Customer Reviews:
Hard read.......2007-07-03
I wonder how many people who buy a book like this, actually read it. It took me six months before I had the courage. And now that I have - and have three more volumes to go - I admit that I would have preferred a somewhat more pedestrian approch, perhaps - I should say - a somewhat more Anglosaxon (or American) approach. Because this book is definitely written in the German tradition, which goes especially for the several general introductions to the volume.
Short as they are, they are hard to read and a lot is taken for granted. I am an art lover, am well at home in the nineteenth century, but am less acquainted with the art of the middle ages and early renaissance, whereas on the other hand I know the general history of the period reasonably well. And although I have already visited many of the churches and chapels, frescoes and mosaics, described in the book, I still find parts of the introductory texts hard to follow. Commenting on fhe frescoes in the Assisi upper church, one of the highlights in the volume, Poeschke writes: "As for their innovate artistic qualities in general, these are already seen in the unified overall conception into the built architecture, in part by illusionistic means, and extend to the well balanced pictorial strucure, the clearly defined volumes and body language of the figures, a heightened presence of everything being represented, and an extension and refinement of the color spectrum. More than ever before, a compositional calculus asserts itself in these paintings (...)." (p.64) Which may all be very true of course, but which is also very dull, and in a way also very abstract. And whereas the layout of plates, diagrams and figures is cristalclear, I find the texts about them a lot less orderly.
Why not, before every church, a small historical introduction, and than a running and systematic textual commentary on the plates? And why not, for instance, systematically add the text of Bonaventura, on which the frescoes are based? This book has a strange way of taking its reader seriously, and at the same time not seriously enough. Where `s the editor? Where Poeschke does give an extended description of a fresco, he does so in an excellent way. But why not systematically combine the texts on the plates with the plates itself? I don't think this is really a quibble. It is a bit of a waste to produce a great looking book, without really thinking of the reader. It is easy to leaf through this book and say: "hey, this looks great", which it does, but I found reading it not always a pleasure.
But then, these are also wonderfull volumes, one has to admit. The quality of the photographs is excellent, the extensive coverage of many of the Italian medieval churches and chapels is a pleasure to behold. One may whine now and then at the tedious style, there is also an immense amount of knowledge assembled here. Would' nt it be great to have a very small pocketversion of an improved version of this book, just to take along to Italy?
Magnifico!.......2006-01-11
The latest in the set of now four brilliant works on the frescoes of the Italian renaissance, "The Age of Giotto" is a masterwork that is worthy of a museum. From the Giotto, Simon Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Cimabue wall paintings in the fascinating double church in Assisi, to the lesser known (and nearly disappeared) work by Cavallini in Santa Cecilia en Trastevere, the commentary is enlightening and the photography stunning. You will not find a better book on the early examples of this wonderful art form than this one. See the other three books - "The Early Renaissance", "The Flowering of the Renaissance" and "The High Renaissance and Mannerism" - for the compete, magnificent look at 200 years of fresco masterpieces.
Il Primo.......2005-11-09
One word describes this book - brilliant! This is the best book on the market for early Italian frescoes with a happy marriage of the finest photography and finest text. Congratulations and thanks.
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Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes : Illustrations, Introductory Essay, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism (Norton Critical Studies in Art History)
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Piero Della Francesca: San Francesco, Arezzo (The Great Fresco Cycles of the Renaissance)
ASIN: 0393314065 |
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Giotto
Francesca Flores D'Arcais
Manufacturer: Abbeville Press
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ASIN: 1558597743 |
Customer Reviews:
Great review of Renaissance painting.......2006-12-13
I'm a real art geek, and I've read a lot of books on this subject. This is one of the best. It provides a wonderful review of paintings and how they were made in Western Europe before the 16th century. This was a time of great transition in style, subject matter, and materials. This was when oil painting transitioned from an ancillary medium, believed useful for a few minor aspects of a painting, to the primary means of making visual art. This book lays it all out in ways that are accessible, yet thorough. If you are going to get one book about Renaissance painting, get this one.
Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope.......2005-07-23
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.
