[Ravensfort] A book Review

[Lemoine Beers]

Here is a review of a book that I have just finished reading.



Painting and Experience in
Fifteenth Century Italy
by
Michael Baxandall
ISBN # 978--019-282144-7


 Baxandall has written a wonderful book that any painter, lluminator, or
pigment maker would enjoy. Baxandall takes the reader through the process of
a person in fifteenth century Italy going out and finding an artist to
create a painting for him. We see how and what the client of the painter
acts when confronted with the price and the wheeling and dealing in order to
get the painting he wants at the price he wants.


 Baxandall then flips it around showing us the hows and whys of the painters
life. We get to see the negotiation for different pigment colors and why a
cheaper red would be used in order to use a more expensive blue. While
looking through the painters eyes the reader gets to fully understand the
subjects that a painter was willing to paint versus the subjects that he
wanted to paint. The reader gets to see the everyday workings of the
painter's workshop everything from the cleaning and prep work all the way
through a finished painting.


 All and all this is 179 pages of pure historical joy. Told from the view
points of the two people most effected by the purchases of a painting. The
buyer and the artist. This book also contains many wonderful places both in
black and white and color of many of the popular period paintings. One of
the plate that really came to life for me was Rotterdam's Study of a Girl.
If you enjoy painting and or illumination or even just have passing interest
in these subjects this is a worth while read.


Later
Lemoine de Gascony MKA"L.D. Beers" loco.cerveza at gmail.com
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If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men
have to reject.
---Ayn Rand
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