Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller
While the extroverted comic vitality that marks the painting of Jan Steen will not engender the hymnal praise evoked by the National Gallery's recent exhibition of Jan Vermeer's art, this important catalog proffers another splendid yet very different vision of Dutch Catholic pictorial genius in the 17th century. The volume's several prefatory scholarly essays provide an intellectual context for an appreciation of the character and content of Steen's work. The more traditional essays offer a documentary reconstruction of the artist's life, stylistic development, and working methods, while others more provocatively attempt to offer deeper insight into the artist's persona, the problems of interpreting the paintings, and their relationship to a literary and social milieu. This handsomely illustrated exhibition catalog (the show is also at the National Gallery) includes not only fine color illustrations of the 49 exhibited paintings but also much comparative visual material. Making minimal reference to the essays, an ample text fittingly describes the individual paintings and suggests their likely meanings, sources, and relationships to a larger artistic ambience. An important addition to academic art history collections.?Robert Cahn, Fashion Institute of Technology, New YorkCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.