The Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi: Glory and Destruction | 
 enlarge | Author: Giorgio Bonsanti
Creators: Ghigo Roli, Stephen Sartarelli
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1507542
Media: Paperback
Pages: 99
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 12.4 x 9.5 x 0.4
ISBN: 0810927675
Dewey Decimal Number: 726.50945651
EAN: 9780810927674
ASIN: 0810927675
Publication Date: March 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Binding loose Buy from the best: 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship today!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
The Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi represents the turning point, in Italian art, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The cycles of murals by Lorenzetti, Martini, Cimabue, and Giotto are among the icons of Western art, and somehow they still retain enormous emotional power. More than a score of recorded earthquakes had rattled the stones of the great Romanesque church in the 800 years since its construction began, but visitors over the centuries repeatedly remarked on the particular peacefulness of this monument to the saint who preached to sparrows and sultans alike. On September 26, l997, that peace was shattered by the worst quake in Assisi's history. A huge section of the Vault of the Evangelists, including Cimabue's St. Matthew and Giotto's St. Jerome, fell to the floor, killing four people. That afternoon, Ghigo Roli had completed documenting the vaults, and this book of crystalline, miraculously well-lighted photographs is the best, last record of the ceiling as a unified whole. The book contains a brief essay by Giorgio Bonsanti about the history of the church and its paintings, and a short but harrowing account by Roli of being there when the earthquake struck. In the back of the book are four stills from a video documentary that caught the massive crash of the vault. These are reproduced small, but their impact on the reader is huge, because of the preceding pages that make clear what has been lost forever. --Peggy Moorman
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| Customer Reviews:
Everything it promises to be! November 5, 1998
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
As an art history major who lived and studied in Italy, and saw this magnificent church before the earthquake, this book provides an excellent history. How wonderful to have photographic evidence of it's prior beauty, and the video clips of the destruction. I visited the church again this October (1998), and it was so wonderful to see the careful restoration. This book will not dissapoint those of you who want photographic history.
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