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.

Book Description
A major work by the most important Italian art historian of this century.

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

From the Publisher
7 x 10 trim. 28 illus. (8 color) LC 00-026564

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Roberto Longhi (1890-1970) is regarded by Italians as their most important art critic, art historian, and prose stylist of this century, with unsurpassed powers of observation and 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. In the New York Review of Books, Francis Haskell wrote, 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."

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