Acknowledgements
This is, in many respects, not a book that I meant to write. I set out in 2014 in anticipation of a sabbatical in 2015–2016 to write at last the book on Romanesque sculpture that had been ripening in my thoughts for a decade, and then Jael intercepted me and called me into her tent. For some time, the subject of Jael and her intriguing early modern imagery had engaged me as an avocation and diversion from my “real” work. I visited Jael as one would a summerhouse, and I appreciated the views that she offered me of the landscape of the history of art, different from those familiar to me from my home in the Middle Ages. I began work on an article on Jael that would, I hoped, be a definitive study of the subject. The article grew and grew. 20,000 words. 40,000 words. On the eve of my sabbatical, I decided the article would have to be a book and that I would just finish it up quickly and get back to the Romanesque. Three years later, though I am pleased the book is finally done, I am also happy that I answered Jael’s call. She and the marvelous stories, artworks, and personalities that surround her in early modern culture are now certainly part of my broader vocation and avocation for the history of art.
Needless to say, this all would not have been possible without the advice and support of some key institutions and individuals. A sabbatical award from the University of North Florida made it possible for me to undertake this project. I could not have written the book without the spiritual, intellectual, and material support of Sally Anne and Benedicte Brown. I would never have come to this subject or developed the expertise to pursue it had I not had the opportunity many years ago to study with Jean French and read the Old Testament with Elizabeth Frank at Bard College and to serve as a graduate teaching assistant at Yale University to Christopher S. Wood in courses on the Northern Renaissance and on seventeenth-century Dutch art. I must thank the scholars and colleagues who generously read and responded to parts of my manuscript, including Christopher Wood, Mieke Bal, and Ilja Veldman. I owe special thanks to Walter Melion, who responded enthusiastically when I appeared as a stranger out of the blue with my manuscript and who then invited the book for publication in Brill’s series on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History. Likewise, I thank Brill’s blind peer reviewers for their constructive suggestions and responses. I could not have completed this work without the advice, support, and encouragement of my two most loyal and generous critics and intellectual partners, Alison Locke Perchuk and Peter C. Brown, who both read and responded at length to part or all of this study and provided vital encouragement. I also wish to thank and acknowledge the institutions that contributed to the successful completion of this study. The Rijksmuseum, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, the Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium/Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique (