The Renaissance Cities – Norbert Wolf

If you are looking for a good coffee table book to get stuck into then Prestel have just published the answer to your dreams. It’s not a book for a bedside table, or a light read to nod off to, but it is an impressive book to dip in and out of . . . . and to have lying around!

The book is slip cased and written by the German art historian Norbert Wolf. The three major centres of the Renaissance were Florence, Rome and Venice and the author takes each of these in turn and examines the sculpture and paintings made in those locations and the key players in their creation: the artists, the clients and the local politics and economics. The book is lavishly illustrated, containing images of all the familiar big-hitters (the Davids of Michelangelo and Donatello, Botticelli’s Primavera) but also some lesser known works such as Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals and Bellini’s Pieta.

If you want further resources available to you alongside this book I can recommend the Borghese gallery’s website. It can’t quite compete with accessing the gallery through the gardens of Rome, dodging sellers of fake branded handbags and luggage as you go, nor can it provide the espresso beforehand and the gelato post gallery excursion, but . . . if you can conjure those things in your mind all the better.

Hardback. Slip cased. 272 pages.

Measurements for The Renaissance Cities – Norbert Wolf (including slip case)

31cm x 38.5cm x 3.8cm