Baroque 1600-1780 (Art Periods & Movements) Hardcover – 1 July 2019

I have much enjoyed the Koenemann series previously and own volumes on French and Spanish painting as well as Gothic art. However, having bought this sight unseen, I was very disappointed.I had noticed a falling off in quality of photography in “Gothic 1200-1500”, where I would say that at least a third of the photos of the artworks where not quite in focus. This problem has not only continued in this volume, but it contains some appalling illustrations. All the Vermeer paintings appear fuzzy, but worst of all, Gainsborough’s “The Blue Boy” looked like a colour copy of a colour copy of a colour copy. Even a bootlegged book would not have had so shabby an illustration. And - many of the paintings appear to have been photographed under some sort of raking light which brings the craquelure on the surface of the oil paint into sharp focus, but somehow washes out the colours so that especially the upper part of the painting appears disturbingly indistinct.Then we have the choice of works: there is page after page after page of second and third rate paintings. I love discovering artists that I have never come across, but preferably with something that takes your breath away. And then the other inexplicable editorial decisions: there are exactly two paintings for Tiepolo and EIGHT for Jan Steen, who could hardly draw. My only explanation for this is the author’s own eccentric preferences.Needless to say, this book went straight back to Amazon,