A fresh look at Rome’s vast grandeur during the 17th century.
A vibrant journey to Baroque Rome.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), acclaimed as the “genius of the Baroque,” is the focus of Grossman’s engaging, sumptuously illustrated history of 17th-century Rome, when grand architectural and artistic projects, commissioned by a succession of popes, transformed the city dramatically. The son of well-regarded sculptor Pietro Bernini, Gian’s talent was evident when he was as young as 11. By the time he was in his 20s, he was a recognized master, and his career soared during the 21 years of the papacy of Urban VIII, when “a flood of papal commissions” made him spectacularly wealthy. Even under Innocent X, Urban’s successor and foe, Bernini managed to navigate political intrigue and turbulence to maintain his status as Rome’s preeminent sculptor and architect. His most important patron, however, was the physically frail Alexander VII. By 1650, after the Thirty Years’ War and the Protestant Reformation, with papal political influence waning and the power of France’s Louis XIV growing, Alexander “turned ever more inward, lavishing more time, attention and money on his projects for Rome.” Public works of art, he believed, reflected his spiritual and diplomatic power, and he saw in the swirling, sensuous, theatrical Baroque a style focused only on “heightening the drama of life.” Grossman portrays Bernini as a self-promoter with a “prodigious” work ethic; a man who could display “arrogance, quick temper, and sharp tongue” but also a tendency to be self-critical. A self-portrait, reproduced in this book, shows “piercing eyes, a dark piratical look, and a sense of tremendous physical and intellectual energy.” He directed that energy toward managing a huge workshop, which, at one time or another, employed “almost every sculptor of talent in Rome.” An added bonus, Grossman’s guide to an Obelisk Walk of Rome, appended to his narrative, highlights many of Bernini’s works.
A fresh look at Rome’s vast grandeur during the 17th century.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64313-740-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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