Leonardo's Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists - Softcover

Fenton, James

3.37

19 ratings by Goodreads

9780226241470: Leonardo's Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226241475 ISBN 13: 9780226241470

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2000

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James Fenton, one of England's most gifted poets, has in recent years been looking closely at works of art and writing incisively and inventively about them and their creators. This collection of fifteen writings discusses a wide range of painting and sculpture, from the mummy portraits of ancient Egypt to the works of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

"Ingenious. . . . Intrigued by emerging and unstable reputations, [Fenton] introduces us to Leonardo da Vinci's half-brother's son Pierino: a precocious sculptor celebrated by Vasari but virtually forgotten since."—Publishers Weekly

"Not surprisingly, Fenton displays throughout the passionate attentiveness of a scholar, the enthusiasm of an amateur, and the urbane cleverness of an English journalist."—Washington Post Book World

"[Fenton] is not, like Baudelaire, a poet moonlighting as art critic; he is something else again—a poetic art historian." —Karen Wright, Observer

"These essays educate, enlighten, surprise and thrill, unfailingly."—Robin Lippincott, New York Times Book Review

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Review:

This savory, erudite collection of essays makes a reader feel incomparably lucky, as if he or she is seated next to a learned, original, decently friendly fellow traveler on an intercontinental flight. Author James Fenton has a style that is both intimate and scholarly. It is always amusing and illuminating; it never cloys. The subjects of the 15 essays--all but two originally published in the New York Review of Books--include Freud's collection of statuary; the remarks of Renoir and Degas made at two parties in the same home (the artists, not on speaking terms, were invited on different nights); Jasper Johns's early life and his later use of the American flag in his paintings; a talented nephew of Leonardo da Vinci whose work was oddly described by both Vasari and Picasso; and more.

Fenton's writing is most moving in those essays that take off from a chance thought or a bit of accidentally discovered history, like the one on Freud. And those that began as book reviews are in a class by themselves. Fenton generally shreds or praises his subjects according to his own meticulous research, which refreshingly tends toward primary sources, but occasionally he simply takes the reader aside. Quoting one critic, he groans, "If this sort of writing makes you want to throw up, I quite agree." His, on the other hand, makes one want to turn back to the beginning of the book and start all over again. --Peggy Moorman

About the Author:

James Fenton is Professor of Poetry at Oxford and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His most recent book of poetry is Out of Danger (Noonday, 1995). Marketing:

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