Though neighbors with common genealogical, political, and cultural roots in Burgundy, the Habsburg rulers of the Netherlands and the Valois rulers of France were at unease through most of the sixteenth century. The two were even demarcated as national entities with a set of characteristics typical for each of them in Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570. Many inhabitants, however, probably never recognized the division or the characteristics; rather, as the editor states, “merchants, humanists, or artists connected across national borders regardless of political and religious conflicts” (23).
The present book contains an introduction and five chapters that present—with the exception of the chapter written by Hubert Meeus—revised and extended versions of papers from a 2015 workshop at the University of Stuttgart organized by the volume's editor. Following Caecilie Weissert's informative introduction, Meeus's chapter is an informative presentation of the culture of print in Antwerp qua Paris and Lyon. The author outlines how Charles V and Francois I offered privileges to protect the printed literature of their respective dominions yet failed to counter the entrepreneurial spirit of the Antwerp scene—in particular that of Christopher Plantin—that allowed French authors to have their works disseminated beyond linguistic barriers and also avoid religious censorship. Thomas Fusenig discusses the works of Hans Robelar, a virtually unknown Netherlandish painter residing in France. Documentary and visual evidence and comparisons between signed and unsigned works enable the author to attribute a dozen paintings to Robelar, proving that Duzendware (uninspired, standardized items) are not to be overlooked when analyzing the exchange of artistic ideas.
Caecilie Weissert analyzes three paintings by Frans Floris in light of the French Renaissance Pléiade, demonstrating how the painter gradually developed the convivium deorum theme into a form that does “not explain and narrate, but show[s] love and beauty comparable to the French poems” (90). Natasha Peeters explores the career of Ambrosius Francken, one of Floris's students, through archival documents and visual clues in his works. Whereas documentary evidence can attest to the painter's presence in Tournai, some of his works also disclose familiarity with events and motifs he could only have come across at the French court. Tamara Engert examines the last phase of stained-glass windows in the Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris, which differ from earlier windows in the same church. She traces their iconography and style to Netherlandish templates mediated through collaboration between engraver Léonard Gaultier and cartographer Jean Leclerc.
That the introduction and two chapters are in German and three chapters are in English presents a relatively unusual combination for contemporary scholarship. Given the historical linguistic divide between the two areas discussed in the book, the choice does bring a sort of meta-linguistic hybridity that fits the content, but even if the reason for keeping two languages is not explained by the editor, it is probably a purely pragmatic and practical one. Regardless of their language of communication, however, the contributors shed analytical light on the interweaving of culture through a welcome variety of media (printed books, paintings, and stained-glass windows) and methodological approaches (e.g., archival studies, visual comparisons, analyses across genres, history from below, etc.).
The numerous color illustrations throughout the book are a joy, but the lack of color plates of the stained windows in Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Engert's chapter is a lament. The unhelpful positioning of figures 1–4 in the same chapter complicates the comparisons prepared in the text. Moreover, the meritorious variation in methodology is partly flawed by a very loose cohesion across the book as a whole: more continuity and cross-references between the chapters would have been appreciated, as would a more coherent system for translations of quotations (see, for example, 75 vs. 104).
Given its rather narrow scope, the book will find its main audience among scholars and students of sixteenth-century art, who may, however, cherish a multifaceted content of exchange between neighbors as a supplement to the many global perspectives on early modern artistic exchanges in present-day scholarship.
