Shelley Perlove

Shelley Perlove, Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has been teaching since 2012 in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A specialist in Italian and Dutch early modern art, with emphasis upon religious culture, social context in the visual arts, Dr. Perlove has been honored by teaching awards and her scholarship has been recognized by such book awards as; the Gustav Arlt Humanities Book award for Bernini and the Idealization of Death; and the Bainton Book Prize of the Sixteenth Century Society, the Brown-Weiss Newberry Library Book Award; and the CAA Charles Rufus Morey Book Award (Finalist) for Rembrandt’s Faith. Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age, both published by Pennsylvania State University Press. Another publication, Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections, appeared in 2015 with the University of Notre Dame Press, and she served as co-editor for Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe, published by Brepols in 2018. Shelley is also the author of of 40 articles dealing with Rembrandt and such other artists as Callot, Bernini, Justus Sustermans, Guercino, and Heemskerck, and is editor/author of eight books and exhibition catalogues. She was consultant for the exhibition, "Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus," which opened in the Louvre, and wrote for its catalog. She is presently working on two book projects: the material culture of Brazilian hardwoods and dyes in colonial America and their reception in the Netherlands; and the religious and secular interpretations of the Bible of artists in Rembrandt’s circle.

Fields of Study

• Dutch art
• Italian Baroque
• Global Trade and Material Culture
• Guercino and Narrative
• Marvels of Plant and Animal Life in Early Modern Art
• Images of Blacks in Early Modern Art

Recent Presentations

• “Precious Hardwoods in Colonial America: Grueling Production and Material Splendor,”in the session, “Dutch Americas,” chaired by Stephanie Porras and Aaron Hyman, CAA, New York City. February 16, 2023.
• Distinguished Annual Art History Coleman Mopper Lecture: “Rembrandt and The African Woman: The Visitation of 1640.” Detroit Institute of Arts, April 20, 2022.
• “Rembrandt and the Jews,” Symposium for Moscow/ Amsterdam exhibition, “Rembrandt seen through Jewish Eyes.” Organized by Gary Schwartz and Mirjam Knotter.  January 31, 2022.
• "Treasures of Early Modern Religious Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts." by special invitation of the Michigan Center of Early Christian Studies, webinar, February 25, 2021.
• Keynote: “The Myth of Enoch in Early Modern Visual Art.” Facoltà Teologia, University of Florence, June 12, 2019. 
• “Rembrandt and the Jewish Experience,” for the eponymous exhibition, Telfair Museum, Savannah, Georgia, March 2019.
• "Dutch Art of the Golden Age and the Early Photography of Henry Talbot: A Case of Transhistorical Competition," Workshop Presentation in "The Transhistorical Turn in Netherlandish Art History," Historians of Netherlandish Art conference, Ghent, 24 May 2018.

Recent Publications

• "Rembrandt, the Jews and Judaism," in Knotter, Miriam and Gary Schwartz, eds. in Rembrandt seen Through Jewish Eyes: The Artist's Meaning to Jews from His Time to Ours. Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 2024, 123-140.
•  "Temple Priests and Pharisees on Calvary: Anti-Judaism and Humanism in Maarten van Heemskerck's Crucifixion (c. 1549)," in Stijn P.M. Bussels, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Michel Weemans, and Eliott Wise, eds. Imago and Contemptatio in the Visual Arts and Literature (1400-1700). Festschrift for Walter S. Melion, Leiden, Brill: 2024, Chapter 8, 162-185.
•  "Navigating Theological Differences: Rembrandt and The Grieving Mother of Christ,” in Barbara Haeger, Elliott Wise, and James Clifton, eds. in Mary, Mother of God. Devotion and Doctrine in the Visual Arts, 1450-1700. Leiden, Brill: 2023, Chapter 8, 300-335.
• 'By this blood most chaste…’: Passion and Politics in Rembrandt’s Lucretia of 1666,” in Walter S. Melion and Art di Furia, eds. Ekphrastic Image-Making in Early Modern Europe and the Americas 1500-1700. Leiden, Brill: 2022, Chapter 15, 650-684.
• "Rembrandt’s Visitation: The African Woman at the Dawn of Christianity and Colonialism," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 14:1 (Winter 2022) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2022.14.1.3
• "Jacob van Ruisdael's Jewish Cemetery, c. 1654-1655: Religious Toleration, Dutch Identity, and Divine Time," in Karl A.E. Enenkel/Walter S. Melion, Landscape and the Visual Hermeneutics of Place, 1500-1700, (Leiden/Boston/New York, Koninklijke Brill: 2021, Chapter 8, pp. 233-260.
• Perlove, Shelley. Stephanie S. Dickey, ed. Rembrandt and his Circle: Insights and Discoveries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. Historians of Netherlandish Art Review, January 2019.
• Perlove, Charles M. Rosenberg. Rembrandt’s Religious Prints: The Feddersen Collection at the Snite Museum of Art. June 05, 2019. Renaissance Quarterly Review, LXXII, 162-63.

Recent Awards

• President's Award from the Midwest Art History Society (MAHS) for outstanding service and publications, 2024.