Antonio Paolucci is a renowned Italian art historian of the Renaissance, a former Minister of Culture, and the director of Vatican Museums
THE MOST VIVID PHOTOGRAPHY AND WRITING EVER PUBLISHED ON THE
RENAISSANCE AND BEYOND
Whether you have visited Florence just once, or stay in the fabled
Italian Renaissance city annually, you remain overwhelmed by the
amount of art and architecture. Florence is not that big of a city,
but its museums, cathedrals and ancient streets are repositories of
hundreds of thousands of significant pieces of art and
architecture. No matter how many notes you took, no matter how many
images you brought home on a digital storage card -- you return
with a thirst for more information.
Florence Art and Architecture, an astounding 500-plus-page book
published by H.F. Ullmann, truly is the only body capable of
quenching your thirst for knowledge. The book is huge -- nearly 10
inches by 12 inches in size and about five pounds in weight. Its
stock is beyond luxurious. The pages feel almost like photo paper.
And the reproduction on that high grade stock is astounding.
Photos of classic art leap off the page in vivid detail. You be
tempted to carefully tear out a full-page reproduction of a
Botticelli classic and frame it for your office wall. But don't
deface this treasure. Florence Art and Architecture Florence is why
we sincerely hope that printed books are never killed by digital
downloads. Because nothing can compare to the sheer joy of thumbing
through this monster of visual delight. Although the book features
hundreds of photos of priceless pieces of art from the Uffizi,
Bargello, Ornimichele, Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo
Strozi and other world class repositories of Florentine creativity,
it is far from being a simple coffee table publication.
Florence Art and Architecture -- edited by Antonio Paolucci, the
famed art historian and director of the Vatican Museums -- features
more than two dozen chapters authored by some of the foremost
architecture and art authorities in all of Italy. Other
contributors include luminaries such as Carlo Cresti, Angelo
Tartuferi, Mario Scalini, Marco Chiarini, Elena Capretti, Annamaria
Giusti, Clarissa Morandi and Silvestra Bietoletti. Paolucci's
chapter "Art and history in Florence: an overview of five
centuries" opens the book with some astounding facts. "In 1342,
with 100,000 inhabitants, Florence was more populous than Paris. It
had double the population of London and five times that of Rome, ''
Paolucci writes. "The gold florin (Dante's lega suggellata dal
Battistta' (the metal with the Baptist's form imprest -- Inferno,
Canto XXX) was the currency of the world's markets from Barcelona
to Constantinople, from Bruges to Milan. Florentine finance,
industry and commerce spearheaded the European economy..."
The book's more than 500 high quality photos are almost exclusively
taken from the world-famous Alinari photographic studio. Founded in
Florence in 1852, Fratelli Alinari is the oldest firm in the world
working in the field of photography. The birth of photography and
the story of Alinari go hand in hand in their development and
growth and the firm owns more than four million classic images. The
Alinari touch and Ullmann's dedication to fine quality print stock
shows in haunting architectural images of Brunelleschi's dome on
the Duomo, Michelangelo's Medici chapels in San Lorenzo and dozens
of other images of piazzas, cathedrals and sculptures.
"The Idea of Florence still fascinates the world, because no city
in Europe is the showcase of art more than Florence," Paolucci
writes. "Nowhere else does the voice of a glorious past appear so
visible and still so eloquent. It is not possible to look at
Florence with the eyes of an archeologist; you do not walk the
streets of a dead city." Florence Art and Architecture can be
enjoyed on many levels. If you are feeling purely visual, thumb
through the many facing pages that represent a single piece of art
displayed in nearly poster-sized 12x20 format. If you are feeling
curious, but not super engaged, gaze at the art of Donatello,
Giotto, Cimabue, Bronzino, Vasari, Pisano, Ghiberti, Della Robia,
Da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Raphael, Masaccio, Lippi, Michelozzo,
Michelangelo, Botticelli, Brunelleschi while reading only the
detailed photo captions.
If you are thirsting for the stories behind art and architecture in
the cradle of the Renaissance, read the excellent essays by the
dream team of art critics assembled for this book. You will learn a
great deal about the painted, sculpted, frescoed and otherwise
ornamented Florence -- much of it by the patronage or force of will
of the Medici family. And though Florence will always be known for
the Renaissance, the Art and Architecture publication sets the
scene by first exploring Medieval Florence and Gothic styles
leading up to the Renaissance. The book triumphs most when its
large format allows the armchair art historian to enter a magical
world of heighten knowledge through detail shots.
The deliciously ghastly "Last Judgment" mosaic decoration on the
vault of the Baptistery of St. John gives one reason to venture
beyond the famed bronze doors -- south done by Andrea Pisano and
the north and east by Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose magnificent east pair
of doors were dubbed by Michelangelo as "the Gates of Paradise."
The enlarged detail of Christ's face and bleeding torso, from
Giotto's Crucifix in the church of Santa Maria Novella gives much
more insight into the human-like depiction of Christ than one could
ever see while gazing at the crucifix from inside the old church.
