Rating: Summary: wonderful Review: Eminent historian Paul Johnson did a great job with this little book. The information he offers about the Renaissance is...informative...& interesting. He knows so much. His writing in this book anyway is completely readable, flowing from fact to fact. Not a single word misfires.
Rating: Summary: A Nifty Little Book Review: First off I would just like to say that I generally don't like Paul Johnson. I don't like his conservative politics or his anglo-centrism. While I admit he wrote two great books -- MODERN TIMES and HISTORY OF THE JEWS, which I've read thrice and twice, respectively -- I don't rate his other books very highly at all, and there are quite a lot of them.The second thing I had wanted to say is this: Pay no attention to the "Publisher's Weekly" review above because it's a pile of nonsense. The quote about Leonardo is a misquote. The actual words Johnson uses go like this: "There was not much warmth in him. He may have had homosexual inclinations." -- I mean, if you're going to quote somebody, please try to get it right. In addition, Johnson's remarks about neuroticism pertaining to Michelangelo was only part of a larger point that suggested ordinary categories of psychoanalytic thought failed to explain Michelangelo's genius, not that he wasn't neurotic. Also, Johnson does not single out Shakespeare, Chaucer, Kipling and Dickens as the only English writers of genius. He only suggests that, above all other English writers, they had inexplicable insight into the thought-processes of other human beings. Finally, the P.W. review says that "dates of birth and death abound," as if to suggest that Johnson's book is hardly more than that -- which is rubbish (if Johnson, on the other, hand omitted the dates, he would then have been guilty of the serious offenses of shoddy scholarship and confusing the hell out of the reader). To address the book itself, Paul Johnson is a non-academic generalist in an era of academic specialists, and I don't think I have to explain the reasons why we need such people, now perhaps more than ever. His book is pithy and yet thorough. His insights are, for the most part, judicious and provocative. The material is well-organized, for in successive chapters he addresses the historic and economic background of the Renaissance, followed by Literature, Sculpture, Architecture, Painting and, finally, "The Spread and Decline of the Renaissance." For such a small book, there is really quite a lot of information. One could certainly do much worse for a general introduction to Renaissance culture. My only significant quibble with the book is that Johnson is largely blind to the greatness of the late Renaissance phenomenon known as "Mannerism" (he even fails to mention El Greco's name!), which, knowing Johnson's ultra-conventionalism, is hardly surprising. For this reason I dread reading what he has to say about Modernism is his recently-published history of art.
Rating: Summary: Good, and concise Review: I am a layman with regard to the arts, but has a keen interest in it, and I thoroughly enjoyed this little work by Paul Johnson. As always he is opinionated, sometimes infuriatingly so (I notice from the formal reviews that this does not endear him to academic historians), but that prevents his writing from being dull and academic. So what if he thinks that England had produced only four authors possessing of true genius- it's his opinion and he is entitled to state it. In this book Johnson gives a concise overview of the Renaissance: why it happened, and the major figures who contributed to this re-birth of painting, sculpture, etc. And he keeps it short, mercifully- it was nice to be able to finish a Johnson in a few days instead of a few months. Above all, after reading this I want to re-visit Florence, the centre of the Renaissance, with this book in hand, looking for the wonderful art works produced by the masters. And I am sure that is what Johnson hoped for when writing this book, that it would make readers excited about the art of the Renaissance.
Rating: Summary: Lack of pictures in a major drawback Review: I am quite surprised at how many great reviews this book has received. My only explanation for this is that the this author must attract readers who already have considerable historical background. As one who really wanted an introduction to this time period, I feel the book sped way too quickly through its specialized topics, while omitting important areas. (If you are going to make the book all about the artistic achievements of the Renaissance, why not at least mention the musical accomplishments of composers such as Josquin and Palestrina?) I completely agree with the reviewer who felt that this was full of name-dropping without much depth. I felt that the book focused too much on artistic individuals without developing a sense of what Renaissance life was like for the everyday person. Most importantly, it was very hard to appreciate all the works of the artists mentioned without any pictures. It was like reading a pamplet about all the works in a museum, without ever going into the musuem.
Rating: Summary: Lack of pictures in a major drawback Review: I am quite surprised at how many great reviews this book has received. My only explanation for this is that the this author must attract readers who already have considerable historical background. As one who really wanted an introduction to this time period, I feel the book sped way too quickly through its specialized topics, while omitting important areas. (If you are going to make the book all about the artistic achievements of the Renaissance, why not at least mention the musical accomplishments of composers such as Josquin and Palestrina?) I completely agree with the reviewer who felt that this was full of name-dropping without much depth. I felt that the book focused too much on artistic individuals without developing a sense of what Renaissance life was like for the everyday person. Most importantly, it was very hard to appreciate all the works of the artists mentioned without any pictures. It was like reading a pamplet about all the works in a museum, without ever going into the musuem.
