FLORENCE:
A PORTRAIT
By Michael Levey


REVIEWS

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1996
• "It would be a brave person to offer yet another interpretation [of Florence], but few could be better qualified to do so than Michael Levey. As a distinguished art historian and former Director of the National Gallery, he has the right sort of familiarity with Florentine art to lend authority to his observations; as an amateur musicologist and novelist, he is certainly aware of broader cultural issues and has an eye for the telling vignette that brings his subject to life. Enthusiastically hybrid, his Florence: A Portrait is both a guide, history and personal appreciation of a city which has now become a shrine of cultural faith more than a living entity...One could go on...pointing out striking passages or perceptive comments [in the book], but anyone who knows Levey's earlier writings can readily understand why his personal view of Florence would be worth reading. Like any successful travel-writer, he has the ability to project a sympathetic and congenial personality, one able to respond interestingly to the variety of Florence...Michael Levey has produced a handsome tribute."
  --Bruce Boucher, Times Literary Supplement

• "Dealing with oft-told tales, [Levey] manages to be fresh and compelling. Intellectual context is a constant concern of his, and in untangling the threads of Florentine politics and weaving them together with the strands of cultural history he achieves a welcome clarity...In painting his Florence portrait, like those Florentine portrait painters of the Renaissance, Sir Michael never fails to add the small, illuminating detail...[An] invaluable [book]."
  --William Weaver, New York Times Book Review

• "Levey's portrayal [of Florence] is that of an eminent art historian elegantly at home in painting, sculpture, and architecture...The book has...a masterly survey of post-Renaissance Florence, of the treasures produced during the city's long decline. Levey is one of our most penetrating connoisseurs of Mannerism and the baroque...[A] loving, erudite tour."
  --George Steiner, New Yorker

• "Michael Levey, the eminent British art historian, is among the most learned and eloquent of [Florence's] adoptive citizens...[He] is never less than highly companionable. Though this is not a guidebook, he is a natural guide, with all the wit and volubility...of a practiced cicerone."
  --Dan Hofstadter, Wall Street Journal

• "[A] lucid, well-informed, and wide-ranging text."
  --Charles Hope, New York Review of Books

• "Levey's book is...a big, muscled analysis, edifying but erudite, of Florence's political and artistic history from earliest times through the nineteenth century. He supplies Florence with a living, breathing corporality in place of its rather mummified tourist image of frozen-in-time, outdoor art museum...A book worthy of the time it demands."
  --Booklist

• "Levey, former director of London's National Gallery and a prolific art historian, explores the long history of the fabled city-state of Florence...A fine achievement. Exceptionally detailed reporting about a fascinating city."
  --Kirkus Reviews

• "[T]his book is almost a personal tour of Florence, providing unusual insights and detail...[I]t meanders through history and art providing the reader with an intimate view of Florentine personalities and environs."
  --Library Journal