Libraries

This sumptuous volume contains Hofer's famously ascetic images of the British Library in London, the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum & the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome & Hamburg University Library, among others. Almost entirely devoid of human presence, the apparent emptiness of the image is imbued with substance by a subtle attention to color, and the prevailing silence instilled with a metaphysical quality that gives voice to the objects, over and above the eloquence of the furnishings or the pathos of the architecture. List of Plates, Locations. Illus., 137 color plates. Some shelfwear to dust jacket.