Rating: Summary: Age of Masters Review: It is no small feat to capture in one hundred eighty-six pages the essence of the most powerful artistic and intellectual movement in history. But historian and journalist Paul Johnson, as only Johnson can, has accomplished just that. In this new addition to the Modern Library Chronicles, The Renaissance: A Short History, Johnson systematically identifies the primary elements of the Renaissance movement, illustrating each point with colorful biographical information. The hallmark of Johnson's writing is a clear, universal presentation of subject matter combined with skillfully selected detail. In Renaissance, he divides his narrative into six parts, each focusing on a different aspect of the era-literature and letters, sculpture, architecture, and painting-framed by sections on the movement's rise and fall. Each chapter is a beautifully constructed piece, expounding upon the minutiae of its respective topic, exploring how each demonstrated the Renaissance principles of individuality and human glorification. For example, in his section on literature, Johnson attributes Dante's Convivio, penned not in Latin but in his native Italian, as "the first great Renaissance defense of the vernacular as a suitable language for works of beauty and weight" (26). Johnson paints the historical landscape with a broad brush, beginning his discussion of the Renaissance with a contrasting picture of the Middle Ages. He explains how the coarse craftsman of the village guild, laboring in stone, leather, and wood, blossomed into the master studio artist, creating aesthetic works through sculpture, painting, and carving (16). The monastic scriptorium became the modern printing press; the local dialect became a script; the illiterate public official became a learned patron of the arts--a uomo universale. Johnson illustrates these artistic movements through an exploration of the individuals who propelled them. The essence of the Renaissance was man's discovery and expression of himself: "The emergence of an artist as an individual in his works-both processes reinforced each other" (66). Johnson demonstrates how this theme of individuality manifested itself in every area of art. For example, he discusses how writers such as Chaucer had a "fascination [for] the individual human being, as opposed to the archetype or mere category," so fashionable in medieval literature (51). Instead, Chaucer created characters that were utterly human, each possessing his own unique set of quirks and foibles. Johnson also readily identifies this trend in the material arts. Sculptors, such as Nicola Pisano (c. 1220-c. 1284) accomplished this same "humanizing process" in his stone relief, The Last Judgment (c. 1260): [T]he embodied souls, whether saved or damned, emerge as individuals, not types; they have faces you would see in the Sienese streets, and bodies you can imagine walking or running-real, working bodies. (64) After exploring its impact on the creative culture, Johnson explains how this emphasis upon the individual gradually transformed the structure of civil society. This trend produced new attitudes and expectations not present in the communities of the Dark Ages. He describes how artists began to cultivate their own distinctive styles, creating art for the sake of personal expression rather than at the behest of a bishop or public official. Noblemen, also, gained a new respect for craftsmen, patronizing their works and bearing with each one's idiosyncrasies (such as Leonardo da Vinci's notorious habit for never finishing a commissioned work) (148). This new creative freedom unleashed an era of artistic production of unprecedented scale. Indeed, Johnson's descriptions of the innovative minds of the Renaissance dazzle the reader. He maintains a sense of wonder throughout his text as he describes the "fantastic imagination" of Donatello's work, Michelangelo's "supranormal powers" of sculpting, and Chaucer's "extraordinary ability to peer into the minds of diverse human creatures (51, 74, 81). Ultimately, it is this characteristic-Johnson's utter respect for the brilliance of the leaders of the Renaissance-in this work that the reader comes to appreciate most. Through Johnson's writing, one develops a sense of camaraderie with the individuals of a bygone era who sought to better understand our common race. The work is an exciting and useful read not only for those who wish to expand their knowledge of the period, but those who wish to understand the driving passions of mankind.
Rating: Summary: Why the Renaissance matters. Review: Johnson does a great job of summarizing the Renaissance in a quick 150 pages. The book summarizes the forward thinking which resulted in a revolution in the sculpture, paintings, and buildings of this period. Man was outwardly focused during this time and shows developments in Italy and then in the rest of Europe. The problem that I find with these quick reads of a complex subject is they have so little space to explain the subject and adequately make it interesting. Johnson does a great job in the summary but fails to motivate the reader to other works which expound on the Renaissance. For those who need a quick read on this fascinating time in history, this is a quite capable book. It describes the advancement in literature, sculpture, painting, and building of this period.
Rating: Summary: A Renaissance Handbook! Review: Most books about the Renaissance focus on a limited subject, often the biography of a single humanist scholar or the life of an artist. Other monographs deal with the political institutions of a single city-state, the criminal courts of 15th-century Florence, for example. Johnson's book is the first successful summary of the Renaissance experience this reviewer has found since first reading Jacob Burckhardt's classic The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1890; 3rd ed. 1995). Johnson provides an excellent introduction to the economic strength of medieval Europe that made the Renaissance possible. By tracing the lives of some of the leading humanist scholars, he illustrates the many contradictions of Renaissance thought. In discussing Florentine sculptors and painters, he explores the close connection between Tuscan art and the goldsmith guilds and provides an excellent description of how frescos were painted. His final chapter offers a balanced account of how warfare in It aly, Protestant iconoclasm, and Catholic reaction ended a period in which Europe's defining artists lived. General and undergraduate readers.
Rating: Summary: brilliantly informative Review: Paul Johnson is so interesting. In this small volume is information about all kinds of Renaissance things, not basic stuff you already know & not anything that could be boringly esoteric to you ever.
Rating: Summary: This book deserves five stars. Review: This is one of the most informative books on the Renaissance I have ever read. In fewer than two hundred pages Johnson manages to examine in fair detail the major and minor figures associated with the Renaissance. Johnson's thesis is that the Renaissance was a dramatic shift from the collectivism of Medieval art, literature, and society, to an individualism that respected both the artist/writer and his subjects as unique, singular beings rather than mere archetypes. Johnson adds, however, that the Renaissance was not inevitable: without the improbable appearance of a handful of geniuses, the birth of modernity might not have taken place as it did. Among Johnson's arguments, grasped by attentive readers, is that historical events like the Renaissance cannot be confined to exact dates. Thus, Johnson usefully and justifiably discusses early writers such as Dante and Chaucer because, as careful readers will note, the innovation and spirit of their works were groundbreaking and indispensably influential on the literature that unfolded as the Renaissance progressed. Johnson is well worth your time, particularly if you are in the mood for a digestible, refreshing take on the Renaissance in a short, easily readable volume.
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