Book description
Rome - as a city, as an empire, as an enduring idea is in many ways the
origin of everything Robert Hughes has spent his life thinking and
writing about with such dazzling irreverence and exacting rigour. In
this magisterial book he traces the city's history from its mythic
foundation with Romulus and Remus to Fascism, Fellini and beyond.
For almost a thousand years, Rome held sway as the spiritual and
artistic centre of the world. Hughes vividly recreates the ancient Rome
of Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula, Cicero, Martial and
Virgil. With the artistic blossoming of the Renaissance, he casts his
unwavering critical eye over the great works of Raphael, Michelangelo
and Brunelleschi, shedding new light on the Old Masters. In the
seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Rome's cultural
predominance was assured, artists and tourists from all over Europe
converged on the city. Hughes brilliantly analyses the defining works of
Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rubens and Bernini.
Hughes' Rome is a vibrant, contradictory, spectacular and secretive
place; a monument both to human glory and human error. This deeply
personal account reflects his own complex relationship with a city he
first visited as a wide-eyed twenty-year-old, thirsting for the sights,
sounds, smells and tastes he had only read about or seen in postcard
reproductions. In equal parts loving, iconoclastic, enraged and wise,
peopled with colourful figures and rich in unexpected details, ROME is
an exhilarating journey through the story of one of the world's most
timelessly fascinating cities.
This ebook has been revised since its original release. Robert Hughes
was born in Australia in 1938. Since 1970 he has lived and worked in the
United States, where until 2001 he was chief art critic for TIME, to
which he still contributes. He is the recipient of a number of awards
and prizes for his work.
