An Introduction to Italian Sculpture Volume One.
Fourth Edition.
John Pope-Hennessy's 'Introduction To Italian Sculpture' remains unsurpassed as the classic work on the subject. A triumph of clear organisation, sustained scholarship and sure aesthetic judgement, its three volumes bring order to a huge mass of material, and present a magisterial survey of one of the most creative phases in Western art. With their lucid narrative texts and detailed biographical and bibliographical notes, they have long been indispensable for scholars, students, curators, collectors and dealers.
Volume I covers the period from about 1150 to 1400, bounded at one end by the pulpits of Nicola Pisano and at the other by Ghiberti's great bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery. In the introductory narrative, the author presents a general survey of the development of Italian Gothic sculpture, placing it in the context of European Gothic style and analysing the differences of background and culture that give it its distinctive character.
The book embraces some of the finest sculptural monuments in Western art, and among the sculptors whose work is dealt with are Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Andrea and Nino Pisano, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Jacopo della Quercia. The monuments illustrated include the great Pisano pulpits, the facades of the cathedrals of Siena, Florence and Orvieto, the Doge's Palace in Venice, Milan Cathedral, S Petronio at Bologna, the Scaliger tombs at Verona, the Angevin monuments in Naples, and the doors of the Florentine Baptistery.
'Italian Gothic Sculpture' has been revised, updated and redesigned with illustrations (now in duotone) integrated in a single sequence with the narrative.
