Review: The Church of Saint-Eustache in the Early French Renaissance, by Anne-Marie Sankovitch

Abstract

Anne-Marie Sankovitch The Church of Saint-Eustache in the Early French Renaissance Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015, 261 pp., 354 b/w illus. $129 (paper), ISBN 9782503555140 The posthumous publication of Anne-Marie Sankovitch's PhD dissertation (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1991) on the Parisian church of Saint-Eustache is a gift for those architectural historians interested in the complex panorama of early French Renaissance architecture and, more generally, in the architecture of late medieval and early modern Europe. Sankovitch's study is preceded by a series of short essays by Krista de Jonge, Jean Guillaume, Etienne Hamon, and Marvin Trachtenberg, the volume's editor, that help to contextualize the author's pioneering contributions within the abundant recent literature in the field.1 Sankovitch's original bibliography has been updated to include the most relevant recent publications. The book is beautifully illustrated with 354 photographs, the vast majority of which Sankovitch took herself. The care taken by the editor and publisher in arranging and scaling the photographs is exemplary: not only do readers have visual access to Saint-Eustache through an abundance of high-quality, full-page images, but also the grouping of scaled sets of architectural details (for instance, figs. 52–59) eloquently supports Sankovitch's compelling analysis of the building. The volume is organized into seven chapters that focus on the conception, design, and early construction phases of Saint-Eustache, from 1519 to approximately 1545. Chapter 1, “A Critical Historiography of Saint-Eustache,” provides an intellectual map to the …