Now we mustn’t judge a book by its cover while we often judge people by how they appear but how about we literally judge a book by its cover. As a reader of books, thin, fat or long; fiction or not; scientific or idiotic, and of course magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have bought more books than I have read and then there are some which I have neither read nor bought.
The Sistine Chapel Trilogy is one such book.
My love for the city of Florence not withstanding this is one book that can only be judged by its cover. As per IMF, there are only 58 countries with per capita income that is more than the cost of the book, but then many things not worth their price, are paid the price they are paid.
Oh, it is also non-returnable – like your first-born.
Something that expensive, and first-borns usually are, must be that delicate, I suppose.
Robert Simmons, an Art Historian and Art Dealer, says, ‘This is a work to covet and, for the fortunate, to own.” Of course you have to be fortunate (besides other things) to buy a $22,000 book, oh btw, there is a $8 shipping fee.
The Authors – I may be judging the book by its over but knowing the authors, should help in the endeavour. The authors nee artists are the who’s who of the renaissance world. Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and of course Michelangelo, of whose life I learnt much from the Agony and the Ecstasy, a book I did not buy but read, though the cover wasn’t much to write about.
In three volumes, on 170 GSM paper, spanning over 822 pages, protected in custom cotton sleeves and accompanied with a pair of white cotton gloves for handling, this indeed reads like a matrimonial advertisement of upper caste NRI boy on a bride hunt. Apart from the fact that they need cotton gloves for handing, they cost about the same.
The book can of course be bought here , and if you are one of my reader and a buyer, I would have a higher opinion of myself than I already do.