Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This lavishly illustrated book is an authoritative and perceptive study of Dutch painting from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Seymour Slive focuses on the major artists of the period, analyzing works by Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael, and others. He discusses the kinds of painting that became Dutch specialties--portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, seascapes, Italianate pictures, architectural painting, and still lifes--as well as traditional biblical and historical subjects painted by artists of the period. He also examines patronage and trends of art theory, criticism, and collecting. This book replaces the classic section on painting in Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600-1800 , jointly written by Slive and Jakob Rosenberg in the 1960s. Slive has completely rewritten and expanded the original text, taking into account his own and other recent scholarship on Dutch painting as well as new archival finds, technical analyses of paintings made by conservators and scientists, and significant pictures that have been discovered. The number of illustrations has doubled, and the result is a book that will immediately establish itself as the new standard work on this great period of painting.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

It is valuable indeed to have this amplification of the section on painting in the "Pelican History of Art" volume Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600-1800, by J. Rosenberg, S. Slive, and E.H. ter Kuile (CH, Apr'67). Expanded are illustrations (from 284 to 432), artists represented, and discussions about historical circumstance, genres of painting, and iconography. Footnotes and bibliography, although selective, are updated. Slive has made revisions throughout to take into account refinements of interpretation; for examples, he analyzes Ruisdael's Jewish Cemetery as a combination of reality and the artist's invention, and he identifies Rembrandt's 1627 Moneychanger as the rich man from the parable (following T"umpel). He includes some recently discovered and lesser-known works by Goltzius and others; and he incorporates new documentation when appropriate, as in his discussion of Saenredam's life and library. The readable and beautifully illustrated text has more depth and breadth in treatment of single artists and themes than the earlier editions, and it demonstrates how the study of Dutch painting has evolved over the last 30 years, from focus on individual artists and their specialties to the better integration of the artists in their social and esthetic contexts. Like the original Pelican volume, this one is an essential reference and serves both the academic and the general reader. Undergraduate; graduate; general. A. Golahny; Lycoming College