Description
The Sistine Chapel – 2 Vols. These two folio volumes contain the most complete coverage of the Sistine Chapel possible within the pages of a book. The text, lavishly illustrated with tipped-on black-and-white plates and color plates, charts, and diagrams, has been divided into several parts. From Roberto Salvini, eminent professor of the University of Florence, comes the grand account of the whole and its parts; from Ettore Camesasaca, a distinguished younger schooler, comes and exacting study of the literary and critical sources that have accumulated since 1541 (when the completed Chapel was unveiled) concerning each scene and figure as well as ceremonies, architectural aspects, and contemporary letters, poems, and drawings; Professor Carlo Ragghianti of the University of Pisa, contributes a summation of the system of decoration. Descriptions, historical background, documents and literature, and great events are covered, and there is a full apparatus of notes and bibliography. The second volume is devoted to extraordinary, full-page, colorplates, several of them multi-paged fold-outs. Not only are whole walls and ceilings shown i stunning totality, but actual-size details of the frescoes make it possible to examine these with cinematic clarity. The result is an overwhelming effect of power and immediacy; no visitor to the Chapel itself can receive all the impressions this book provides. Book text is in English.
