The author is at ease when enthusiastically describing the visual force of works of art. The breadth of argument inspires many original general points that are praiseworthy, as in the integration of Pinturrichio and Jacopo Ripanda into the debate over the antiquarian revival near the start of the sixteenth century that feeds into one of Raphael's pursuits in Rome. At the other end of the book, the linking of Caravaggio to the debates over religious reform in the Catholic Church rather than emphasizing alone his formal stylistic rebellion, is refreshing. At many points the author of this type of synthesis is naturally at the mercy of specialized literature, and it is perhaps unfair to point out niggling errors, but much text is devoted to some of these. As noted above, Polidoro da Caravaggio is, in general, not especially well treated.
Some concerns have broader implications.
By treating the period starting ca. 1520 now typically called Mannerism, the traditional dichotomy between the High Renaissance and Mannerist is maintained. While understandably introduced as a shorthand for large concepts to be easily recalled by students, who are always grateful for dependable, preset containers for individual works and artists, these terms remain a problematic and dogmatic tendency in the literature. Rather than radically rewriting the history of sixteenth-century Italian painting, therefore, the text crystallizes in an easily digestable form the debate as it stood three or four decades ago. The treatment of the ideas of Sydney Freedberg, to whom the book is dedicated, is particularly reverential.