Controversial Monuments: Personifying the Continents Between the 18th and 21st Centuries (Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 84)

Controversial Monuments: Personifying the Continents between the 18th and 21st Centuries offers a sweeping exploration of the iconography of the Four Continents, tracing its evolution from origins in Antiquity through early modern religious and imperial frameworks to contemporary artistic reinterpretations. Through richly illustrated case studies spanning pulpits, frescoes, sculptures, maps, and world fair displays, the book reveals how these personifications perpetuated Eurocentric worldviews, racial hierarchies, and colonial ideologies across centuries. Featuring contributions from leading scholars, it unpacks the symbolic power and persistent influence of this imagery while also highlighting how contemporary artists are critically engaging with, subverting, and reshaping these historic visual traditions for the 21st century.

Contributors are: Louise Arizzoli, Renée Ater, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Elisa Antonietta Daniele, Catherine Dossin, Charles Forsdick, Daniel Fulco, Maria P. Gindhart, Paul Kaplan, Hoyon Mephokee, Anne Pingeot, Marion Romberg, Wolfgang Schmale, and Chet Van Duzer.

Louise Arizzoli is the Agnes Mongan Curator of the Fototeca and Art Collection at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Previously, she served as an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Mississippi, USA. Her past roles also include Curator of Western Art before 1800 at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University Bloomington, as well as Exhibition Coordinator and Archivist for the Archivio della Scuola Romana in Rome.


Maryanne Cline Horowitz is Professor Emerita of History, Occidental College. Her Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge was awarded the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History. She serves on the Executive Board and Board of Editors of the Journal of the History of Ideas. Editor-in-Chief of the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (6 volumes and on-line), and she designed and wrote the 80-page Reader’s Guide. She continues her scholarship as Associate of the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.

Marion Romberg is a historian of early modern Europe, specializing in cultural history, visual culture, and the Habsburg Monarchy. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and is currently a research associate at the University of Bonn and editor of the Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter. Romberg has contributed to several research projects, including "Empress and Empire: Ceremonial, Media, and Rule 1550 to 1740," "Continent Allegories in the Baroque Age," and "The Diaries and Tagzettel of Cardinal Ernst Adalbert von Harrach (1598–1667)."