Chronicles the life of art historian Sir Anthony Blunt, exploring his private and public personas and how he used his connections within English high society to work as a Soviet spy until he was exposed by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
Through previously unpublished documents, this volume revisits the public furore 40 years ago when the British Academy chose not to expel from its Fellowship the eminent art historian, Anthony Blunt, who had been exposed as a former Soviet spy. David Cannadine portrays the main characters in this episode which rocked the academic establishment.
Picking up where the million-copy bestselling Spycatcher left off, here is the first book to use newly declassified documents to expose the shocking double lives of the most notorious Soviet spies of the postwar era--the Cambridge spy ring.
At first a successful painter of the Roman Baroque, Pietro (Berrettini) da Cortona (1597-1669) soon emerged as an architect of equal stature. This book is the first to focus full attention on Cortona's buildings and projects and to assess his position in Roman Baroque architecture. The book discusses Cortona's major commissions, particularly SS. Luca e Martina, the Villa del Pigneto, S. Maria della Pace, and S. Maria in Via Lata, as well as the designs that remained unbuilt, such as his plans for the Palazzo Pitti in Florence and the Louvre in Paris. Cortona's great decorative cycles, including Palazzo Barberini, the Chiesa Nuova, and others are also considered as part of his stunning vocabulary of architectural decoration. The book explores Cortona's relationships and rivalries with other outstanding Roman architects to illuminate the competitive climate in which he worked, and it concludes with a review of his influence and reputation into the twentieth century.