The Critic’s Notebook by the Editors

Nonfiction:

Winter: The Story of a Season, by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly Press): In Scotland it is said, “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes,” for it is sure to change. But there’s not much to be done about the lack of winter sunlight at Caledonian latitudes. No matter for the Scottish crime writer Val McDermid, who professes a love for winter in all its forms and especially revels in its juxtapositions: the cold outside and the fire within. In Winter: The Story of a Season, McDermid offers lyrical reflections on a land especially suited to the coldest months. —⁠BR

Nonfiction:

Scipio Africanus: The First Imperator, by Dexter Hoyos (Reaktion Books): An anecdote in Livy places Scipio Africanus in conversation with his onetime foe Hannibal, a few years after their decisive confrontation at Zama in 202 B.C. The Roman asks the Carthaginian which military commanders he deems the greatest in history: Hannibal gives Alexander the first prize, King Pyrrhus of Epirus second place, and himself third. Scipio then asks what he would say if Hannibal had beaten him at Zama, and the Carthaginian replies, “That I was ahead of Alexander and Pyrrhus and all other commanders.” As testimony to the talents of Scipio, the greatest commander in Roman history, this is impossible to top—but Dexter Hoyos’s new biography of the general who never lost a battle, much less a war, will remind readers why Roman might was feared across the Mediterranean well before Pompey and Caesar came on the scene. —⁠RE

Art: 

“Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Pietà’ Restored,” at the Morgan Library & Museum (January 15–April 19): For the first time in its five-hundred-year history, Giovanni Bellini’s Pietà (ca. 1470) will travel from its home in Rimini to the United States. This haunting Pietà, a favored subject of the painter, does not show Mary; instead, Bellini creates a jarring contrast between Christ’s languid corpse and the four serene and dainty miniature angels supporting the body. The masterpiece has recently undergone a comprehensive conservation treatment and will be displayed at the Morgan alongside several other Italian and Netherlandish works from J. Pierpont Morgan’s collection to situate Bellini’s masterpiece within the early Renaissance. Devotees of the Venetian master should also not miss the distinguished art historian Keith Christiansen’s lecture on the Pietà, hosted by the Morgan on February 11. —AG

Art:

“25 | 250: A Celebration of American Art” at Schoelkopf Gallery, New York (January 16–February 28): Just as we saw during America’s bicentennial fifty years ago, this semiquincentennial year is inspiring a reawakening of interest in the history of American art. Opening this week at New York’s Schoelkopf Gallery, “25 | 250: A Celebration of American Art” kicks off the festivities with a survey of works by nearly thirty American artists from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. With paintings, works on paper, and bronze sculpture, the selection bridges the periods of the Hudson River School through the Ashcan and American Scene into the modernist era. Represented artists include Thomas Hart Benton, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Windslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence, Paul Manship, Georgia O’Keefe, and John Singer Sargent. The gallery exhibition is paired with a yearlong series of spotlight shows on American art, beginning with a viewing-room presentation of three works by Andrew Wyeth in tempera. —⁠JP

Dispatch:

“AI word slop,” by Joshua T. Katz. On the 2025 Words of the Year.