Next up in our CAA Barr Award coverage, a consideration of Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance: It delivers 484 pages of catalogue-raisonné detail, scholarship-packed analysis, and long-overdue re-evaluation of this neglected artist. It also overstates its case. Nearly every essay protests Gossart’s low reputation and minimizes his failings. “One of the most innovative and versatile artists working in the sixteenth century”; “the revolutionary nature of his art.” In their foreword, Thomas Campbell and Nicholas Penny compare him with Jan van Eyck, but alas Gossart suffers by this comparison, among others. For every stunning Young Princess (1530) there’s a Holy Family (1510), in which the Christ Child’s arm rests on his mother’s breast as if it were a Barcalounger, or a Virgin and Child (1532), where the boy has apparently impaled his genitals and had half his face transplanted to the other side by an early plastic surgeon. Countless Gossart heads seem to have found themselves on the wrong end of a chunk of falling masonry. Blessedly, the catalogue entries take a more nuanced view of the artist, calling him out on many an awkward patch of paint. Overenthusiasm isn’t such a sin anyway, and I’ll treasure this catalogue for some time to come. Be sure to read Homa Nasab’s interview with curator Maryan Ainsworth in ARTINFO and Andrew Morrall’s take in caa.reviews ($) (“It will become the standard reference work on the artist and the starting point of all future research”).

Read more: http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=5420