Painting-the

Even if you could use a flash you would never get the brightness of diffuse illumination these books have captured so well, crisp but all the subtle color blends are captured.

These books allow you to see some details you would not see standing in the churches unless you had binoculars,even then the angle would cause distortion.

The color accuracy is great, it is too bad it is not cost effective to print on a satin surface paper as this would provided some of the glow effect real frescoes have, the sheen surface is unique to fresco alone and hard to reproduce.

Credit not only goes to the author and photgrapher but to Abbeville press for stepping up to the plate, this would have been a publishing risk,and for Abbeville to back such a venture with such outstanding quality puts them at the top of the stack in the world of Art book publishing.

These periods of art will never be re-captured, nor will patrons or artists ever tackle projects of the scope found here. This art represents one of the outstanding moments in human evolution. The treatment of fresco at this level is long overdue as most art books cover oil painting, drawing, pastel, printmaking, and sculpture.

I should also mention the great job they did in selecting artists, with all due respect to the "BIG M" , (Mr.Michaelangelo, the vaticans most abused poster boy ),it is great that other outstanding artists from this period finally are allowed to get out of The Big M's shadow in the publishing world. (For every one book about Fillipino Lippi, there are 50 about Marble Mikey, I love the guy,...TOP CHISEL...TOP BRUSH but his fame has left a lot of other good artists ignored by publishers when it comes to fresco,Raphael gets covered a lot, but never the Hall of Constantine, like Romano did a hack job...)

TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE FRESCOES AND THESE BOOKS, PLEASE WRITE TO ABBEVILLE PUBLISHING AND DR. STEFFI ROTTGEN AND SUGGEST THEY CONTINUE INTO THE EARLY, MID, AND LATE BAROQUE AND EARLY NEO-CLASSICAL STYLE FRESOES IN ITALY. MANY OF THESE PALACES ARE NOW CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC SO THE WONDERFUL FRESCOES WILL NEVER BE SEEN, THE ONLY HOPE WOULD BE THAT ABBEVILLE OR SOMEONE LIKE THEM WOULD TAKE UP THE CAUSE.

We need
1) Pitti Palace -Pietro Da Cortona rooms and The Hercules room
NO PHOTO TAKING IS ALLOWED
2) The Altieri Palace - Carlo Maratti,and freinds
3) Barberini Palace - Pietro Da Cortona (Details)
4) The Borghese Palace
5) The Pamphilli Palace and Dore
6) Maybe Luca Girodano at Medici in Florence
7) Farnese Palace
8) Some Conca, Chiari, etc.
there are a whole truckload of fresco's from Baroque Rome
9) some --- Venice, Balogna, and Naples(Tiepolo, Veronese, and Tintoretto are covered in a lot of other books).

These books are well worth the price, keep them coming Steffi!!!

I thought Mr. Pike's books were out of print, but on a whim, I decided to search his name on Amazon.com, and it was exciting to find "John Pike Paints Watercolors." I admit this is not the same title I found in the library, but the book review discusses his style of writing and teaching. That style overcame the fear I had to try, to begin, to learn, to dare. He is a teacher! And because of his writing, I was able to begin to catch up to my classmates faster than I had imagined. His paintings are full of life, interesting in subject, and inspirational to a beginner. I am privileged to know that I will have his book on my own shelf.

Due to his ebbing energy he began to paint on a smaller scale, simple bouquets of flowers in a variety of glass vases. Often these were the flowers friends brought to the convalescing artist.

"The Last Flowers of Manet" is a little gem of a book presenting 16 of these elegant, magical paintings. There are ethereal white lilac blossoms and slashes of pink peony petals shimmering before rich, black backgrounds. There are roses and tulips in warm, golden shades.

Just as Matisse in his last days could not make a false stroke when creating his cutout compositions, so Manet brings total mastery to these exquisite, soulful still lifes.