Andrea Mantegna: Padua and Mantua (The Great Fresco Cycles of the Renaissance)

I recently acquired the book by Bruce Cole on Giotto’s frescoes for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and loved it. It reproduces in color those magnificent paintings so beautifully that I decided to start exploring other volumes in this series, “The Great Fresco Cycles of the Renaissance” published by George Braziller. Call me shallow, but I usually purchase art books mainly for high-quality reproductions of the art itself rather than the text. Perhaps the Giotto volume was a fluke, but this entry in the series, about Alberto Mantegna’s frescoes in Padua and Mantua, was a major disappointment. Half of the reproductions are in black and white, and it doesn’t take a professional art historian to tell you that a LOT is lost when paintings are reproduced without any color. What is the excuse for this? A hundred years ago, color reproduction was expensive and nearly impossible to print properly. The Swiss publishing firm of Skira made a major breakthrough when they started publishing books in which the text was printed on buff paper while the art works appeared as tipped-in glossy plates. Since then, printing has advanced a lot so that this is no longer necessary. So why all the drab B&W photos in this book? If you want to see Mantegna’s beautiful paintings in a version that does them justice, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

It has been a delight to discover a series on books published with color illustrations of some of the great fresco works of the Renaissance. This one is a good example of the book with satisfying color reproductions of the paintings and a good explanation of the painter's work. There are several other really good books of exactly the same kind in this series and they are well worth looking up.

This series on the great Italian fresco painters is excellent, all well written and well illustrated.