That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.
superb introduction to renaissance painting.......2003-06-15
We are used to looking at "old Master" painting as if it were just a matter of style, but the truth is that Renaissance art was in important respects the product of a revolution in the use of binding media (water and egg yolk for tempera; oils) for pigments, and in the prepared surfaces (wood panels, paper, canvas) to which these pigments were applied. This wonderfully illustrated book distills the knowledge gained by the restorers of the National Gallery in London, from decades of well-documented, cutting-edge restorations of the outstanding Italian and northern European Old Master paintings in their care. It is much, much more than a technical handbook. Historical essays cover the categories of Renaissance painting, 1300 to 1500, and their many uses, while the second half of the book is an informative catalogue (with gorgeous color reproductions) of individual paintings by many of the best-known Renaissance artists (Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, to name the most obvious).
Average customer rating:
- Very glad to see this is still in print
- bought this book for a friend and wished she'd kept it.
- Jesus' life in great frescoes
- THought provoking and beautiful
- The best children's Bible book I've ever seen
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The Glorious Impossible (Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Madeleine L'Engle
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ASIN: 0671686909 |
Book Description
The birth of Jesus was a Glorious Impossible. Like love, it cannot be explained, it can only be rejoiced in. And that is what master storyteller Madeleine L'Engle does in this compellingly written narrative, inspired by Giotto's glorious frescoes from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. With a simple clarity that illuminates the life of Christ, Madeleine L'Engle gives eloquent voice to the miracle of God's love.
Customer Reviews:
Very glad to see this is still in print.......2002-12-12
I bought this as a gift for my niece/goddaughter about 11 years ago and have wished I'd got one for myself ever since. It is simply gorgeous with a very moving text. You don't have to be a committed believer to enjoy this lovely book.
bought this book for a friend and wished she'd kept it........1999-02-03
As an artist with an Master's degree in painting, I was amazed by the stunning reproductions in this "children's" book, and kept looking at it, and looking at it. The reproductions are so vivid, the text so appropriate, and the book so well designed that I could almost imagine I was walking through the chapel myself. It was the first time I'd seen the frescos in an order the artist intended, which made them even more powerful. Eventually the book went to a friend who admires frescos, but there was such a sense of intimacy in it that I've been searching for another copy for well over a year. The text and the images meld beautifully, and I can honestly say it's the first story of Christ's life I've seen where I felt the illustrations or text didn't "get in the way". Even if you're a fesco fan who's more interested in Giotto than in the story, tear up your check for that expensive art book and buy this first.
Jesus' life in great frescoes.......1998-09-04
As an art educator, church librarian, and special lecture person who links art with religion at my church, I can highly recommend this gorgeous book to you. Madeleine L'Engle is one of my favorite writers and she presents the life of Christ in flowing prose. I even picked up a few facts I did not know. The book is illustrated using various panels from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy which adds sumptuousness to its narrative. As a child I was drawn to picture books like this because of their medieval, almost Oriental appearance, so if you wish to influence your children to appreciate a good story well told and illustrated, select this book. The text is on an 9-13 year old level. The "glorious impossible" is something that cannot be explained but only rejoiced in, and I think that sums up God's gift of Jesus to us in a very satisfying way. Enjoy.
THought provoking and beautiful.......1998-04-04
I remember reading this book in the store when it first came out, and it has stuck with me since. Madeline L' Engle gives a thoughtful, sensitive twist on a timeless story, and writes iin such a prose that you could easily imagine reading aloud to young children. I have searched for it for years, and am pleased to discover it in print again.
The best children's Bible book I've ever seen.......1997-11-20
Are you looking for a book to read to your children to share your faith, tell the story of Christ, and inspire your child and yourself to feel the joys of giving, forgiveness, commitment, and love? This is THE book for you. L'Engle's extraodinary and inspiring writing style was never so beautiful as in this faithful retelling of the Gospels. It uses both simple, everyday language and the more complex quotes of the Bible to render a tale that is both easy to read and mystical- a hard task in Children's Bible literature. Her comments on the feelings and activities of both Jesus and others are so spiritually aware that adults will end up thinking about it long after the book is finished. In particular, her thoughts on Judas and his motivation were thoughtful, compassionate, and shed the first positive light I have ever seen given to this character. She brings up points I had never considered--- After Jesus rose He said "Peace be with you" not "Where were you when I needed you" - with such simplicity that one can't help wonder why they didn't consider it before. Along side L'Engle's rich prose is artwork beautiful enough to be awed over by adults, but detailed enough you'll laugh as children comment, "Hey, Lazarus really looks dead!" "The Glorious Impossible" is beautiful, gentle, rich, and assuring- a perfect book to introduce not only Christ but what he taught as well.
