Giotto

This ravishing album combines a scholarly text with 200 superb color reproductions and 150 black-and-white illustrations representing all phases of Giotto's career. D'Arcais, a University of Verona art history professor, believes that the tensions in the Florentine painter's works reflect the medieval theological battle between those who emphasized Christ's humanity and those who centered on his divinity. Tracking Giotto's sojourns in Assisi, Rome, Naples, Rimini and Padua, and systematically commenting on his fresco cycles, individual masterpieces and architectural commissions, she deems him a revolutionary innovator not only because of his illusionistic space and his ``avant-garde'' use of color but also for his emotional candor and his attention to the minute particulars of everyday life. A magnificent gift book. (Nov.)