Heads and Tails – Tales and Bodies: Engraving the Human Figure from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Heads and Tails – Tales and Bodies: Engraving the Human Figure from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Vasiliki Penna & Yannis Stoyas (eds)

Ghent: MER, 2016. ISBN 978-94-9232-131-2. 546 p.

This is the catalogue of the homonymous temporary exhibition which was held at the Pushkin Museum (Moscow). It is comprised by 223 exhibit entries, structured in five units: Anthropomorphism and Divinity – The Human Factor – Personifications and Metamorphoses – Human Figures and Artistic Challenges – The Anthropomorphic Tradition Disseminated. The volume is supplemented by six essays examining through the ages aspects of the development of the human figure depiction and it is embellished by full-page colour plates, at the beginning and the end of the book, which provide the reader with a good sense of visual elements of the exhibition.