Ingrid D. Rowland | The New York Review of Books

Vitruvius & the Warlords

Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture was not only a manual of the building arts but a treatise on how to extend and consolidate the Roman Empire, and lent itself all too well to the autocratic ambitions of Renaissance princes.

All the King’s Horses: Vitruvius in an Age of Princes

by Indra Kagis McEwen

May 15, 2025 issue

Caravaggio Lost and Found

As two paintings by Caravaggio return to public view, it is possible to hope that his best-known lost work will reappear after almost half a century.

Caravaggio: The Ecce Homo Unveiled

an exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, May 28, 2024–February 23, 2025

Caravaggio: The Portrait Unveiled

an exhibition at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, November 23, 2024–February 23, 2025

Caravaggio, la Natività di Palermo: Nascita e scomparsa di un capolavoro [Caravaggio, the Palermo Nativity: Birth and Disappearance of a Masterpiece]

by Michele Cuppone

March 13, 2025 issue

Nature’s Rival

Antonio Canova’s clay models reveal the creative struggle behind the classical perfection of his marble sculptures.

Canova: Sketching in Clay

an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 11–October 9, 2023, and the Art Institute of Chicago, November 19, 2023–March 18, 2024

May 9, 2024 issue

‘A Great Glory to Wealth’

Like so many of the Tuscan banker Agostino Chigi’s undertakings, the Villa Farnesina burst through all the old categories—social, architectural, and cultural—for a merchant’s house.

The Villa Farnesina: Palace of Venus in Renaissance Rome

by James Grantham Turner

November 2, 2023 issue

The Divine Guido

A new exhibition at the Prado dispels the idea that Guido Reni was an academic painter, revealing instead a tireless innovator.

Guido Reni

an exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, March 28–July 9, 2023

June 22, 2023 issue

Mysteries of Use and Reuse

For the artists and patrons of medieval and early modern Rome, the repurposing of ancient objects involved a tangle of complex motives.

Recycling Beauty

an exhibition at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, November 17, 2022–February 27, 2023

May 11, 2023 issue

An Exceptional Witness

The Holocaust survivor Stella Levi recalls growing up in the Jewish community of Rhodes before its destruction by the Nazis.

One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World

by Michael Frank, with illustrations by Maira Kalman

April 6, 2023 issue

The Spell of Marble

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s immense artistic authority was based on his theatrical skill with the chisel.

Bernini and His World: Sculpture and Sculptors in Early Modern Rome

by Livio Pestilli

May 12, 2022 issue

Caught in the Coils

In Hans von Trotha’s haunting novel, the Gestapo is rounding up the Jews of Rome, but the archaeologist Ludwig Pollak refuses sanctuary in the Vatican and wishes only to recount his memories.

Pollak’s Arm

by Hans von Trotha, translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer

April 7, 2022 issue

Nor Gloom of Night

In Vigdis Hjorth’s novel Long Live the Post Horn!, controversy over the European Union’s Third Postal Directive reveals that the mail service is one of the most powerful bonds connecting Norwegians.

Long Live the Post Horn!

by Vigdis Hjorth, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund

August 19, 2021 issue

See Rome and Feel Alive

“The city itself is an artistic treasure, so there was always something to see even when museums were closed.”

May 1, 2021

Light in the Palazzo

Hidden away and neglected for decades, works from the world’s greatest private collection of ancient sculptures are finally on public display in Rome.

The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces

an exhibition at the Capitoline Museums, Rome, October 14, 2020–June 29, 2021 (currently closed due to Covid-19 restrictions)

May 13, 2021 issue

The Virtuoso

No less than Michelangelo but much more subtly, Raphael brought on revolutions in art and architecture, and in thought itself.

Raffaello 1520–1483

an exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, June 2–August 30, 2020

August 20, 2020 issue

He Made Stone Speak

Late in life, Michelangelo took on a series of huge, daunting projects, fully aware that he would never live to see them completed.

Michelangelo, God’s Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece

by William E. Wallace

July 2, 2020 issue

The Master’s Master

Andrea del Verrocchio epitomizes what the Renaissance of art in Florence was all about.

Verrocchio, Il Maestro di Leonardo [Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo]

an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, March 9–July 14, 2019

Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence

an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 15, 2019–January 12, 2020

Bertoldo di Giovanni: The Renaissance of Sculpture in Medici Florence

an exhibition at the Frick Collection, New York City, September 18, 2019–January 12, 2020

December 19, 2019 issue

Filling Our Eyes with Sunshine

No one who saw Olafur Eliasson’s The weather project has ever forgotten it.

Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life

an exhibition at Tate Modern, London, July 11, 2019–January 6, 2020

Olafur Eliasson: Experience

edited by Anna Engberg-Pedersen, with an essay by Michelle Kuo

Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen

by Olafur Eliasson, with a preface by Alice Waters

September 26, 2019 issue

‘A Painter Not Human’

No one, not even Leonardo or Piero della Francesca, has ever paid such penetrating attention to the way light works as Antonello da Messina

Antonello da Messina

an exhibition at the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia di Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, December 14, 2018–February 10, 2019

Antonello da Messina

an exhibition at the Palazzo Reale, Milan, February 21–June 2, 2019

May 9, 2019 issue

Roman Holidays

‘Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Europe’ by Victor Plahte Tschudi

Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Europe

by Victor Plahte Tschudi

June 28, 2018 issue

Norwegian Woods

The thrilling complications of Edvard Munch’s art

Towards the Forest: Knausgård on Munch

an exhibition at the Munch Museum, Oslo, May 6–October 8, 2017

Så mye lengsel på så liten flate [So Much Longing on Such a Small Surface]

by Karl Ove Knausgård

Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed

an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 24–October 9, 2017; the Met Breuer, New York City, November 15, 2017–February 4, 2018; and the Munch Museum, Oslo, May 12–September 9, 2018

December 7, 2017 issue

Roman Rivalries

Michelangelo and Sebastiano

an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, March 15–June 25, 2017

August 17, 2017 issue