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The Catholic Rubens: Saints and Martyrs. By Willibald Sauerländer. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. 2014. Pp. 311. $45.00. ISBN 978-1-60606-268-5.)
Willibald Sauerländer (born in 1924) is an internationally recognized art historian, who taught during his prolific career at universities in the United States, Germany, and France. Being a medievalist, he wrote several tone-setting publications redefining the history of French medieval sculpture. This book stems from a review of the 2006 Rubens exhibition at Lille, rejecting the simplistic view that ranges the essence of Rubens's oeuvre under the label of "baroque passions." Instead, Sauerländer draws attention to the ethical, philosophical, and religious tension that is at the heart of Rubens's art. The volume appeared in German in 2011. Thanks to the Getty Foundation, it has been published in English, allowing the publication to reach a larger audience.
As the title suggests, Sauerländer focuses on the characteristics of Rubens's work as one of the major painters of the Counter-Reformation. The book therefore focuses on three topics that were at the center of religious strife in the...