Insect Artifice

Winner of the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize for Art and Music History, Sixteenth Century Society and Conference [Bass'] study beds the manuscripts in early-modern empiricism, and beautifully complements the plates-a jewel box of exquisitely rendered sunfish, chameleons, bees, an Indian elephant and more. ---Barb Kiser, Nature **** * De Volkskrant * [Insect Artifice] brilliantly brings [the] various facets of the depiction of insects together, in a study of the polymath and artist Joris Hoefnagel. ---Kathryn Murphy, Apollo Bass brings vast learning, remarkable facility with classical texts and meticulous first-hand analysis of the volumes in Washington to bear on her interpretation of Hoefnagel's artifice. . . . This is a nuanced study, hovering between critical biography and wider intellectual and artistic history, of an easily overlooked sixteenth-century master. Bass has eloquently channelled Hoefnagel's message - relevant to our own time - that small things do matter. ---Albert Godycki, Burlington Magazine This beautifully illustrated and exquisitely printed book offers a poetic reading of the Four Elements manuscripts. ---Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, Nuncius Bass provides an ideal, humanist reading of Hoefnagel's oeuvre, positing the painter in opposition to the world of sixteenth-century court culture. . . . Insect Artifice is a magnificently illustrated, erudite, and profoundly insightful book. It offers an original and provocative interpretation of how Hoefnagel relied on art to remedy the wounds that the Dutch Revolt had inflicted upon him. ---Daniel Margocsy, CAA Reviews