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Allen Hockley’s long-awaited monograph on Isoda Koryūsai (1735–90) is a welcome addition to the literature on Japan’s eighteenth-century print culture. Not only does he focus on one of the too-long neglected masters of the period, he also presents a fine analysis of some of Koryūsai’s major themes as well as his best-known series of single prints, Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh Young Leaves. That this study is, indeed, long overdue can be inferred from the fact that Koryūsai has received little scholarly attention in spite of the sheer number of designs for which he was responsible. As… Full Review

Francisco de Goya's Los Caprichos (1799), a series of eighty etchings and aquatints, are widely known as satiric criticisms of human ignorance and folly. The artist is democratic in his critical assessment of society and its customs, from the superstitious beliefs of the lower classes to the genealogical obsession of aristocrats. Although the series includes themes particular to Spain at the turn of the century, Goya often veils these fixed references with ambiguous meanings, settings, and figures. Thus, many of the critiques expressed pictorially by Goya have application for locations and times outside of late-eighteenth-century Spain, giving the series a… Full Review

Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru is a welcome addition to the literature on the art of ancient Peru. The Moche were a state-level society who prospered in the first seven or so centuries AD on the desert coast of what is now northern Peru. They were prolific and prodigious artists in many media, the most famous being metalwork, the most numerous being ceramics. The gold-filled graves at Sipán and other Moche sites have been discovered in the last twenty years, and much progress has been made in our knowledge of this important ancient American society and its art. Christopher… Full Review

In an inspired act of programming, in the summer of 2005 the Prado Museum exhibited a selection of paintings associated with the legendary Palace of the Buen Retiro. Not only does the accompanying catalogue shed light on an unparalleled chapter in the artistic patronage of Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–65), it also marks a resourceful initiative by the Prado to draw attention to the strengths of its own holdings. The museum, which borrowed just three of the roughly sixty works in the exhibition, used the occasion to commemorate an enterprise generally accorded fragmentary coverage in the literature on seventeenth-century… Full Review

Ellen Perry offers a clear and forthright, if sometimes oversimplified, account of the complex, highly sophisticated discourses that characterized the Roman "aesthetics of emulation." In so doing, she seeks to transform the debate on Roman copying, with a particular focus on Roman statues of gods and heroes, so-called ideal sculpture. This debate has important repercussions for Romanists, and indeed for the field of art history as a whole. After all, Roman ideal sculptures are familiar to most art historians—but not as Roman works of art. Instead, statues that appear stylistically Greek, such as the Apollo Belvedere… Full Review

In chapter 1, after a brief discussion of "Greek art, the idea of freedom, and the creation of modern high culture," which treads mostly familiar ground, Tanner takes on some twentieth-century accounts of ancient art and (unsurprisingly) finds them wanting—too literary, too anachronistic, and so on. His own (quasi-Parsonian and somewhat jargon-filled) solution is to characterize art as a form of expressive cultural symbolism, constructing "affective experience on the basis of cultural-level codifications of sensuous form generated in some degree of abstraction from immediate social relationships (21). He then mobilizes Karl Weber's concept of rationalization to account for art's different… Full Review

Robert Aguirre should be commended for calling our attention to the less-studied area of the circulation between, and symbolic function of, collections and displays in nineteenth-century Britain and parts of Latin America. Largely centered on nationalist discourses, Aguirre's very useful and informative Informal Empire explains the ways that England, in the place of direct military colonization of post-independence Mexico and Central America, and in the face of increasing interventions by the United States, nonetheless managed to play a vital, if not controlling, economic role in those regions. England did so, Aguirre argues, through the appropriation, trans-Atlantic exchange, and display of… Full Review

Christopher Whitehead’s well-researched book, The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth Century Britain: The Development of the National Gallery, contributes significantly to the narrative of Britain’s first public museum. The National Gallery was originally conceived in the early nineteenth century as a public institution accessible to the general population. As the museum evolved throughout the nineteenth century, an attempt was made to accommodate the often conflicting desires and ideas of museologists, artists, donors, politicians, and the public. A debate arose during the mid-nineteenth century over the appearance and function of the public art museum. Should it be a public educational… Full Review

Chinese Steles is an exceptional work, useful for those unfamiliar with the genre of steles yet thorough enough to satisfy a scholarly need for depth. Dorothy Wong presents her study in a very coherent fashion: beginning with an overview of the stele within a broader Chinese historical context before moving on to consider the form as it was appropriated by Buddhist and Northern Wei concerns. With the brunt of the study focused on Buddhist steles, Wong effectively argues for an appropriation of the medium to relay the new Buddhist message, and she uses a regional construct to chart the connections… Full Review

This handsome catalogue accompanied an exhibition of Italian drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year. The show featured one hundred-and-fifty drawings from the permanent collection, whereas the book catalogues eighty of these drawings, ranging in date from c. 1539 to 2001. The publication includes a long essay by Ann Percy, curator of drawings at Philadelphia, tracing the formation of the collection. Seventy-eight of the eighty catalogue entries were written by Mimi Cazort, former curator of prints and drawings at the National Gallery in Ottawa; one entry was written by E. James Mundy and one by Ann Percy. Both… Full Review