Summary: Publisher Summary 1 Published to accompany a historic exhibition held in Florence, Italy at the Palazzo Strozzi in 2008, this oversized catalog (9.75x11.25") features 8 essays and full catalog entries for 132 works of Chinese painting, calligraphy, and sculpture from Chinese museums. Written by specialists in Chinese art based in the US, Europe, and Taiwan, the essays discuss topics that include Chinese Buddhism, nomads and merchants in China, horses in Han art, and the Tang dynasty in recent Chinese film. The art works are reproduced in full-page color plates of superb quality. There is an extensive bibliography, but no index. Distributed by Rizzoli. Annotation 漏2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)   Publisher Summary 2 China at the Court of the Emperors presents almost two hundred masterpieces, various in form and rich in beauty, coming from thirty-two museums and institutes in Shaanxi, Henan, Gansu, and Jiangsu provinces, many of them never seen in the West before. It examines the vast period from the Eastern Han dynasty (25鈥?20) through the Tang (618鈥?07), during which Chinese civilization underwent radical transformation. As a matter of fact, Tang China synthesized foreign and indigenous elements that had been present for centuries, thus creating a new, distinctive, and extraordinary cosmopolitan civilization, made possible by tolerance鈥攁 message as important today as it was 1,500 years ago. The book includes essays by some of the foremost experts in the field, including Roderick Whitfield (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Felix Schoeber (University of Westminster, London), Lillian Lan-ying Tseng (Yale University), Nicola di Cosmo (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Stefano Zacchetti (Universit脿 Ca' Foscari, Venice), and Chao-Hui Jenny Liu (New York University).