This is a fascinating work for anyone interested in painting and in the history of ideas… Mannerism, of course, is primarily the name applied to the style in Italian art that prevailed during the 70 or 80 years that followed the death of Raphael in 1520. The style that grew up was… marked by distortions (especially elongations) and other strangenesses of form and color, often graceful and beautiful, often harsh and repellent, always piquant… Mr. Hauser [has given us] a work that is at once handsome and the equivalent of a semester's course by a stimulating, controversial lecturer.
-- New York Times Book Review
Of the greatest interest to Renaissance scholars and students… they will find this work pregnant with a thousand provocative ideas.
-- Contemporary Literature
"Like Simmel, Lukács, and Sartre, Hauser writes the sort of culture-criticism which reveals an age to itself.
-- Modern Age