The Art of Florence

Florence is the city of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dante, Masaccio, Botticelli, Giotto, Cellini and Machiavelli. This mammoth, two-volume survey lets one trace the shifting styles of Florentine painting, sculpture and architecture amid crosscurrents of political turmoil, Renaissance thought, princely patronage, commerce, wars, plague. It would be hard to match this opulent set for comprehensive detail or wealth of illustration. Among the 1553 plates (nearly half in color) are photographs, sketches, plans and hundreds of full-page reproductions. The text is designed to appeal to lay readers as well as to specialists. It brings Renaissance giants down to human proportions as it follows the rise of Florence from mercantile center to militant republic and to its late 16th-century decline foreshadowed by mannerism in the arts. The authors are art professors--Andres and Hunisak at Middlebury College, Turner at NYU; photographer Okamura's credits include The Vatican Frescoes of Michelangelo. (Sept.)