Customer Reviews

On Alberti and the Art of Building

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Robert Tavernor's On Alberti and the Art of Building is a book for which every student of Renaissance history in my young day would have sold his soul, for it presents this seminal theorist as an architect of rich intelligence and aesthetic sensibility, his excitement irresistibly infectious. With Tavernor's help we see through the alterations, false completions and unfinish of the buildings and comprehend Alberti's original intentions; reconstructions, models and photographs of astonishing documentary clarity support the exhilarating text. This book will no doubt pass unnoticed except by those few art historians whose imaginations were touched by Alberti when they first discovered him in Florence, Mantua and Rimini, and stood in awe of flawed perfection, but this monograph is, for me, the best art book of the year. Brian Sewell, Art Critic, London Evening Standard, 11 December 1998.

Alberti's buildings were mostly left incomplete, altered, or unfinished by others, his original intentions often impenetrable. Tavernor goes further than previous scholars in untangling this confusion in his impressive, handsomely illustrated study. Though complex and learned, his book has a clarity and consistency of aim in its analysis of the process by which theory is related to architecture.

One learns an enormous amount about the buildings and the man from this beautiful book. Indeed it is the place to go for Alberti as master builder.