Sculpture from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: From the Eighth Century Bc to the Fifteenth Century (Jumbo)

Rating:
Summary: I warmly recommend...
Review: I had a little problem rating this book. As I layed my eyes upon it, I was realy impressed by the quality and quantity of reproductions. The book is of a pretty large format, and includes over 500 pages, and I have only read small portions of it. This is where the problem with rating begins. The texts I came across were pretty basic and general, but still I think they give a good and conclusive idea about the subject to someone with no or little prior knowledge.

The book deals with Greek art from the archaic period to the Hellenistic, Etruscan and Roman art. The middle ages section starts with a very short introduction of Pre-Romanesque sculpture and procedes through the Romanesque to Gothic and late Gothic sculpture.

I personally think, that when a book has such a variety of very very decent reproductions it's worth having, regardless whether you may approve of it's texts or not. That's why I rated it 5. The sculptures are truly remarkable, and looking at them is a pure joy.

I should mention there's a second part to the book - from Renaissance to Modern, which I don't own, and I don't know if it's selling on amazon, but those of you interested in sculpture might want to look it up.