Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance 1400-1470

I like the last books on Italian Frescouse & the baroque book is in line with 4 others.I resently was in Italy & seen many of shown in these books but when you open the book you have a hard time to close it. You find the details that you mist. When you are there you can't see all the details that well.Great book & I am glad I have them.It was a used one but in very good condition, came on time & well packed.

I returned from LeMarche, italy , last spring with a renewed interest in early frescoes. In searching for a book, I came across this perfect one. It was in fine condition, too.

this book is a must for any art person. pictures are up close and very detailed ...this book has loads of info it has blueprints of the churches giving the reader a better perspective of the art and artist mind...has a lot of short interesting stories about the artist this book is made of very high quality..if you are an art student or serious artist then get this book! this period of renaissance art is critical if your trying to understand western art..leonardo was born in 1952 by age 21 he was a master in st luke guild.. this book provides the setting of which leonardo was living in

I found the photos very good but not quite as compelling as the other books in the series (I have the next three). The attributions are somewhat hard to connect with the images.

Stunning photography, well-written, comprehensive historical narrative, and a wide range of styles have made the Italian Frescoes series, now at four volumes, a magificent achievement. From the age Giotto to the advent of mannerism, these incredible books cover the great age of fresco in Italy as well as one could ever hope for. The full-page photos are of amazing quality and give close-up views of sections one could only see from dozens of feet below in many of the chapels, duomos, and palazzos where they are located.Of the four volumes, this is my personal favorite because it focuses on the true 'renaissance' of the fresco form - the decades when masters like Masolino and Masaccio were taking the advances of Giotto into an era of perspective and realism not seen before. "The Early Renaissance" includes works by these two often collarborators in addition to Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Castagno, Gozzoli, and other early masters who, although perhaps not as well known as the painters of the high Renaissance (spectacularly covered in the next volume in this series), were pushing the boundaries of the fresco toward the epic achievements that would appear in the first decades of the 16th century. As I've written in other reviews of these books - this is the best view you will ever have of these magnificent works short of seeing them in person. And actually, given the distances to ceilings, the available light, and the excellent chance and any of these works could be 'en restoro' for a decade or so, these photos might be better than a visit.The photography is museum quality and the introductory history and analysis of each of the 21 works covered here by Steffi Roettgen is informative and insightful without becoming laboriously dense in the way some art history books can. The sections on each fresco are accompanied by annotated illustrationa of their location within the structure containing them...a very useful tool to determine exactly which section of the painting each photo represents as well as the challenges the architecture imposed on the artist and his workshop.If you are interested in the few hundred years during which the fresco was a dominate form in Italy, this book, and the others in the Abbeville series, are ones that you will treasure forever. "The Early Renaissance" just happens to be my favorite of the four. It is worth every penny you will spend to purchase it.

This fine, large hardback is lush, made with thick paper. Inside, it details frescoes from around Italy in more or less chronological order, earliest-created first. Each chapter details one set of frescoes, giving extensive history and corroborating details along with art analysis of style, including reproductions of other art, then shows diagrams of where each piece of fresco it depicts comes from in the building in question. Then it gives the frescoes themselves, some in wide-shot, some in close-up detail.The frescoes are beautifully reproduced, in vibrant color, some so close up you can see brushstrokes. They depict people from all walks of life in Italy doing just about everything from praying to hunting to giving birth to you name it. Of particular interest to me were the Sienese hospital frescoes depicted therein -- the most complete I've ever seen anywhere.Personally, me, I got this for the beautiful costumes it depicts, and it hasn't steered me wrong. It really is an inspiration. But I think anybody interested in art history or in Renaissance art would adore having this magnificent work on his or her shelf. It's worth noting that there's another book in this set which looks to be of equally high quality.

This is beautiful book with a wealth of magnificent colour photos. Having seen some of the frescoes illustrated, I can vouch for the fact that the book often gives a better view of them than you can get in situ. The text is insightful and contributes to making this a real treasure.