article ‘Guardi and the English tourist: a postscript’ in our June issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202506?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=June+25+issue+promo
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Image: ‘Venice: the Piazzetta with S. Giorgio Maggiore’, by Francesco Guardi. Early 1760s. Oil on canvas, 69 by 86.5 cm. (Private collection).

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