1: "Non ha'l ciel cotanti lumi"
Doktor Alpers is one of the Super Novas of Art History, and as the Monteverdi song title suggests, she luminates far more than most of her starry peers. Starting with Rembrandt, along with Rubens the core of artistic values and sensibility for this stellar intelligence, we are taken through a carefully grounded argument, arriving finally at Velazquez, and "The Spinners". Alpers never falters as she unveils a plethora of critical perspectives, analyzes each in a dizzingly narrative convergence, and leaves mere mortal readers to return to her pages and consider the embarras de richesses she bestows. Alpers is never easy, but neither is she deliberately obscure; her chapter on Rembrandt's painting of Bathsheba is a model of clarity: a privileged sharing of Alper's lifetime of considered wisdom.
Alper's books are events in the best sense of the word; each as brilliant as an illuminated book. Her works inevitably follow one all-pervading rule - "Let there be light!" And what better touchstone for an historian of art?
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