The Florence Baptistery Doors
- Hardcover
- New York: A Studio Book from Viking Press, 1980
New York: A Studio Book from Viking Press, 1980. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 328 pp. Octavo [30.9 cm]. Green cloth over boards. Gilt stamped lettering on front board and back strip. Illustrated end papers. From the publisher: "... The visitor marvels at the sculptor's art, and the skill of the bronze founder and gilder, yet he can see little of the detail. In a remarkable testimony to his skills, David Finn, the AMerican photographer, whose work has been described by the American National Sculpture Review as having "a capacity to alert even the most jaded eye and to bring pulsating life to the sculptors's surfaces," repairs that separation from the sculptured imaged. He brings the viewer as close to the astonishing sculptures as the artists were when first modelling their work more than 500 years ago, revealing a wealth of detail and incident.
Kenneth Clark's characteristically urbane but authoritative introduction explains the original commission of the doors, and their place in the art of the time, and examines their importance as one of the few complete masterpieces that have survived umdamaged and un-restored to the present day. George Robinson's commmentaries connect the scriptural allusions, iconography and cultural background, illuminating the weight of meaning incorporated into these bronze masterpieces.
Kenneth Clark's characteristically urbane but authoritative introduction explains the original commission of the doors, and their place in the art of the time, and examines their importance as one of the few complete masterpieces that have survived umdamaged and un-restored to the present day. George Robinson's commmentaries connect the scriptural allusions, iconography and cultural background, illuminating the weight of meaning incorporated into these bronze masterpieces.