Review by Choice Review
As Melion observes, it is impossible to understate the importance of Van Mander's 1604 Het Schilder-Boeck, comprising three series of artists' lives, a treatise on painting, and two guides for mythological stories and allegorical depictions. Melion's goal is to define this importance in terms that specifically articulate Netherlandish art theory and art historiography. His premise is the "intertextuality of Van Mander's argument, which depends on a cross-referential reading of the Schilder-Boeck". He expounds on this by analyzing selected themes, terms, and concepts from Het Schilder-Boeck, with reference to narrative and non-narrative modes, critical categories of medium and method, and historical position of artists and writers. His analyses are particularly developed and successful in the cases of Jan van Eyck and Goltzius, the two artists who set the parameters (temporally and stylistically) of the northern Renaissance. Especially interesting are Melion's considerations of visual information gleaned from prints, of cultural relativism with respect to Venetian and Tuscan/Roman painting, and of the relationships between De Heere, Lombard, Ortelius, and Lampsonius. Immensely useful as an English-language publication about Van Mander, this work is not a substitute for Van Mander's original text (repr. 1969 and 1980) and its sources in 16th-century European literature. A. Golahny; Lycoming College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
