Italian Painting

This gorgeously illustrated, large-format book surveys Italian painting, from rich Roman portraits and fantastical Pompeiian room interiors to post-WW II artists like Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, who seek ways to overcome alienation by ``going beyond modernity.'' Christiansen, a curator at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, is an engaging guide to 300 color plates. He reveals the tensions between cerebral Florentine drawing and sensual Venetian color. He champions Correggio as an under-appreciated master, nearly as influential as Michelangelo and Leonardo. He stresses regional differences evident in Byzantine-influenced Venetian art, Lombard naturalism and Naples' hard-edged realism. And, by delineating Italian painting's links to artistic theory--from Masaccio's experiments in perspective to Futurism--Christiansen locates one source of this art's continual inventiveness. Text and illustrations marvelously complement each other in this glorious album. (Nov.)