From Publishers Weekly
The procession of the three Magi unfolds with a mixture of exotic, oriental splendor and stately, bourgeois respectability in the fresco cycle painted by Benozzo Gozzoli on the walls of the Medici family private chapel in Florence. Completed in 1459 and restored between 1988 and 1992, Gozzoli's popular frescoes set the divinely prophesied cavalcade of the Magi against a landscape strewn with allusions to the Last Judgment and contemporary Florence. Enlivened by dramatic juxtapositions of choirs of angels, hunting scenes, castles and Eden-like gardens with peacocks, the paintings incorporate 32 realistic portraits of Gozzoli's contemporaries, including his noble patrons, the Medici. Featuring 184 color plates with scores of close-ups, this lavish volume, edited by Italian art historian and restorationist Luchinat, includes scholarly essays on Gozzoli's iconography, his involvement in humanist circles and the recent restoration. Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This beautifully produced book documents in exquisite detail the best-known paintings by the 15th-century Florentine master Gozzoli, which portrays the wise men en route through a fairy-tale landscape. This subject gave Gozzoli the opportunity to depict his figures in a courtly, opulent style reflecting the status and affluence of his powerful sponsor, Cosimo de Medici. The recent cleaning of the frescoes is impressively showcased: taking its cue from the recent Brancacci Chapel (LJ 10/1/92), this book examines the Chapel of the Magi wall by wall, figure by figure, with dozens of full-page, actual-size reproductions. An especially pleasing feature is that a great many of the facing pages are left a plain matte black, thus visually isolating the details so judiciously highlighted on the opposite page. Although the work contains several stiffly written scholarly essays, editor Luchinat wisely decides to let the 300 pages of illustrations dominate. What results is an extraordinary resource for the student of painting as well as the art lover in general. Highly recommended.Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A glittering cavalcade of men and animals winds through a rocky landscape under an azure sky. The men are dressed in all the luxury of Italian fifteenth-century fashions, in brilliant colors, damask, gold brocade. They ride horses and camels with various exotic creatures to amuse them - dogs, cheetahs, peacocks and monkeys. In the background are forests and picturesque towered towns. This is the procession of the Magi on their way to worship the newborn Christ, painted in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici, Florence, in 1459. The artist was Benozzo Gozzoli, formerly an assistant of Fra Angelico. For their sheer beauty, their precision, and their almost fairy-tale-like quality, these frescoes have always been among the most popular of all Western paintings. The Medici family chapel is a jewel-like room and, despite changes that have been made to it over the years, it houses the best preserved of Renaissance fresco cycles. This magnificent volume reproduces the frescoes in all their glory, taking us through the chapel wall by wall - showing the entire surface and then series of details reproduced in actual size. It is in the details, with their vivid brushwork, that the magic of these frescoes resides: costumes, jewels, weapons, trees, distant castles, flowers, birds of all kinds, animals, streams, rocks - and faces, many of them identifiable portraits of Gozzoli's Florentine contemporaries, notably the powerful Medici themselves. These remarkable photographs were taken after the chapel's recent cleaning: not only do the colors glow with a new brilliance, but features have been revealed that could not have been seen before. The photographs are complemented by lucid texts which examine the chapel as a whole, its art-historical context, the individual murals and the problems and procedures involved in the conservation of the paintings.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The procession of the three Magi unfolds with a mixture of exotic, oriental splendor and stately, bourgeois respectability in the fresco cycle painted by Benozzo Gozzoli on the walls of the Medici family private chapel in Florence. Completed in 1459 and restored between 1988 and 1992, Gozzoli's popular frescoes set the divinely prophesied cavalcade of the Magi against a landscape strewn with allusions to the Last Judgment and contemporary Florence. Enlivened by dramatic juxtapositions of choirs of angels, hunting scenes, castles and Eden-like gardens with peacocks, the paintings incorporate 32 realistic portraits of Gozzoli's contemporaries, including his noble patrons, the Medici. Featuring 184 color plates with scores of close-ups, this lavish volume, edited by Italian art historian and restorationist Luchinat, includes scholarly essays on Gozzoli's iconography, his involvement in humanist circles and the recent restoration. (Dec.)

Library Journal