Product Description

This book is a new English version of the third edition (1963) of Longhi's seminal work on the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca, with an introduction by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Keith Christiansen.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #271452 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 386 pages

From Library Journal
Among the most significant achievements of the great Italian art historian, critic, and connoisseur Longhi (1890-1970) is his pioneering study of early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. The book was published in 1927 and refurbished by the author in 1950 and 1962, but Longhi's often daunting Italian has until now resisted satisfactory translation. Tabbat, who also contributed to the translation of Longhi's Three Studies, has not only made this provocative and mesmerizing work available to an English-language readership but also most intelligently updated the author's scholarship and illuminated his methodology. Nevertheless, the almost exclusively formalistic approach employed by Longhi in his scrutiny of Piero's work and the evocative and sometimes elusive style of his exposition will almost certainly confound readers not already familiar with this art. The rejection of a historical context, a lack of interest in content, and overstated insistence on the centrality of Piero to the history of European painting will also doubtless trouble a contemporary readership. Although this volume is manifestly not required for nonspecialized collections, any serious art history collection worth its salt should make it a mandatory acquisition.
Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Roberto Longhi is "the most brilliant Italian art historian of our century and a stylist of intoxicating powers . . . few of his very idiosyncratic works have been translated into English; but thanks to the enterprise of the Sheep Meadow Press, this situation is at last being remedied."--Francis Haskell, New York Review of Books

Review
"With the exception of Walter Pater, it is difficult to think of a critic whose work is so close to the art it embraces that it becomes itself a kind of art. Yet Pater's criticism is always on the verge of metamorphosing into poetry. With Longhi, the scholar and the poet are seamlessly fused, resulting in prose that is palpable and radiant as the Renaissance paintings he describes so meticulously: an object of rare beauty indeed." (John Ashbery )

Customer Reviews

STILL THE BEST BOOK ON PIERO
This remains the best book on Piero della Francesca, one of the world's greatest artists. It has influenced many books but still has no equal--after almost 80 years! Great it is back in print.