Sienese Painting: From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque

Rating:
Summary: A sumptuously produced book, with some flaws.
Review: 'Sienese Painting' is a sumptuously produced book (it has some 350 illustrations, with 200 in colour) and as a general survey certainly does its job well. It does have a flaw however, namely in the lack of clear connections between the text and the illustrations.Indeed in a number of instances references are made in the text to paintings which are frustratingly not illustrated. There is a positive side to this of course: one's reading experience becomes much more interactive as one searches over a number of pages for the painting which is being discussed. Finding it becomes a real, and memorable, pleasure! This is really the only large survey of Sienese painting currently available and given that it has so many wonderful illustrations and a generally informative text I would, even with the above reservation, recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary pictorial content
Review: This volume is the ideal resource for those interested in the scholarship and pictorial wonder of the Sienese painters in Early Renaissance art. The enlarged sections are magnificently rendered. A wonderful alternative companion volume to the 1988 Met exhibition catalog (Painting in Renaissance Siena)which is unfortunately now out of print. A masterwork indeed.