Book Review: "Baroque" by Barbara Borngässer is Work of Art

SEATTLEPI.COM
By Jack Goodstein

It doesn't seem that long ago that Baroque art was treated with something approaching disparagement. It was pretentious. "Baroque: Theatrum Mundi, The World as Work of Art," one of the first two volumes now available in publisher H. F. Ullman's new series "The Collection of Art Epochs," is a massive attempt to illustrate and explain the scope and variety of the Baroque in all of its many iterations.  If the attempt is massive, the book is no less massive. Its hand-bound 568 pages in a 15 x 11-inch format is not the kind of book you will want to hold on your lap. It is the kind of book that belongs on an ornate table in a Baroque library. In many respects it is itself a work of art. [link]