Betrachtungen über die italienische Malerei im 17. Jahrhundert

The present views Italian painting of the 17th century with a cool perspective; where the Romantics once saw the peak of perfection, we mostly see pose, transience, and technical and artistic inferiority today. Where, as here, a sympathetic and congenial empathy is absent, there is only one way to achieve an understanding of an art period: we leave the standpoint of modern art and derive an understanding of the time from the voices of those days, seeking what the artists aimed for, what seemed desirable to them, rather than what they accomplished from our perspective. If we succeed in clarifying some of the moments that shaped the image of that time, we may hope to gain enough general insights that engaging with the art of those days is fully worthwhile.

Art historian Hugo Schmerber examines Italian painting and its artists in the 17th century in this volume. Illustrated with numerous images.

This book is an unaltered reprint of the long out-of-print original edition from 1906.