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Title: Poorly written
Review: I was looking forward to reading this book, having read "M; The Life of Caravaggio" in the past. I was very disappointed. The writing level is extremely low. The characterization, dialogue, and description are around the level of a generic romance novel.Further, I recently read David Hockney's fascinating and convincing book "Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters" that demonstrates how optics were almost certainly used by artists of the time (and Artemisia is specifically sited with examples). Since the author of this Artemisia book seems unaware of the evidence (published in 2001), this book suffers from passionate descriptions (although not exacting) of foreshortening practice and other techniques that were unlikely to have been used by the artist. This poor research throws the authenticity of the whole book into serious question.If you're interested in painting, I would suggest you look elsewhere.
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