Customer Reviews

Sienese Painting: From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque

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'Sienese Painting' is a sumptuously produced book (it has some 350 illustrations, with 200 in colour) and as a general survey certainly does its job well. It does have a flaw however, namely in the lack of clear connections between the text and the illustrations.Indeed in a number of instances references are made in the text to paintings which are frustratingly not illustrated. There is a positive side to this of course: one's reading experience becomes much more interactive as one searches over a number of pages for the painting which is being discussed. Finding it becomes a real, and memorable, pleasure! This is really the only large survey of Sienese painting currently available and given that it has so many wonderful illustrations and a generally informative text I would, even with the above reservation, recommend it.

I really enjoy this book but it is not for everyone. If you have a degree in art or a good knowledge of Italian art then I would suggest it. The Sienese painter's were in a class of their own and comparing them to the rest of Italian art of this period is interesting.

This volume is the ideal resource for those interested in the scholarship and pictorial wonder of the Sienese painters in Early Renaissance art. The enlarged sections are magnificently rendered. A wonderful alternative companion volume to the 1988 Met exhibition catalog (Painting in Renaissance Siena)which is unfortunately now out of print. A masterwork indeed.