‘The World’s Most Lavish Art Book’ is a pretty big claim, but when two men lugged it through my front door I conceded that The Sistine Chapel is one monster tome. Three, actually. Three hardback volumes, each two feet-tall, each weighing nearly two stone, each in its own calico bag, comprising of digitally perfect photographic recreations of the artwork in the 15th-century chapel. The first volume deals with the masterpieces along the walls, while volumes two and three are a quasi-Greatest Hits, one covering the Sistine ceiling and one the ‘Last Judgment’, both of course by Michelangelo and one of the most famous art sequences on the planet.
Lavish, yes, with beautiful creamy paper and no-expense-spared bookbinding, this is probably also the world’s most expensive art book. And one of its most limited. You will not find it in your local Waterstones, since the English-language edition runs to only 600 copies and will never be reprinted (the remaining 1,399 are in Italian, with a smattering of copies in other languages). The cost? Are you sitting comfortably? £16,500.
It is my task to examine this marvel of ultra-high everything: art, photography, bookbinding, printing and cost. Trembling slightly, I pull on the white gloves provided. Then I take them off, and wash my hands, again. Then I put them on again, after scanning the room for any rogue cups of coffee, ink pens or jars of beetroot that might come into disastrous contact with the World’s Most Lavish Art Book, by now unpacked and sitting portentously on a velvet cushion.
Where to start? I find myself skipping over work by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli in volume I and slide volume II out of its bespoke case. It seems almost impolite not to start my experience by paying homage to the world’s most famous index-finger bump.
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