Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. How does the artist's self-conception change in old age? How does old age affect artistic practice? In this intriguing study, art historian Philip Sohm considers some of the greatest artists of Renaissance and Baroque Italy and their experiences of aging. Sohm investigates how art critics, collectors, biographers, and fellow artists dealt with old painters, what mental landscapes preconditioned responses to art by the elderly, and how biology and psychology were co-opted to explain the imprint that artists left on their art. He also looks carefully at the impact of prejudices, stereotypes, and other imaginary truths about old age. For some artists, the problems of old age were related to physical decline-Poussin's hands became shaky, Titian's eyesight dimmed. For others, psychological symptoms emerged. The book's cast of characters includes Michelangelo, the hypochondriac young fogy; Titian, the shrewd marketer of old age; the multiphobic Pontormo; and others. With sensitivity and insight, Sohm uncovers what it meant to be an old artist and how successive generations have looked at the art of an old master.
Hardcover. NY, Benjamin Blom, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light orange cloth with brown titles on spine. Traces the history of the time-honored farce, featuring Pulcinella, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pantaleone, and other traditionsl characters, from Roman comedy to Cruikshank's Punch & Judy. Originally published in 1912, this new edition adds 46 pages of illustrations and a folding color frontispiece. Clean copy, no dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton, 1st, 1919, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt lettering, 402 pages. Translated form the Italian by Maria Sermolino. An account of WW1 by an officer in the Italian Army. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Polity Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 223 pages, In this highly original book, Camporesi explores the two worlds of feast and famine in early modern Europe. Camporesi brings together a mosaic of images from Italian folklore: phantasmagoric processions of giants, pigs, vagabonds, down-trodden rogues, charlatans and beggars in rags. He reconstructs a world inhabited by the strange forces of peasant culture, and describes the various rituals - carnivals, festivities, competitions and funerals - in which food played a central role. NOTE: light pencil making to many pages.
Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton , 2nd Ed., 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 291 pages, b&w illustrations. Records the findings and methodology of archaeologists concerned with the civilizations of ancient Italy. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Fordham University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 234 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the half-title page. The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not "words," making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy-the autobiographies written by immigrants. Here she looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra recovers the voices of the first generation-bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses-compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often thickly accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change.
Hardcover. NY, Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 1st US, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, demi dust jacket. The history, cultural life, customs and social life of Venice. 403 pages. Chronology, Bibliography, Index. Two 8 page sections of full color illustrations, and two of black and white; b/w drawings at each chapter head. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 152 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Minor soiling to front cover of dust jacket. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Color illustrations throughout. A tight copy. "A collection of exquisite large-format pen-and-ink watercolor renderings of all of Palladio's villas."
Hardcover. NY, Viking , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 282 pages. Black & white maps, plans and illustrations. Documents the experiences of late-Renaissance Venetian nuns, many of whom were upper-class women immured against their will, exploring how convents of the period were often political hotbeds and the sites of illicit love affairs in their resident's efforts to find fulfillment. Clean copy.
