Prize: Awarded Honorable Mention in the 2008 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Best First Book competition In her inspiring study, Andrea Pearson invites us to take a fresh look at seemingly familiar material. Her analysis of Netherlandish books of hours and devotional diptychs proposes that male and female patrons consciously shaped their public role by adopting, modifying or even rejecting gender-specific codes in art. Women are no longer seen as powerless victims in a patriarchal society, but as active agents who shaped the ways in which they were perceived by their contemporaries - an original book, well written and worth reading. Dagmar Eichberger, University of Heidelberg 'Gender is a topic only rarely and only quite recently addressed in the study of early Netherlandish art. Andrea Pearson's fascinating book throws down the gauntlet, demanding that we think more deeply about issues of intention and artistic format. In a series of well chosen case studies, Pearson charts the gendering of books of hours (female) and religious portrait diptychs (male) images in the Burgundian Netherlands of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This is a highly stimulating and beautifully researched book that should be of great interest to scholars of early modern European culture.' Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Kay Fortson Chair in European Art, University of Texas at Austin
