Spanning six centuries and seven countries, the Middeldorf Collection--assembled by the late eminent art historian Ulrich Middeldorf--provides an extraordinary overview of major personalities and of political, social, cultural, and religious events as depicted in more than 350 medals and plaquettes. Illustrated in full color and accompanied by extensive documentation are commemorations of kings, queens, emperors, poets, composers, physicians, artists, inventors, popes, cardinals, and bishops. Papal annual and jubilee medals and delightful French reliefs from the Belle Époque complement medals from the eras of Louis XIV and XV, Napoleon, and the Risorgimento. Highlights of the collection are Italian medals from the 17th century and later--periods that until recently have received little scholarly attention.

The seventeenth-century Valencian artist Jusepe de Ribera spent most of his career in Spanish Viceregal Naples, where he was known as “Lo Spagnoletto,” or “the Little Spaniard.” Working under the patronage of Spanish viceroys, Ribera held a special position bridging two worlds. In Ribera’s Repetitions, art historian Todd P. Olson sheds new light on the complexity of Ribera’s artwork and artistic methods and their connections to the Spanish imperial project. Drawing from a diverse range of sources, including poetry, literature, natural history, philosophy, and political history, Olson presents Ribera’s work in a broad context. He examines how Ribera’s techniques, including rotation, material decay (through etching), and repetition, influenced the artist’s drawings and paintings. Many of Ribera’s works featured scenes of physical suffering—from Saint Jerome’s corroded skin and the flayed bodies of Saint Bartholomew and Marsyas to the ragged beggar-philosophers and the eviscerated Tityus. But far from being the result of an individual sadistic predilection, Olson argues, Ribera’s art was inflected by the legacies of the Reconquest of Spain and Neapolitan coloniality. Ribera’s material processes and themes were not hermetically sealed in the studio; rather, they were engaged in the global Spanish Empire. Pathbreaking and deeply interdisciplinary, this copiously illustrated book offers art history students and scholars a means to see Ribera’s art anew.

"Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, October 26, 2013/January 12, 2014."