Angelus & Diabolus: Angels and Devils. The History of Good and Evil in Christian Art Hardcover – November 8, 2016

I'm a big fan of the recent trend toward producing giant books. I have almost all the Taschen XL series, the Gothic and Baroque books, and the history of European cities in art series. This is the sequel to the amazing Ars Sacra: Christian Art and Architecture from the Early Beginnings to the Present Day, but it tops that book and all the other ones too.First of all is the size... it's massive. 25 pounds. This is a book to spread out on the dining room table. You're not going to be reading this in your lap. The print quality tops all the others too. The photography of the paintings (with one or two exceptions) has wonderful color and incredible sharpness. Even the paintings here that I am familiar with are revelations. It's like seeing them for the first time. The selection of art is perfect too... both ancient and modern, lots of things I've never seen before and all of them are jaw droppers. There are several huge fold outs, a couple of them are as big as a poster. They always give you a view of the whole work first, and then go into detailed crops. Needless to say, at 11 by 17, none of the pictures are printed too small, and the layouts are well designed to give plenty of room for the pictures and text without a lot of dead white space.The book is divided roughly in half, with the first part dealing with angels and the latter half dealing with devils. The chapters are broken down by subjects... Angel of Death, Last Judgement, the Fall of Lucifer, Heirarchy of Angels, etc. Obviously the last half of the book is a lot of fun, but I found that the compositions and stunning imagery in the angels section were just as fascinating. I haven't read the text yet, but I'm betting it is great. The pictures alone are worth the price of admission though.This is a book to buy and pass down to your descendants. Buy two copies and leave one sealed. Like the early Taschen XL books, this is sure to go out of print and fetch three or four times the price in a few years. I can't recommend this book more highly.

There's only one complaint (and it's not, really!): the book easily weighs over twenty pounds. I have to ask my husband to get "the big-big" book down for me to hunch over in my bed and enjoy. This book makes my Gothic and Baroque "Big books" (they are sixteen pounds each) look small! I'm spoiled by the quality in these oversized books, they are simply magnificent. This one in particular is an absolute treasure, with about 800 pages of amazing works of art in photos so crisp and colorful, it might be even better than visiting the works in person.

Absolutely fascinating, intriguing book.

That huge book deriverd in complete condition.

the most exciting book ever! beautiful illustrations. Great size. Fantastic!!

Para los amantes del arte, este libro contiene unas impresionantes láminas que abarcan una gran variedad de estilos y un amplio arco temporal. Me parece muy barato para lo que contiene.

Meraviglioso.

Amazing, huge, high quality illustrations.