Renaissance Splendor: Catherine de’ Medici's Valois Tapestries. Elizabeth Cleland and Marjorie E. Wieseman. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. 96 pp. $40.
by the forcefulness of her argumentation. Her careful analysis of what other scholars have written about the works provides yet another valuable contribution of these volumes. But Markham Schulz does much more than clarify or propose new attributions. By deftly combining documentation from archival sources; careful analysis of artistic, social, and religious practices; iconographical analysis; and biographical information on patrons and artists with extensive, careful visual analysis, Markham Schulz reminds the reader of the extraordinary value of connoisseurship. Once the raison d’être of our field, it is now highly unusual, and young scholars are rarely trained in it. Markham Schulz’s volumes model how important—especially in areas of the history of sculpture, which have not been so extensively studied or documented by photography—such an approach can be.