Customer Reviews

Michelangelo (Masters of Art)

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Hartt is an interesting writer and points out details that other writers don't. The quality of the color printing and of the paper itself is high. Since I bought this at Amazon marketplace, I consider it a great value.

However, this is the 'concise' edition (in 1984) of the 1964 book. And the reason the colors are not as bright as another reviewer remembers them is that the book's pictures were taken before the somewhat controversial cleaning and restoration of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. They were brownish after centuries of accumulations (smoke and 'protective' applications of varnish), and the project to clean them and restore the colors took place from '81 to '94.

To see what the paintings look like nowadays, color-wise, see _Michelangelo The Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel_ with text by Marcia Hall (Temple University) and photographs by Takashi Okamura, who was the first photographer given the opportunity to photograph the Chapel after the restoration project was completed. [...]

I purchased this book recently after having come back from Italy and having seen some of these works of art in person. The books is very nicely put together, a great coffee table piece. The large, thick pages really make the book feel sturdy. The only thing that I found a minor issue with is that the color plates of the paintings should be brighter. An example, the painting of the Doni Madonna was much more bright and colorful than is depicted in the book. In real life even the old paintings in the Sistine Chapel pop out at you (see the Delphic Sybil for another example).