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Customer Reviews (5)

SIZE Does Matter
Having expectedto receive a book covering most ofFra Angelico's works I was quite satisfied as the book delivers its promise in this respect.
The drawback is too SMALL size of many of the paintings.Using a magnifying glass to see detailsresults in seeing images broken into printing dots that are pretty BIG. This way one has an impression of seeing paintings without really seeing them as theybreak down upon a closer look. This is an interesting phenomena in itself but it's decreasing the book's value as of a document. Of course this doesn't apply to all reproductions.

Another matter is color quality, although this complaint could apply to the majority of art books.

Suggestion:
As for this reviewer art books published by an Italian house "Electa" reproduce colors to such a standard, other publisher should blush. "Electa" had published a book containing images from San Marco, that was also published in English. If you can put your paws on that one, you'll get my point, I hope.

Inspirational Immediacy and Presence
This beautiful book, published in conjunction with the first major exhibition of Fra Angelico's work since the cinquecentenary exhibition of 1955 in Florence, will feature more than seventy paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations covering all periods of the artist's career, from round 1410 to 1455. Also included will be fifty selected works by his assistants and closest followers.

Fra Angelico ("the angelic friar"; ca. 1390/95-1455) was one of Renaissance Florence's leading painters. In addition to his celebrated altarpieces and frescos in Florence, Fiesole, Cortona, Perugia, and Rome, Fra Angelico also completed many masterpieces on a small scale. His predella panels, the small narrative scenes included beneath large altarpieces, are among the most innovative creations in fifteenth century Florence, while his images of the Virgin and Child still retain the inspirational immediacy and presence that first secured the artist's reputation as the premier painter of his age.

This book is an up-to-date, and comprehensive, look at the sublime works of one of Renaissance Italy's greatest masters. Research undertaken in the last fifty years now allows scholars to reconstruct a more historically reliable biography of Fra Angelico that goes beyond the legends and traditions to establish his position not only as one of the greatest masters of the fifteenth century, but also as one of the most intellectually accomplished painters who ever lived.

BEAUTIFUL CALENDER
This is a calendar I will enjoy everyday, and I knew I would when I ordered it.Fra Angelio is a featured artist of The Met this year, but they were out of the calendars when I ordered, so I was very happy to find that Amazon had it.The pictures selected for this calendar are beautiful, and provide daily inspiration, though painted by this Italian artist about 800 years ago.

Fra Angelico: A Breathtaking Glimpse
This is much more than a coffee table book because of the extensive coverage of the artist: his life, his contemporaties, influences on his style and his influence on the styles of others.The lavish illustrations in glorious color emphasize the other-worldliness of the subject matter.

Fra Angelico: A Reevaluation and Appreciation
FRA ANGELICO may be a museum catalogue for the current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but it is also one of the more impressive historical documents on this important painter and his influence on the world of art in the library today.The book is a masterwork of scholarship and visual examples of this 15th Century artist.

Words fail in describing the degree of integrity of scholarship of the contributors. Under the curatorial guidance of Laurence Kanter the museum has gathered seventy-odd paintings, drawings and illuminations from books by Fra Angelico, and then to add to the dimension of the great master's influence, they have added some fifty works by his students and disciples.While Fra Angelico shines in his extraordinary sense of detail and representational art in a period when art was flattened decor and just entering the blossoming of the Renaissance, the works included by his pupils are quite staggeringly beautiful.Some would say comparison to the master is unfair: history offers another vantage, that being the concept that the truly great teachers enlighten their pupils to exceed the teacher's creations!

While the visual components of this fine book are incomparable, the various written sections by not only Laurence Kanter, but also by Pia Palladino, Magnolia Scudieri, Carl Strehlke, Victor M. Schmidt, andAnneke de Vries not only inform - they also read like a novel of the life and times in 15th Century Florence. In every way this is a magnum opus that represents well the Museum's exemplary exhibition of the work of Fra Angelico.Highly Recommended.Grady Harp, October 05 ... Read more

Product Description
This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nice, Larger Size
This is a beautiful hardcover book from a German publisher.The paper quality is excellent and the color plates, all are color, is exceptional.It is 12.75 x 11 inches, thus making the details really pop!Make sure this is the English language version if that is what you want, the cover is shown as in the French language edition. Enjoy! ... Read more

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Dominican friar Angelico was considered in his lifetime the greatest Italian painter of his generation. In an engaging new appraisal, art historian John Spike discusses how Angelico's painting reveals important artistic innovations. An extensive essay on the artist's life and work combined with large color plates make this volume an important reassessment of this important Florentine Renaissance painter. 220 illustrations; 70 in full color. ... Read more

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FRA ANGELICO

FRA ANGELICO, known by various names, including Fra Giovanni Beato Angelico da Fiesole (1399?-1455), is one of the very few painters of the Italian Renaissance who painted religious pictures exclusively. Almost all Angelico’s paintings are religious – he did not paint secular portraits, like, say, Giovanni Bellini or Ghirlandaio. It was Vasari who stressed Angelico’s purity, holiness, faith, humility and devout nature, and this description of Angelico as a holy monk-like painter persists throughout the centuries. John Ruskin called Angelico ‘an inspired saint’.

