David Ekserdjian is professor of history of art and film at the University of Leicester
“Ekserdijan has an impressive encyclopaedic knowledge of the byways
of altarpiece development during the period. . . . He writes
engagingly and wears his learning lightly, and, with its 250
illustrations, this handsome book is designed in the best Yale
tradition.”—Peter Humfrey, Art Newspaper
“The first in-depth study of the genre. . . . Mr. Ekserdjian nimbly
addresses styles, patrons, artists, and history, as well as the
three key categories of the Renaissance altarpiece: icons,
narratives and mysteries. And he teaches how to read altarpieces,
including their predellas, or related supporting panels. The book
is beautifully illustrated with 250 plates; you’ll savor both image
and text.”—Lance Esplund, Wall Street Journal (Holiday Gift Book
selection)
“Ekserdjian brilliantly outlines the broad picture, but the devil
is in his details: how variously artists, famous and obscure,
enlivened and energised this iconic structure, balancing narrative
and invention, clarity and mystery.”—Jackie Wullschläger, Financial
Times, “Best Books of 2021: Visual Arts”
“David Ekserdjian’s book is a sumptuous and scholarly study of a
form he sifts into categories — icons, narratives and mysteries —
to reveal its development and subtleties.”—Michael Prodger, Sunday
Times, “Books of the Year: Art”
“[Ekserdijan] excels at shepherding us through the varieties of
altarpiece and the terminology used to describe them . . . Peppered
with new and surprising insights, this painstaking study will
become an indispensable work.”—James Hall, Times Literary
Supplement
“The glorious art of the kind that Napoleon would have stolen if he
could is on full display in David Ekserdijan’s The Italian
Renaissance Altarpiece.”—Michael Glover, The Tablet
“One of the most magnificent picture books I have ever handled...As
David’s minute scholarship and acute observation draw you in
deeper, to places and artists you have never heard of, you gain a
fresh and startling sense of the breaktaking abundance of
sixteenth-century Italy.”—Ferdinand Mount, Times Literary
Supplement
“Professor Ekserdijan has brought together a career’s worth of
knowledge of Italian art to focus on a subject that, while widely
commented on, has not received detailed analysis.”—Nicholas
Cranfield, Church Times
“The very superior product of a lifetime of thinking and writing
about the subject...Peppered with new and surprising insights, this
meticulous study will become an indispensable work.”—James Hall,
Literary Review
“Citing a wealth of examples that is unlikely to be surpassed,
Ekserdijan’s text is certainly alive to the exceptions that emerge
whenever one attempts to apply the rule of thumb...The broad genre
of the Renaissance altarpiece is triumphantly reasserted here as an
arena for artistic creativity and experimentation.”—Donal Cooper,
Apollo Magazine
“This beautiful volume's real claim to magisterial status rests on
the author's ability to combine formidable erudition with pellucid
prose, the elegance with which he organises his almost limitless
material, and the originality of the entire enterprise. This book
is the crowning achievement of a life's work.”—Daniel Johnson, The
Critic
“More comprehensive and detailed than any previous work devoted to
this subject, David Ekserdjian’s The Italian Renaissance
Altarpiece: Between Icon and Narrative both provides an
authoritative history of altarpieces in Italy up to c.1600 and
addresses fundamental questions about the nature of religious art
in this period.”—Nicholas Penny, The Burlington Magazine
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022
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