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Title: enjoyment pure and simple
Review: An absolutely brilliant book, indeed! It is written with a lot of intellectual vigour, Settis' knowledge of the subject is breathtaking, but what is by far the most impressing feature of this book is the author's ability to connect very different fields of academic research: sociology, history, philology. It is an absolute must for all students and scholars of arts, a true example how a detailed analysis of a single painting reveals to us much about the era it was painted in, as well as about the times when its meaning was attempted to be deciphered. We learn here much about the Italian Rennaisance, Giorgione and his contemporaries, but also about centuries which came after -- what they did with his paintings and how they tried to adjust their meanings to their contemporary tastes and preferences. A real diamond.
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