Rab Hatfield
Bottcelli's Uffizi "Adoration": A Study in Pictorial Content.
Princeton University Press, 1976. Princeton Essays on Art, 2. Author-signed first edition. 0691039127 xv/150 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in light and dark brown cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book shows light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Previous owner's name is written at top of front pastedown. Interior is otherwise clean and bright. Dust jacket exhibits light shelfwear. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
Author's signature appears at top of half title page.
"The Uffizi "Adoration of the Magi" by Sandro Botticelli was painted, probably during the early 1470s, for the alter of Guasparre dal Lama in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella. To discover the manner in which the artist conceived his first truly ambitions composition and the ways in which his contemporaries might have experienced it, the author recreates the contexts within which Botticelli worked. Rab Hatfield's full and complex interpretation draws on new material and interpretive methods, offering the reader a fascinating glimpse of Florentine religion and culture during the later Quattrocentro.
The author examines the relationship of the painting to its surrounding, its significance for its patron, its imagery in relation to the tenets of medieval and Renaissance theology, its reflection of trends in religious sensibility, its meaning in the social context of the period, and its significance in terms of the painter's skill. His account suggests how a Florentine contemporary might have experienced Botticelli's work. An appendix makes available hitherto unpublished documents and sources."