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Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of the Decameron, from Giotto to Pasolini (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)
Jill M. Ricketts
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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The Decameron
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The Decameron: A New Translation (Norton Critical Editions)
ASIN: 0521496004 |
Book Description
Visualizing Boccaccio represents a new approach to the interpretation of Boccaccio's classic book of erotic tales, The Decameron. In a comparison of selected tales from The Decameron with works by Cimabue and Giotto, fifteenth-century manuscript illumination, a series of paintings by Botticelli, and Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinematic interpretation of the tales, Ricketts demonstrates how the juxtaposition of verbal and visual renditions permits new interpretations of each of these works.
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Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation
Hayden B. J. Maginnis
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
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ASIN: 0271015993 |
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Giotto Di Bodone: 1267-1337: The Renewal Of Painting (Taschen Basic Art)
Norbert Wolf
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ASIN: 3822851604 |
Book Description
A central figure of the Early Renaissance
According to legend, he was discovered by Cimabue as a boy, sketching his father's sheep. Giotto di Bodone (1266-1337) was the most famous and influential painter of his generation in Italy. As the pioneer of modern painting, his impact was so enormous that his artist colleagues in Florence, however capable, were left struggling to keep up. His services were engaged by numerous high officials and princes, including the Pope and his cardinals, King Robert of Anjou, and the Scaligeri and Visconti. All these works, including the large secular cycles, are lost. Amongst his surviving works, his masterpieces are undoubtedly his decoration, from 1303 to 1305, of the private chapel built by the financier Enrico Scrovegni for his family in a former Roman amphitheatre in Padua, the fresco cycle in the Upper Church of Assisi, and the frescos in side chapels of Santa Croce in Florence. The simplicity and strength of his forms, as well as the humanism he infused in his works, set him apart from his Byzantine contemporaries and at the forefront of Italian painting in the early years of the Renaissance.
Book Description
At the end of a program of restoration that lasted an incredibly short time, but for which preparations had been made down to the smallest detail over twenty years of scientific investigation, historical research, laboratory experimentation, essays, trials and monitoring, one of the most fundamental cornerstones and certainly the most dazzling incunbala of modern European painting has been reopened to the public.
Preceded by long and complex preparatory work on the building and the surroundings, the intervention of conservation on the mural decoration has made it possible to arrest the acceleration of the process of decay. This decay was chiefly the result of the combined action of damp and pollution, but had been further aggravated by the use of unsuitable restoration materials during the intervention carried out in the early sixties.
Once the problem that had prompted the decision to intervene on Giotto's cycle had been resolved, it was thought only proper to respond to the need to restore the paintings as much as possible to their original state.
The result has been to render the revolutionary spatial layout of the work more legible, along with the formal values through which Giotto expressed himself, in particular the quality of his coloring, something that is usually (and inexplicably) undervalued.
But several genuine discoveries have also emerged, such as his use of the technique required to make mock marble ("marmorino" or "Roman stucco") and of oil to "bind" the white lead, which as a consequence has not undergone any process of alteration. This has revealed, at an unparalleled level (at least as far as our current knowledge is concerned), effects of sunlight or luminosity that it would be hard to regard as produced by chance.
Customer Reviews:
This is an absolutely wonderful book!.......2004-09-04
This book is lacking in comprehensive text (although it does go into some detail with the individual paintings), but it does have the best and biggest possible reproductions of his frescos (with many close-ups of each individual panel). With hundreds of huge pages completely filled with Giotto's Padua paintings, this book is a must for any art lover and will inspire those unfamiliar with art to become art lovers. NOTE: the reproductions are Post-restoration and all the more beautiful because of this.
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Italian Frescoes: High Renaissance and Mannerism 1510-1600
Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance 1470-1510
Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance 1400-1470
Prague, The Crown of Bohemia, 1347-1437 (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)
