Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2014 -

This masterful study is the "culmination of an international collaborative research project" sponsored by the Getty Research Institute.  Editor Feigenbaum and 25 contributors collectively offer a fascinating account of the display of arta category taken broadly to include any visual element found within a palace interior in the 16th-century residences of Rome's elite.  These categories range from tapestries to stucco work and from silver to paintings.  This study draws on a wealth of primary source data artfully assembled to vividly reanimate now-lost Baroque palace interiors, and to explore the ways in which 16th-century Romans, and the city's foreign visitors, lived alongside art.  Details that in other hands might seem arcane are here transformed into an accessible and relevant narrative that sparkles with insight.  Five thematic sections contain 18 chapters on discrete topics represented by chapters including "Architecture for Display" and "Frescoes."  Interspersed throughout are 18 illuminating, brief case studies (e.g., "State Beds," "Showing Drawings in Roman Collections").  As befits its subject,Display of Artis lavishly illustrated with high-quality black-and-white illustrations and 39 color plates.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.