Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni

Jones (art history, University of Massachusetts, Boston) has selected five Roman altarpieces painted from 1595-1625 and studied them exhaustively in a brilliant example of interdisciplinary scholarship. Rather than focus on the paintings as art, she looks at them as a form of communication to the viewer. Using contemporary commentaries, broadsheets, sermons, liturgy, popular drama, legal documents--anything that reflects a culture, she has pieced together an image of how these altarpieces were received by the Catholics of Rome of the counter-Reformation. She takes into account the purpose of the churches and the congregation. Parallel photos of the altarpieces, first as close ups and then in the context of the church, stress the difference between seeing art in a vacuum and as a part of daily life. The book has several color plates as well as black and white. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Pamela M. Jones is Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. She is the author of Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana and a co-curator of the exhibition Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague.