The Art of Florence

-- WINNER of the Prix Vasari Award, 1988

"If you want to give someone a bang-up, no-holds-barred, once-for-all-time present, this may be just the right thing." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Readers of the book will find that their understanding of the city and its culture has been immeasurably deepened and enriched." -- Sir John Pope-Hennessy

"The Art of Florence promptly established itself as a classic." -- International Herald Tribune

"Along with this visual feast comes a substantial and well-written chronological account...This work will delight students, travellers, and general readers, as well as specialists." -- Library Journal

Since the radiant years of the Renaissance, the city of Florence has come for many to represent the greatest triumph of the Western cultural tradition. This is the city where humanism was born, where Plato was discussed passionately in the narrow streets, and where men and women first found themselves to be the measure of all things. For more than three centuries Florence nurtured a creative community of astounding, even revolutionary genius. Here, starting in the late 1200s, Giotto painted the grave and powerful frescoes that drew Florence and the world toward a radical new vision of realism, and here, ushering in the dazzling era of the High Renaissance, Michelangelo began his incomparable career as architect, sculptor, and painter. During the intervening years, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo, and hundreds of the most splendidly talented artists in history lived and worked in this small city on the Arno and collaborated in the creation of the great urban museum we know as Florence.

Matching an elegant and sophisticated text by three leading art historians with hundreds of glorious colour photographs, The Art of Florence immerses us in a city and a time of unparalleled cultural ferment. This important and uncommonly beautiful publication analyses the history of Florentine art in terms of the distinctly Florentine and Tuscan influences that shaped it—an approach never before employed in a study of this breadth and complexity. The fascinating and lucid text by Glenn Andres, John Hunisak, and Richard Turner gracefully links Florentine architecture, sculpture, and painting to the rich social fabric and the dramatic political life of the city. Woven into this compelling history is the most luxurious and comprehensive visual documentation available of Florence's unrivalled treasures. More than 700 colour images and another 854 duo tones and architectural drawings have been reproduced with a meticulous care worthy of the Renaissance craft tradition. Joining visual beauty with intellectual rigour in a fashion that truly invokes the spirit of this great city, The Art of Florence presents as rich a vision of human creativity as we can find anywhere outside Florence itself.