Books do Furnish a Painting by Jamie Camplin and Maria Ranauro

Books do Furnish a Painting by Jamie Camplin and Maria Ranauro is a

tribute to books and to my point of view, each book lover should keep a copy of this book in his/her house.

Published by Thames&Hudson, the introduction long and detailed will explain the story of the arrival of books as we conceive them in the Western part of the world without forgetting the importance of China.

Men in general have always tried, Egyptians are a clear example of it, but also Preistoric men, of leaving a mark of their passage on our Earth

for the posterity and the best thing to do was to use all the possible instruments for create memories in grade to reach distant cultures, or also people who would have been,   born a lot of centuries after them. In this sense Egyptians have been incredible.

When man discovered a modality in grade to permit a diffusion of the written word thanks to paper, and later printed paper, see at the voice Gutenberg, it was a success.

People became book-lovers, book-collectors, and books became indispensible in the daily life of people.

Power of  book is so big, because maybe constituted of a natural material, that nothing has been in grade to destroy.

The advent of the internet destroyed the past society but books, where possible became more powerful thanks to the net.

A personal example? Someone once asked me how many books I review of the once publishing houses send physically. I replied: "All of them. I can't say the opposite of ebooks."

The beauty of a book is the physicality, the possibility of touching, smelling, bringing it everywhere. Seeing it. 

When the story of books started to become interesting?

The authors focus on The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architect, by Giorgio Vasari. The beauty of these biographies, could let show to everyone the magnificience of who created masterpieces in grade to be immortals for everyone.

Inspirations the most diversified. St Genevieve for example saint Patron of Paris, inspired Van der Goes.

In the Renaissance Saint Mary was portrayed while reading a book; one of the most delicate painting the one of Botticelli, the Madonna of the Book.

The XX century was influenced by the horribles two mondial wars and art reflected it as we can see with Scholz or Chagall.

Books became in this sense revolutionaries; some authors including Hemingway banned by Nazists and their books burned. Words are powerful and people can be scared by them.

In another section of this elegant book we will see the book as synonime of home and domesticity.

Painters understood it well. Paintings will reveal situations where readers are "captured" in a special domestic moment while they're reading a book sat on a sofa, while they are cleaning up the house (for a maid, who tries in the while of reading some bit;) mothers reading to their children, chidren peacefully reading a book.

The section ends with Picasso.

We said that a book can be brought everywhere for being read and painters understood this as well portraying public characters, situations where book becomes synonime of trips, outdoor, or bucolic scenarios, like the painting of Alma-Tadema let us see. That man read pleasantly immersed in the british countryside. The reader was Sir Henry Francis Herbert Thompson, with eclectic interests in medicine,egyptology and law.

Men, nature and books the protagonists.

The latest section is devoted to books.

Books painted in beautiful and original ways or as did Vermeer in The Astronomer where the darkness of the dress wore by the protagonist

is "washed" away by the arrival of light, in grade to illuminate the book and the globe.

Books seen as windows on the world as did Heyden.

In another dutch painting children try to force a cat to learn to read.

Guercino painted an italian lawyer and city counsil Francesco Righetti.

Highly recommended to all book-lovers and everyone interested in painting.

I thank Thames & Hudson for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori