The Art of Florence (2 Volumes) - Hardcover

Andres, Glenn; Hunisak, John; Turner, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896594025 ISBN 13: 9780896594029

Publisher: Abbeville Press, 2000

Synopsis

Since the radiant years of the Renaissance, the city of Florence has come to represent the greatest triumph of the Western cultural tradition. Here, hundreds of the most splendidly talented artists in history lived and worked, and collaborated in the creation of the great urban museum we know as Florence. The Art of Florence analyzes the history of Florentine art in terms of the distinctly Florentine and Tuscan influences that shaped it, linking the city's architecture, sculpture, and painting to the rich social fabric and the dramatic political life of the city. Woven into this history is a visual documentation of Florence's treasures.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Florence is the city of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dante, Masaccio, Botticelli, Giotto, Cellini and Machiavelli. This mammoth, two-volume survey lets one trace the shifting styles of Florentine painting, sculpture and architecture amid crosscurrents of political turmoil, Renaissance thought, princely patronage, commerce, wars, plague. It would be hard to match this opulent set for comprehensive detail or wealth of illustration. Among the 1553 plates (nearly half in color) are photographs, sketches, plans and hundreds of full-page reproductions. The text is designed to appeal to lay readers as well as to specialists. It brings Renaissance giants down to human proportions as it follows the rise of Florence from mercantile center to militant republic and to its late 16th-century decline foreshadowed by mannerism in the arts. The authors are art professors--Andres and Hunisak at Middlebury College, Turner at NYU; photographer Okamura's credits include The Vatican Frescoes of Michelangelo.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This expensive and elaborate set, replete with a wealth of excellent photographs, presents the art of Renaissance Florence in two beautiful, oversized volumes. Along with this visual feast comes a substantial and well-written chronological account of Florentine architecture, sculpture, and painting from 1200 to 1600. Basic historical and political background is incorporated into the text, making it informative and accessible to students and others with no prior knowledge of Italian Renaissance art or history. Although not a full history of Italian Renaissance art because of its limitation to one city, and lacking full scholarly apparatus (publication histories, dimensions of some works, etc.), this work will delight students, travelers, and general readers as well as specialists.
- Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.Ln., Cincinnati
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0896594025
• ISBN 13: 9780896594029
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 2