Marcia B. HallCritiques

I have always wanted to go to Italy and see the great art works of the Renaissance done by Leonardo DaVinci, Raphael and, of course, Michelangelo,maybe it's because of my Italian heritage, I don't know specifically why but as I get older I realize that that dream may never happen so, I have resolved to make the journey through books.

This volume is filled with photos of the restored frescoes of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. There are detailed photos as well as explanations of the processes used to paint them and the story behind them. I poured over these for several afternoons and felt as if I had really visited the Sistine Chapel, but with one great exception. In this book, the photos showed me the vibrancy of the artist's conceptions but at a much closer prospective than I would have had had I been standing in the Chapel itself. So no, I did not get to feel the power of the overall vastness of these magnificent works of art, but yes, I did get to experience their phenomenal beauty.

If you are an art lover, this book will not disappoint.½

Great selection of essays, though some seem more relevant than others. Marcia Hall's introduction and essay are excellent; I look forward to reading her book Michelangelo: the Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Another highlight was Melinda Schlitt's "Painting, Criticism, and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Age of the Counter-Reformation." Unfortunately, while not bad, Margaret Kuntz's essay on the Cappella Paolina frescoes was only tangentially connected to the Last Judgment, ending the book in a note that made it feel diffuse.