Painting of the Renaissance. This item is unavailable.Painting of the Renaissance

Each title in this large-format paperback series, translated from the German by academics, covers its period with a 20-page essay on salient points (with a separate essay on the Netherlands in the Baroque volume). The meat of each title, however, is in stylistic descriptions of close to 200 individual works, arranged by country and artist. Each work gets 75-150 words explicating the style it exemplifies. Clear, direct, and aimed at a general reader, the entries combine discussion of form, content, and iconography succinctly (although occasional lapses occur, as in the absence of any discussion of the anamorphic skull in Holbein's "Ambassadors"). At the back are potted biographies of the artists, usually with a portrait. These titles are useful visual summaries for the general reader but make no advance over, for example, Penguin's "Style and Civilization" series of 30 years ago. The plates vary in quality from average to good. For academic and public libraries.?Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.