Bramante's Spiral Staircase: Recent Restorations of the Vatican Museums, Vol. 2,New

Review A bestseller at the Vatican Museums, this book gives the reader insight to the artistic meaning and historical content of the two most important Renaissance artists, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael Sanzio of Urbino. Through the clarity of its text and the thoroughness of its pictorial documentation, the publication is designed to bring the reader and art lover closer to the artists and their works represented in this book, some of which are not on display to the public. Its didactical approach, with newly documented pictures and extensive captions, make it a valuable learning tool as well as a beautifully illustrated book to be studied and enjoyed. Editor's IntroductionThe following paragraph is taken from page 13 of Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican. The sources and meaning of Michelangelo's masterpiece were the subject of polemical conjectures almost as soon as the fresco was unveiled. Vasare saw in it the culmination of all Italian pictorial art; citing some of its sources, he mentions Dante and Signorelli. Pietro Arentino, on the other hand, malevolently criticized it, finding hints of heresy in it and denouncing the scandal of so many nudes in a sacred place. Unfortunately, his criticism found its mark: Daniele da Volterra, a favorite Michelangelo pupil, was deputed to 'put breeches' on the nudes. What was the original like? We can reconstruct it by comparing copies, such as those (now in Naples) which Marcello Venusti sketched immediately before the veilings. The accusations and exaggerations, redolent of the CounterReformation spirit, explain some of the polemics the work aroused. But Michelangelo's was a tough, welltried faith, a spirituality tested and lived in the context of the Renaissance but with profound roots in the Middle Ages. The Pictorial inspiration is clearly from the Italian 'Quattrocento' (Giotto, Camposanto di Pisa, Orcagna). In fact Michelangelo emphasized the ideal aspect by uniting time and space in a single vision and traditional divisions into sections. The drama before the viewer is unique and instantaneous and is acted out beyond time and space in the human sense. Excerpted from Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican by Francesco Rossi, Antonio P. Graziano, Fabrizio Mancinelli. Copyright 1993 (c) by the Vatican Museums. All rights reserved. Product Description A detailed study on the restored staircase in the Vatican Belvedere Palace built in the early 1500's by the great Renaissance architect, Donato Bramante. The book shows beautiful and detailed photographs and includes extensive pictorial documentation on the Vatican and its environs in the 16th and 17th century. From Library Journal Any serious art book collection must upgrade its holdings to include recent photographs of the Sistine Chapel after the cleaning, as our understanding of the paintings on the ceiling and walls has since changed radically. Here are three titles complementing one another and various aspects of the images revealed by the restoration. The slender, slipcovered Michelangelo and Raphael is an updated version of the official publication of the Vatican Museum illustrating the Sistine and Pauline chapels and the stanzas and loggias of Raphael. A best seller to tourists in Rome, it records the histories of the chapels with clear, elegant reproductions and descriptive text. There are fullcolor foldouts of the restored Sistine ceiling and Last Judgment by Michelangelo showing the breadth and scope of these paintings. The wall decorations, life cycles of Moses and Christ by Botticelli, Signorelli, Ghirlandaio, and Roselli, under the direction of Perugino, are explained in terms of their historical and contemporaneous significance. Raphael's great frescoes in the stanzas and his paintings in the picture gallery are fully represented, though restoration is now being done in the Stanza della Signatura. The Sistine Chapel covers this chapel, including Michelangelo's ceiling and