Leonardo's Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists

Rating:
Summary: Erudition as entertainment
Review: This is a collection of fifteen short essays, but we read them as if it were a book of short stories, or as if it were a novel. Fenton's prose is something we read at ease, it can amuse us as well as give us some important informations about diverse subjects - Freud's interest on statuary; Pierino da Vinci, a sculptor who had a legendary oncle; Degas'anti-semitism; the enigmas behind Jasper Johns's pictures of the american flag. The author shows the same eloquence writing about the late Renaissance as well as when he discourses about Rauschenberg and his contemporaries. "Leonardo's nephew" is not exactly a work of a critic - it's at the same time a book of a scholar and a collection of curious stories about art and the art scene, that you can read while waiting for your bus.