It is in San Marco in Florence that Angelico’s ‘saintly’ reputation was forged. He (with assistants) painted fifty frescoes at San Marco. The paintings reveal a traditional form of Christian worship: Angelico’s is a conventional kind of Christian theology and devotion. Some critics emphasize Angelico as a stylist. Of course, Angelico did not separate style from content in the way modern critics do. Clearly, they are part of the same thing. For the Renaissance religious painter, the aim is to come up with a style, colouration and technique which accords with one’s beliefs, as well as flattering the faith of one’s patrons. So Angelico’s ‘sweet style’ stems from his blending of painterly technique with religious understanding.

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Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (c. 1390/95-1455), known as Fra Angelico, was possibly the most celebrated religious painter of the Italian Early Renaisance. Adhering to the austere life of a Dominican monastery despite his huge success, Fra Angelico's contemporary biographer Giorgio Vasari said of him 'it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.' Originally trained as an illuminator, Fra Angelico went on to paint altarpieces that even early on in his career showed great skill in the rendering of the figures, composition and use of colour. Perhaps his most famous works however are the astonishing frescos that decorate the cells, corridors and Chapter House of San Marco Monastery in Florence, to where Fra Angelico moved in 1436 along with many of the monks from the Fiesole monastery in which they had been living.A magnificent altarpiece was also among the commissions for the newly built monastery, which showed an unprecedented realism in the intimate arrangement of the holy figures.Diane Cole Ahl's engaging text is combined with almost 200 images to create a book that is both informative and visually stunning. The works are discussed in detail, in the context of the time and places in which they were created, and Fra Angelico's influence, both directly on his pupils such as Benozzo Gozzoli, and more wide-ranging on the artists that followed in the later Renaissance, is also examined. The original viewpoints of the author and the hitherto unpublished artwork of a newly restored predella ensure that Fra Angelico will appeal to the specialised reader as well as students and those with an interest in art history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fra Angelico (Purchased on 08/19/2010) by Diane Cole Ahl
I received the book in perfect condition and ahead of schedule
thank you very much

A classical art lover's treasury
Fra Angelico is a captivating showcase of the classical creations of Fra Giovanni de Fiesole (c. 1390/95-1455), one of the great painters of the early Italian Renaissance, especially known for his Christian artwork. Nearly 200 full color illustrations take the reader on a wondrous tour of Angelico's beautiful expressions of faith, while the text spares no detail in chronicling Angelico's life, inspiration, and legacy to later masters including Raphael, the Nazarenes, and the Symbolists. A classical art lover's treasury, enthusiastically recommended for public library and private artbook collections.
... Read more

Product Description
General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1861Original Publisher: RivingtonsNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or an index.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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The traditional story of Renaissance painting is one of inexorable progress toward the exact representation of the real and visible. Georges Didi-Huberman disrupts this story with a new look--and a new way of looking--at the fifteenth-century painter Fra Angelico. In doing so, he alters our understanding of both early Renaissance art and the processes of art history.

A Florentine painter who took Dominican vows, Fra Angelico (1400-1455) approached his work as a largely theological project. For him, the problems of representing the unrepresentable, of portraying the divine and the spiritual, mitigated the more secular breakthroughs in imitative technique. Didi-Huberman explores Fra Angelico's solutions to these problems--his use of color to signal approaching visibility, of marble to recall Christ's tomb, of paint drippings to simulate (or stimulate) holy anointing. He shows how the painter employed emptiness, visual transformation, and displacement to give form to the mystery of faith.

