From Publishers Weekly
Florence is the city of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dante, Masaccio, Botticelli, Giotto, Cellini and Machiavelli. This mammoth, two-volume survey lets one trace the shifting styles of Florentine painting, sculpture and architecture amid crosscurrents of political turmoil, Renaissance thought, princely patronage, commerce, wars, plague. It would be hard to match this opulent set for comprehensive detail or wealth of illustration. Among the 1553 plates (nearly half in color) are photographs, sketches, plans and hundreds of full-page reproductions. The text is designed to appeal to lay readers as well as to specialists. It brings Renaissance giants down to human proportions as it follows the rise of Florence from mercantile center to militant republic and to its late 16th-century decline foreshadowed by mannerism in the arts. The authors are art professors--Andres and Hunisak at Middlebury College, Turner at NYU; photographer Okamura's credits include The Vatican Frescoes of Michelangelo. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This expensive and elaborate set, replete with a wealth of excellent photographs, presents the art of Renaissance Florence in two beautiful, oversized volumes. Along with this visual feast comes a substantial and well-written chronological account of Florentine architecture, sculpture, and painting from 1200 to 1600. Basic historical and political background is incorporated into the text, making it informative and accessible to students and others with no prior knowledge of Italian Renaissance art or history. Although not a full history of Italian Renaissance art because of its limitation to one city, and lacking full scholarly apparatus (publication histories, dimensions of some works, etc.), this work will delight students, travelers, and general readers as well as specialists.- Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.Ln., CincinnatiCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This popular monument of scholarly and publishing history, winner of the prestigous Prix Vasari in France, is now available at an irresistible low price.

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 color photographs, The Art of Florence immerses us in a city and a time of unparalleled cultural ferment. This important and uncommonly beautiful publication analyzes 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, JohnHunisak, 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 unrivaled treasures. More than 700 color images and another 854 duotones and architectural drawings have been reproduced with a meticulous care worthy of the Renaissance craft tradition. Joining visual beauty with intellectual rigor 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.

Other Details: 1,555 illustrations, 701 in full color 1312 pages 11 x 11" Published 1999

"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