marginaliant's reviews
1053 reviews

I genuinely enjoyed this book, as it was an informative and comprehesive history of Florence combined with a catalog of some of the greatest artistic archievements to be found within it. And, it did all this without falling into pretentious art-world cliches. I can't wait to find more by Judith Testa, what she created here was truly marvelous.

This book makes me want to visit the gallery, and what else can you say about a book that's very clearly intended as a grandiose advertisement? To be fair, the history is fairly well written, but it's not well organized, but there's some interesting information (and a very, very funny anecdote about the acquisition of one painting.) And if the evacuation of the gallery during WWII doesn't tug at your heartstrings, I don't know what to do about you.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Like the others in this series, it's a wonderful introduction to the period without getting too bogged down in Art History rhetoric or value judgement. Unfortunately, if you're looking for a book that will engage in in-depth analysis, this isn't the book for you, but it's a nice way to cover lots of artists so you get a broad, sweeping understanding of the movements, their sub-categories, and several of the artists that participated in it.

This was a truly wonderful book, despite how long it took me to get through it. Berendt really makes reading this historical book read like fiction, smoothly gliding from one topic to another. And there are a lot of topics. Though the book is "centered" around the theme of the fire that consumed the Fenice Opera House in 1996, it branches out to discuss the happenings of prominent (and not so prominent) Venetian residents, from the battle over the estate of Ezra Pound to the man who discovered perfect recipe(s) for rat poison. It can be very involved in the politics and business of certain events (like the Save Venice Foundation debacle), though Berendt stays unbiased for much of it. What stuns me is how he manages to get all of these interviews with famous figures of Venice, he seems to be able to call up anyone and get an interview. He must be extraordinarily charismatic, I'd love to have coffee with him.

Anyway, if you're at all interested in Venice but want to read something other than Renaissance history, definitely get this book. Highly recommended.

I didn't think this book was as well written as others in the same series, but that might just be because I don't like the impressionists. It's a good primer for the genres and has huge lists of paintings and sculpture to look at, so if you're interested in them this is a great place to start.

Ehh. I didn't really like this book. Certainly not the worst book I've read about Medieval Art, but still pretty bad. The writing was decent if bland and there were some pieces I hadn't seen before, but the organization was horrible. It went by topic without considering dates so all the information was jumbled and confused (especially when the pieces of later Medieval art contradicted the themes of early Medieval art.) And there were a few occasions when they show a close-up of a work of art next to the whole piece and the close-up is colored wrong and is a mirror image... it's just not well put together. So, you could do worse, but I'd skip it.

For what it is, this book is pretty good. It provides a catalog of sculpture from the Louvre with big, glossy pictures and the basic information about them. I powered through the scholarship written by Gaborit but you really don't have to bother if you have any art historical background. There's nothing ground-breakng there. Mostly I'm just using the book as a resource for my art blog, and for that purpose it does just fine.

Pictures of creepy looking dolls with "funny" captions of how they're all serial killers. Silly fun for a while, but nothing special.