"Alice Sedgwick Wohl's translation of Francisco de Hollanda's De pintura antigua reintroduces an important voice to the larger discourse on Renaissance art theory and criticism. The Portuguese visitor was an alert witness to the aesthetic discussions taking place in sixteenth-century Rome; these he recorded in a series of dialogues in which Michelangelo was a dominant participant-and the reason the dialogues themselves have received much attention in modern scholarship. The dialogues, however, constituted Book II of Hollanda's larger project, which was intended as a defense of the nobility of the art of painting and a program for realizing that goal. In the forty-four chapters of Book I, the author addresses all the major themes in the discussion of the art, but Hollanda's most ambitious recapitulation of Renaissance aesthetics has been relatively neglected in art-historical scholarship. This new translation and critical edition will inspire reevaluation of Hollanda and the significance of his project."