Past-present : essays on historicism in art from Donatello to Picasso /

Lavishly produced, this wide-ranging collection of essays by the prominent Irving Lavin provides the definitive version of seven lectures presented within the past eight years. The ideas are hallmark Lavin--sensible iconographic interpretations, delivered with admirable savoir-faire. The reader may be left wondering why the banner of "historicism" was necessary, since the vaunted "self-referentiality" of the works involves nothing more than the art historian's perennial search for illuminating precedent. Artists treated include Michelangelo, Giambologna, Caravaggio, and Bernini. Each project is expansively considered as it impacted on a large audience and as it related to vernacular imagery. By way of bringing this theme up to date, Bernini's equestrian statue of Louis XIV is shown both in color and in black and white covered with spray-paint graffiti (also in two photographs of its undefiled state). Sententious but not pompous, these erudite but not forbidding essays are suitable for anyone sympathetic with the liberal arts. P. Emison; University of New Hampshire