"From the brush of Donato Giancola, one of the world's most recognized and awarded fantasy artists, comes a book filled with new illustrations that blend his legendary Renaissance craftsmanship with the visions outlined in J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle-Earth. Dramatic lighting and deft draftsmanship seemingly culled from the tableaux of great Old Master painters like Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Vermeer explain Donato's popularity with millions of fans and his numerous Hugo and Chesley Awards for his oil paintings. This long-awaited moving and beautiful voyage through Middle-Earth from a modern master of the arts will be a must-have for eager genre readers everywhere."
- Underwood Books
"He is among the most accomplished illustrators in the industry, to me, and his varied images show a keen and seemingly inexhaustible curiosity and delight in compositional and image possibilities within the perimeters of his signature high realism style. I know the excitement that drives him. "
- Ted Nasmith
"There's more to Donato Giancola's art than just a pretty face. Underneath
the incredibly meticulous surface of his paintings is concealed a love of
perspective and form, an intimate understanding of the human body, a
historian's knowledge of costume and armour, an infallible sense of
implicit narrative, visual storytelling and mythical history. It's just
that you're so rapt gazing at all the mind-blowingly pretty bits that you
tend to miss it. Look again. There's a lot more to see."
-John Howe
I cannot express to you how excited I am about this book. Ever since my brother Michael handed me 'The Hobbit' to read when I was a teenager, I have dreamed of the chance to share my passions about J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth with the world in a manner I felt conveyed the weight of the burden placed on the Fellowship. To those ends, I have embraced the narrative and humanistic aesthetics of the European Rennaisance to interprete 'The Lord of the Rings'. As many of you can guess, the works of John Howe, Ted Nasmith, David Wenzel, Ian Miller and Alan Lee, amongst many others, helped inspire my own pursuits of Tolkien worlds in the grandest manner possible. I hope you enjoy my explorations...
- Donato Giancola
