Full Description
A collector's edition of a world-historical classic
In 1907, Pavel Muratov, a budding littÉrateur and art connoisseur from Moscow, set off for Italy with his wife, three friends, and a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. This journey, the first of over a dozen he would make in a decade, inspired an obsession with the country's art and culture that would produce, in the words of Clive James, "one of the most dazzling books of its type ever written." First published in Russian between 1911 and 1924, Evocations of Italy(Obrazy Italii) chronicles Muratov's encounters with the art, myth, and land of Italy. A classic of the Silver Age, it built on the tradition of Italian travelogues by Goethe, Stendhal, John Ruskin, and Henry James and defined the idea of Italy for generations of Russian artists and writers. Finally available in English, this three-volume collector's edition illuminates the personalities, conditions, and dreams that gave us the Italian Renaissance. At once intimate and authoritative, and here richly illustrated with photographs that echo Muratov's shimmering juxtapositions of image and sensation, Evocations of Italy is as timely and compelling a guide today as it was a hundred years ago.
Contents
Translator's Preface
Note on the Text
Note on Photography
Acknowledgments
EVOCATIONS OF ITALY
Author's Preface to the First Edition
VOLUME 1
Part 1. Venice
The Waters of Lethe
Tintoretto
The Age of the Mask
Casanova
Part 2. The Road to Florence
The Arena Chapel
Andrea Mantegna
Ferrara and Its Artists
Bologna
Mausoleum
Part 3. Florence
From San Miniato
Quattrocento
The Fate of Botticelli
A Captive Spirit
Bronzino and His Age
Part 4. The Cities of Tuscany
Prato and Pistoia
Pisa
Lucca
San Gimignano
Siena
Notes
Bibliography
VOLUME 2
Part 1. Rome
The Aura of Rome
Antiquity
Christian Rome
Melozzo da ForlÌ
The High Renaissance
The Baroque
Piranesi
The Roman Campagna
Part 2. Lazio
The Spirit of Lazio
Ostia
Cori
Ninfa
Subiaco
Olevano
Palestrina
Corneto
Bracciano
Viterbo
Part 3. Naples and Sicily
Life in Naples
Pompeii
Amalfi, Ravello, Paestum
Palermo
Greek Sicily
Notes
Bibliography
VOLUME 3
Part 1. From the Tiber to the Arno
The Umbria Valley
Assisi
Perugia
In the Footsteps of Piero della Francesca
Italian Summer
Part 2. The North
Parma
Days in Milan
Gaudenzio Ferrari
Bergamo
Brescia
Mantua
Part 3. Venetian Epilogue
Verona
Vicenza
Around Venice
Preface to the Third Edition, by Pavel Pavlovich Muratov
Afterword, by Ksenia Muratova
Notes
Bibliography
INDEX
