New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Item #1485

8vo. 245 x 170 mm., [9 ½ x 6 ½  inches]. x + 498 pp. with two sets of eight leaves each of color plates inserted between text pages and with the following Appendices at the end: Bibliography; Index; Illustration Credits. Fifty-three color illustrations on sixteen leaves inserted between text pages. Quarter-bound in publishers’ black cloth with silver lettering on the spine and red paper over boards; a publisher’s mark stamped in blind on the lower back cover; fore-edges deckled; top and bottom edges cut smooth; unclipped illustrated jacket. Book and Jacket are As New: a seemingly unread copy.

First Edition; Third Printing. Robert Hughes (1938-2012) was an influential Australian art critic and television personality whose writing appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout the world, notably The Observer, The Sunday Times, and Time magazine, and whose celebrated TV documentaries and series focusing on art and art history were aired on the BBC and PBS, among other major networks. In 1964, Hughes moved to Italy to study European painting and architecture (he had graduated as an architect in 1962). This period produced his second book Heaven and Hell in Western Art. Rome, published towards the end of his career, uses his early days in Rome as a starting off point to tell a spanning and comprehensive political, social and cultural history of the city from its founding to the present day. He comments on the key periods and figures within that history, including the collapse of the Roman Republic, the rise of Christianity, the intellectual and artistic output of the Renaissance, unification in the nineteenth century, and the rise and fall of Mussolini in the twentieth. He ends with a personal analysis of what he perceives to be a decline in Rome’s significance and appeal due to mass tourism.

Price: $30.00