The detail of Andrea Orcagna's Triumph of Death portrays the
imperfect townspeople's faces more vividly than one sees when
visiting the detached fresco in the Museo dell'Opera di Santa
Croce.
The greatest blown up image of the book comes from Filippino
Lippi's Madonna with Saints altarpiece from Santo Spirito. On one
page, the full painting is printed with the Madonna, child and
saints taking up the vast majority of the image -- with some
ancient buildings and Tuscan hills in the background. The entire
facing pace is dedicated to an enlarged full detail of only the
background scenery seen in a small portion of the full painting.
All of a sudden, Florence itself comes alive with Lippi's depiction
of the San Frediano gate and other buildings as they appeared in
15th century Firenze. Better still, about a dozen depictions of
daily life in late 1400s Florence come to life in the detail shot
-- including a father hugging his daughter good bye and a pair of
dogs growling at each other in the street. Such treats await every
turn of the page in H.F. Ullmann's brilliant Florence Art and
Architecture.
- Steve Wright review, Urban Travel and Accessibility September
2012 blog
VENICE OR FLORENCE ?
Choosing between Venice or Florence can not only be a hard choice
but an unfair one. There is too much to see, too much to experience
and feel in both enchanted cities that FW recommends once in your
life to go to both. Until then however, the two books by Ullmann
Publishing give you an insightful look into the two worlds.
Venice The Golden Centuries is a look into the city on water
through the eyes of dazzling style in architecture, design,
sculptures and paintings. This book allows you to learn, explore
and dream of the heaven like city and does not seize to amaze of
what has been preserved until today only waiting for you to
experience in real life!
The other keepsake, Florence Art and Architecture is another
magical book that inspires you to travel to the other part of the
world that offers sculptures, paintings, design, churches, chapels
and masterpieces that let you dream of another time.
Fashion Weekly Magazine August 2012 issue by Sakina K.
VENICE: The Golden Centuries
ISBN-10: 384800013X
FLORENCE: Art and Architecture
ISBN-10: 3848000083
Holiday Gift Guide: Florence: Art and Architecture and Venice: The
Golden Centuries
If various reports are to be believed, the recession is drawing to
a close. Even so, money is tight, gifts are precious and travel is
dear. That might mean a lot of the things, but to me it means that
gorgeous, elegant and rich books about wonderful places are going
to be among the top holiday time gifts this year. How could they
not be? Even an expensive book is a tiny fraction of the cost of a
trip and it can last ever so much longer.
Two great gift giving candidates come to us this season from H.F.
Ullman. Florence: Art and Architecture and Venice: The Golden
Centuries are both massive, impressive, filled with wonderful
information and both books are relative bargains: pound for pound,
these two might just be the best book bargains out there!
Neither of these books are contemporary travel guides which, in
many ways, make them much better gifts. The information contained
herein is not time sensitive or dependent. These are art books and,
considering the topic at hand, both deal with the artistic history
of the city under discussion. Noted scholars and historians
contribute chapters to do with their own areas of expertise, while
hundreds of images in each book complete the full illustration of
two of the most artistically important cities in history.
January Magazine coverage"
VENICE: The Golden Centuries
ISBN-10: 384800013X
FLORENCE: Art and Architecture
ISBN-10: 3848000083
Holiday Gift Guide: Florence: Art and Architecture and Venice: The
Golden Centuries
If various reports are to be believed, the recession is drawing to
a close. Even so, money is tight, gifts are precious and travel is
dear. That might mean a lot of the things, but to me it means that
gorgeous, elegant and rich books about wonderful places are going
to be among the top holiday time gifts this year. How could they
not be? Even an expensive book is a tiny fraction of the cost of a
trip and it can last ever so much longer.
Two great gift giving candidates come to us this season from H.F.
Ullman. Florence: Art and Architecture and Venice: The Golden
Centuries are both massive, impressive, filled with wonderful
information and both books are relative bargains: pound for pound,
these two might just be the best book bargains out there!
Neither of these books are contemporary travel guides which, in
many ways, make them much better gifts. The information contained
herein is not time sensitive or dependent. These are art books and,
considering the topic at hand, both deal with the artistic history
of the city under discussion. Noted scholars and historians
contribute chapters to do with their own areas of expertise, while
hundreds of images in each book complete the full illustration of
two of the most artistically important cities in history.
January Magazine coverage"
VENICE OR FLORENCE ?
Choosing between Venice or Florence can not only be a hard choice
but an unfair one. There is too much to see, too much to experience
and feel in both enchanted cities that FW recommends once in your
life to go to both. Until then however, the two books by Ullmann
Publishing give you an insightful look into the two worlds.
Venice The Golden Centuries is a look into the city on water
through the eyes of dazzling style in architecture, design,
sculptures and paintings. This book allows you to learn, explore
and dream of the heaven like city and does not seize to amaze of
what has been preserved until today only waiting for you to
experience in real life!
The other keepsake, Florence Art and Architecture is another
magical book that inspires you to travel to the other part of the
world that offers sculptures, paintings, design, churches, chapels
and masterpieces that let you dream of another time.
Fashion Weekly Magazine August 2012 issue by Sakina K.
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