In the work of Fra Angelico, an alternate strain of Renaissance painting emerges to challenge rather than reinforce verisimilitude. Didi-Huberman traces this disruptive impulse through theological writings and iconographic evidence and identifies a widespread tradition in Renaissance art that ranges from Giotto's break with Byzantine image-making well into the sixteenth century. He reveals how the techniques that served this ultimately religious impulse may have anticipated the more abstract characteristics of modern art, such as color fields, paint spatterings, and the absence of color. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

!NECESSITY!
At last a book that bridges the gap of ambiguity between Christian art and art history. Didi-Huberman's eloquent investigation of both the painter (a Dominican, Fra Angelico) and the context (a Catholic theology within the Dominican Order) provides an insightful interpretation of images that most art historians tend to treat clinically. Didi-Huberman is well versed in not only iconography, but speaks fluently on the sources that influenced the Dominican painter (Holy Scripture,the works of Plato, and the theological writings of St. Thomas Aquinas). I highly recommend this book for artists, theologians, and art historians. This is a book that can forever alter the interaction between viewer and image, and will hopefully incite an awakening in how we interpret and understand the paintings of Quattrocento Florence. The original French probably offers the best read, but I will continue to hope for more English translations of Didi-Huberman's work. ... Read more

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Most powerful Rosary
I have recited to rosary since I was a child but this Rosary taught me to PRAY the Rosary. What a wonderful prayer to live the Gospel and understand all the Mysteries!!! Great for teaching children, young adults, RCIA classes, Confirmation classes and Cursillo weekends!!! BUY IT, PRAY IT! As Father Peyton reminded us " The family that prays together stays together"

Inspiring and engaging
This book led me into praying the rosary; it fed my soul, my senses and it educated me.
For some people praying the rosary comes as easy as falling of a log; for many others, they just can't seem to get the hang of it.I was one of those people, my mind refused to meditate while praying the beads and pretty soon I was just saying words.One day I found this little booklet( the cover captivated me)and I began to read the introduction.What surprised me was this method of praying the rosary has been in existence for hundreds of years.
What's so different? After the end of the first half of the Hail Mary which ends with the name of Jesus a phrase is added to highlight an episode on Our Lord's Life.Example: Who freed us from Adam's sin.
At the end of the decade, one ends with the traditional closing: Holy Mary, Mother of GOd etc and one continues with all the other tradionalprayers.
There is a brief history of the rosary in the beginning of the book, clear instructions on how to pray the rosary and a biblical citation and prayer intention.
The quality of the paper, the beautiful art work and the fact this small booklet can be carried any where makes it a bargain.

I've given it as a gift to many people Catholic and non-Catholic alike.All have expressed nearly the same thing;It has changed them and made them want to continue in their religious journey ... Read more

Product Description
This is a record of all the Fra Angelico frescoes, which can be found in the convent of San Marco in Florence. They were painted in the 1430s and 1440s centring on the themes of Christ's sacrifice. Conceived and executed simply as aids to meditation and prayer, they have taken their place among the most exhilarating masterpieces of Western art. An introductory history of the building and the paintings is followed by a fully illustrated survey of every picture, most with details shown in actual size. The book aims to reveal the artist's tenderness and strength, his freshness of colour and his subtlety of line. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fra Angelico
This is what an art book should be, page after page of splendid reproductions, including several full page details of Fra Angelico's greatest works.I was able to spend one day in San Marco, 2 years ago, I was alone most of the morning, but by noon had to contend with hoards of tourists pushing their way to get their 3 second glimsp of each fresco.Looking at these wonderful reproductions, I am reminded of the originals, I am able to see details I could not see peering through the entrances to the monks' rooms, and to recall many details had just forgotten.The text, devoted to the illuminating the art, included a wonderful explaination of composition and perspective.

incredible book for an incredible work of art !
this book is a piece of art itself. the reproductions and the details close-up photographs gives a new demention of fra angelico's frescos of 'san marco' in florence.it is a unic book. tzvia haitin ... Read more

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Fra Angelico's fresco paintings at the Dominican priory of San Marco are among the best-loved works of Italian art, yet they have been oddly neglected by art historians. In this book, William Hood analyzes the newly cleaned frescoes at San Marco, setting them against the background of 15th-century Florentine artistic, political, cultural, and religious history. Hood discusses the ideals, daily rituals, and pictorial traditions of the Dominican order - especially the reformed or Observant branch to which Fra Angelico belonged. He presents new material on traditions of religious art, altarpiece design and imagery, and the decoration of chapter rooms and cloisters. Hood compares Angelico's work at San Marco to earlier Dominican altarpieces and to Angelico's other alterpieces for Dominican buildings in Siena, Pisa, Prato, and Florence, pointing out both the traditional elements and the novelty of the San Marco altarpiece. Similarly, by comparing San Marco to other Florentine fresco cycles, he illuminates the originality of the cloister and chapter-house of San Marco.Hood's discussion of San Marco follows and itinerary through the church and adjoining convent buildings, beginning with the high altarpiece and ending with the corridor paintings - especially the exquisite "Annunciation" in the dormitory corridor. Throughout, he analyzes Angelico's use of colour, his technique in fresco and tempera, the way he solved specific visual problems and how his paintings affected 15th-century viewers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

