Wendy Beckett

Combines priceless illustrations drawn from the rarely seen archives of the Italian State Libraries with Sister Wendy's personal observations. This is a unique account of the lives and works of more than 35 saints.

Sister Wendy Beckett's highly acclaimed insights into the work and psyche of Max Beckmann, one of the major Expressionist painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. The author sheds new light on the way the traumatic events in the artist's life were reflected in his painting and observes that "he painted himself as if thereby to find himself. If he could make visible...these lineaments, that expression, that visual record of his experience, then he might come to a deeper experience of what he was." By tracing the changing moods of Beckmann's painting throughout his life, Sister Wendy, with her uncanny and intimate skills of analysis, plots a fascinating series of peaks and troughs in his feeling of self-worth. She correlates these directly with events in his life, and reveals a number of hidden self-portraits. Much of Beckmann's work was dramatically influenced by the two world wars, and Sister Wendy shows how it was only the artist's last works, in America, that demonstrated he had finally reached fulfillment.

Following the popularity of Sister Wendy's Odyssey, a highly acclaimed PBS television series and book, Sister Wendy Beckett's love of art has now taken her further afield on a Grand Tour of ten of continental Europe's cities of art. Like the eighteenth-century travelers who embarked on the Grand Tour before her, Sister Wendy delighted in the opportunity to see in reality great works of art she had previously seen only in books. Her journey encompassed masterpieces by. Velazquez and Goya in Madrid, Bruegel and Titian in Vienna and Kandinsky in St. Petersburg, among many others, but her aim was always to choose art she could share with people at home. Sister Wendy finds huge pleasure in the "total visual experience of the real world" afforded by Cezanne's The Bathers in Paris. In Amsterdam she captures the essence of van Gogh's personal tragedy in her interpretation of Artist's Bedroom, and in Antwerp she finds extraordinary grace in a. Simple carving by an unknown fifteen-century sculptor. Florence, Venice and Rome, milestones of any Grand Tour, offer further delights: the joyous work of Botticelli; a rarely seen Giorgione, The Tempest; and Michelangelo's awesome Pieta, a work expressing immense anguish and love.