Northern Painting. From Pucelle to Bruegel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth, And Sixteenth Centuries

New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1973. — 500 p. — ISBN 978-0030894763."A good book, a solid book, an impeccably published, illustrated, and edited book! Since it is encyclopaedic in scope, thorough in the treatment of its material, and careful in its conclusions, it offers scarcely any points of attack. In a disarming preface the author acknowledges his indebtedness to Friedlander and Panofsky and since he modestly states.
My hope is that the material presented here will be useful to those who have followed the lectures (of the author at the School of Art of the University of Iowa) in the past and to students of art everywhere who follow comparable lectures and discussions, he places his book within the college and university textbook category. It is more than that, of course: a reference book of the first order, a delightful contribution to cultural history, a monument to art historical scholarship. In such a large and comprehensive work there will be always statements that will arouse some doubts in the minds of specialists, but any niggling criticism must fall silent before the immense scope of the author's undertaking. It is true that the bibliographies are not intended to be complete — indeed, if they were, the size of the book would have become excessive — but while the author states that his objective has been "to provide the essential minimum for those interested to explore further," he has certainly done more than that and consistently quoted some unusual and inter¬esting sources, especially in the matter of catalogs and periodical literature.
The greatest merit of Cuttler's book lies in its inclusion of graphic art and in the detailed treatment of those periods in German, Spanish, French, and Bohemian art which get short shrift in the usual textbooks."