SanMarco a Beautiful Place
William Hood's Fra Angelico at San Marco is one of the best books written on this important period of art. It is comprehenisve, well-illustrated and entertaining, it is also a model of clarity and scholarly precision.There are many painting and sculpturesthat are beautiful to see. The book has captured the beautiful works of Fra Angelico. William Hood writes with authority and eloquence.He illustrates the architecute and painting of San Marco with a burst of creativity. Beautiful illustration, fine writing and authoritative scholarship bring into focus all the elements of this beautiful book. ... Read more

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The cloister of San Marco was the home of on e of the greatest Renaissance painters, Fra Angelico. Betwee n 1440 and 1452, he and his assistants covered the entire co mplex with over 50 frescoes, designed within the traditions of the Dominican order. ' ... Read more

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GreatArt /Great Book
First rate elegant book on Fra Angelico.Excellent reproductions of an artist that Rothko preferred to any otherartist of this period . There is a vellum transparent cover over each reproduction.This is effective in protecting the coloredreproductions. ... Read more

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Fra Angelico, known to his contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, was probably born at San Michele a Ripecanina, between 1395 and 1400. He is thought to have joined the community of San Domenico between 1418 and 1421. Fra Angelico examines the painter's life and early works, from 1418-32, to his panel paintings and frescoes, including the frescoes at San Marco, through to his year in Rome and late works, until his death in 1455. ... Read more

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This sumptuously illustrated catalogue charts the history of drawing in Italy from 1400, just prior to the emergence in Florence of the classically inspired naturalism of the Renaissance style, to around 1510 when Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian were on the verge of taking the innovations of earlier masters, such as Leonardo and Pollaiuolo, in a new direction. The book highlights the key role played by drawing in artistic teaching and in how artists studied the human body and the natural world. Aspects of regional difference, the development of new drawing techniques and classes of graphic work, such as finished presentation pieces to impress patrons, are also explored. An extended introduction focusing on how and why artists made drawings, with a special emphasis on the pivotal role of Leonardo, is richly illustrated with examples from the two collections that elucidate the technique and function of the works. This is followed by catalogue entries for just over 100 drawings where discussion of their function and significance is supported by comparative illustrations of related works, such as paintings. ... Read more

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Even if you didn't see the exhibition...
...you will appreciate this book for its stunning reproductions and insightful text. If you have any interest at all in how Renaissance artists worked, this book should be on your shelf. ... Read more

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"The Rosary as a guide to reality" is the central thought of this book, a thought made clear by the pictures, prayers, poems, stories, and facts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Beautiful to look at, but could use better scripture translation.
The medieval artwork is great, the paper and the backgrounds are beautiful, I like it that it has a hard cover and there is good information about how to pray the rosary and a good litany prayer at the end of the book.My only criticism is that the book would have benefitted if a more traditional translation of scripture had been used.

The Scriptural Rosary
I loved this book. But like so many of his devotional books about Mary he seems a little off when he comes to the Immaculate Conception. I dont think well of those who on there own change things that should not be changed. That being said the rest of this book was great. More Please. But down with the new age stuff,OK? It only makes you look stupid.... ... Read more

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From Fra Angelico to Francisco Zurbaran, from the masters of the Renaissance to the abstract expressionists, this lavishly illustrated volume showcases the most influential Western artists from 800 years of art history, including:

• Michelangelo
• Salvador Dali
• Mary Cassatt
• Edgar Degas
• Pablo Picasso ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol
This is a lovely hardback book, a worthwhile addition to coffee-table collections as well as one artists will treasure.

It's an easy entertaining read
It's a very good read giving you an idea of many artists, very easy to read, I usually have a look to it before sleeping. And a very good thing about it is that it gives you an idea of the artists' personal and social lives not just their art style and ... For example, I was quite touched by Van Gaug's life story. For people who are just interested in arts and want to begin knowing artists, I definitely recommend it.

A personal selection of 100 masters
This album is a personal selection of one- hundred great artists from Fra Angelico to Warhol. The subtitle suggests that the artists will be presented in chrnological order but they are in fact presented alphabetically. One full page illustration of apainting is selected for each artist. There is short accompanying material about the artist and the work, with another small photo on the opposite page. The selection of the artists, I found a bit eccentric with there being a number of names who are not ordinarily considered part of the first- rank.
This is not an outstanding album but of course many of the illustrations are of great works, and can truly hold the attention and interest. ... Read more

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Fra Angelico. please visit www.valdebooks.com for a full list of titles ... Read more