With the completion of Simiolus volume 41 (2019) another fifteen contributions have been added to the vast collection of papers on the art history of the Netherlands to which our journal has been contributing since 1966. At the time, as you can read in the preface to that very first issue, Simiolus was greeted with suspicion by part of the art-historical establishment: the editors were warned that there would not be enough copy for a new journal, and nor that its quality would merit publication. In fact, Simiolus quickly became a journal of record for studies in Netherlandish art, and we may now say that over the past fifty years it has indeed had the privilege of publishing many of the most influential and exciting papers in the field. And, we hasten to add, we are still as interested as ever in all original contributions on the history of Dutch and Flemish art especially, and if accepted, offer to pay for the cost of translation into English of manuscripts submitted in Dutch, German or French.
Volume 42 (2020) will start with a double issue containing, among others, a contribution by James Hall on the aesthetics and politics of Michelangelo’s attack on Flemish painting, a paper by Ruben Suykerbuyk on the highly innovative and influential funerary monument for Philip of Cleves in Brussels (now sadly lost), and an extensive analysis by Laurens Kleine Deters of Marcus van Vaernewijck’s notes on art, followed by the first English translation of this extraordinary material.
Later in the year, we are also looking forward to publishing the contribution by Elizabeth Rice Mattison from the University of Toronto, which was awarded the first Haboldt Mutters Prize. We are very grateful to Bob Haboldt for enabling us to continue with this tradition of an annual prize for a young and outstanding contributor, and are much looking forward to receiving the papers by new candidates for the prize before the end of January 2021.
Articles in the current issue (41-4)
Hendrick Goltzius and the origins of the auricular style or kwab
Huigen Leeflang
Rembrandt’s so-called betrothal
Irene Groeneweg
The idol in Rembrandt’s 1626 Leiden history painting: an addendum
Peter Hecht
Evoking a common past: art in the cause of unifying the southern and northern Netherlands, 1815–30
Naomi Bisping
Willem de Kooning at the Stedelijk Museum: Edy de Wilde and the introduction of Abstract Expressionism in the Netherlands
Jan van Adrichem
Review – Books by Tatjana Bartsch and Arthur DiFuria on Heemskerck’s Roman drawings
Ilja Veldman
