Italy Observed in Photography
and Literature
by Luigi Ballerini and Charles Traub
New York: Rizzoli, 1991
As painters, sculptors, writers, and connoisseurs have always known, Italy is the place where art and life come together. The truth of such an observation can be seen in this beautifully designed new book. Through some of the most striking photographs taken by American and Italian photographers in the past 25 years, and a selection of witty, trenchant, sometimes truculent excerpts from letters, diaries, essays, short stories and novels by 74 American and Italian writers of the past three centuries; it provides a portrait of Italy that is sometimes ironic in tone but passionately committed to everything making that country the spiritual homeland of all who love art. As Herman Melville hurriedly scribbled in his diary, "Rather be in Venice on rainy day than in any other capital on fine one."
