Only Connect...: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance - Softcover

John Shearman is William Door Boardman Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard University.

"In guiding our concentrated attention to the action that unfolds in [a group of paintings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Pontormo, and others that represent the Entombment], the author has taught us to make the relevant connections and thus to see these deeply moving works with fresh eyes."---E. H. Gombrich, The New York Review of Books

"As the author of a brilliant work on Mannerism, in which literature and music were employed to explain characteristic forms, Shearman is eminently qualified for his task. [He] weaves a brilliant account of poetry and painting immortalising the sitter."---Bruce Boucher, The Times

". . . the author has taught us to make the relevant connections and thus to see these deeply moving works with fresh eyes."---E. H. Gombrich, The New York Review of Books

"[Shearman's] argument that the observer, in the artist's mind, was as carefully placed, posed and arranged as the content of the work is sustained by considerable intelligence and scholarship."---Robin Blake, Independent on Sunday

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1993"

"Shearman's six lectures contribute significantly to current debates about the interpretation of images, particularly in relation to their reception by the spectators."---Martin Kemp, The Times Literary Supplement

"Winner of the Charles Rufus Morey Award, College Art Association"