The 1916 silent film Cenere (Ashes) features the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) in her only cinematic role. In her meditative approach to her craft, she reprised for the screen all the "mother roles" she had created for the theater.Marking the film's 100th anniversary, this collection of essays brings together for the first time in English a range of scholarship. The difficulties involved in the making of the film are explored--Duse's perfectionism was too...

Concise. Essential. Annotated. These three words describe what the books in My Pocket Gallery gives readers. This Art Book contains annotated reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci greatest masterpieces, date and interesting facts page below. Book includes Table of Contents, thumbnail gallery and is formatted for all e-readers and Tablets (use rotate and/or zoom feature on landscape/horizontal images for optimal viewing).< This Art Book contains annotated reproductions of Leonardo da ...

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, military-engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest...

Modigliani (1884-1920) was a painter of great unhappiness in his native Italy and felt only sorrow in his adopted country of France. Out of this discontent came forth Modigliani’s original work, which was influenced by African art, the Cubists, and drunken nights in Montparnasse. His portrayal of women—sensual bodies, almost aggressive nudity, and mysterious faces—expresses their suffering and feelings of being unloved and unjustly disregarded. Modigliani died at the age of 36.

How an oddly attributed $19,000 picture proved to be a $100 million work by Leonardo da Vinci—a true art-world detective storyIn late 2010, art collector Peter Silverman revealed that a "German, early 19th century" portrait he had bought for $19,000 was, in fact, a previously unknown drawing by Leonardo da Vinci—an exquisite depiction of Bianca Sforza, rendered 500 years ago. In Leonardo's Lost Princess, Silverman gives a riveting first-person account of h...

A lively and authoritative journey into the world of a cinema masterWith the revolutionary 8 1/2, Federico Fellini put his deepest desires and anxieties before the lens in 1963, permanently impacting the art of cinema in the process. Now, more than forty years later, film critic and Fellini confidant Tullio Kezich has written the work by which all other biographies of the filmmaker are sure to be measured. In this moving and intimately revealing account of ...

Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City is a valuable introduction to one of the most influential of film movements. Exploring the roots and causes of neorealism, particularly the effects of the Second World War, as well as its politics and style, Mark Shiel examines the portrayal of the city and the legacy left by filmmakers such as Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti. Films studied include Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Bicycle Thief

A new biography, the first in two decades, of the legendary actress who inspired Anton Chekhov, popularized Henrik Ibsen, and spurred Stanislavski to create a new theory of acting based on her art and to invoke her name at every rehearsal.Writers loved her and wrote plays for her. She be-friended Rainer Maria Rilke and inspired the young James Joyce, who kept a portrait of her on his desk. Her greatest love, the poet d’Annunzio, made her the heroine of his novel Il fuoco (The Flame...

The Italian cinema is regarded as one of the great pillars of world cinema. Films like Ladri di biciclette (1948), La dolce vita (1960), and Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988) attracted unprecedented international acclaim and a reputation, which only continue to grow. Italian cinema has produced such acting legends as Sophia Loren and Roberto Benigni, as well as world-renowned filmmakers like Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lina Wertmülle...

Futurism began as an artistic and social movement in early twentieth-century Italy. Until now, much of the scholarship available in English has focused only on a single individual or art form. This volume seeks to present a more complete picture of the movement by exploring the history of the movement, the events leading up to the movement, and the lasting impact it has had as well as the individuals involved in it.The History of Futurism: The Precursors, Protagonists, and Legacies ...

The first collection of letters in English by one of the great writers of the twentieth centuryThis is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Italy's most important postwar novelist, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) achieved worldwide fame with such books as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. But he was also an influential literary criti...

Leonardo, like his contemporary Christopher Columbus, possessed an insatiable curiosity and desire for discovery of unknown worlds. Only observation, says many times Leonardo, is the key to knowledge and understanding.Throughout his life Leonardo seeks to understand and control the nature. He constructed machines and original installations built bridges, dissected human bodies and trying to break into the Providence of God.But the whole time Leonardo knows perfectly well th...