Stories of Art is James Elkins's intimate history of art. Concise and original, this engaging book is an antidote to the behemoth art history textbooks from which we were all taught. As he demonstrates so persuasively, there can never be one story of art.

Cultures have their own stories - about themselves, about other cultures - and to hear them all is one way to hear the multiple stories that art tells. But each of us also has our own story of art, a kind of private art history made up of th...

GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES: A CONCISE WESTERN HISTORY, provides you with a comprehensive, beautifully illustrated tour of the world's great artistic traditions, and, with MindTap, all of the online study tools you need to excel in your art history course! Easy to read and understand, the fourth edition includes new artists and provides a rich cultural backdrop for each of the covered periods and geographical locations.

Lavishly illustrated volume showcasing nearly 200 objects from the collection of George Loudon relating to the nineteenth-century life sciences, revealing the artistic expression of these historic curiosities.

The collection of drawings Teyler's Museum has a widely known international reputation. This book is part of a series in which previously books were published on Italian drawings of the 15th and 16th century, and on Dutch drawings dating from 1575-1630 and 1740-1800. This book describes the 257 Netherlandish drawings by artists born before 1581. The most important group consists of no fewer than 125 sheets by Hendrick Goltzius; nowhere else in the world there are so many of his drawings. Othe...

Unique publication accompanying the astonishing exhibition on nature in the works of Arcimboldo, Bruegel, and BassanoHow did people in the Renaissance perceive nature and time? How were these relationships visualized in art? And what role did the fascinating cycles of seasons and months – expressed in ever-new and diverse forms – play in this context?These are some of the central questions explored in this volume. Masterpieces by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Jacopo and L...

New York Times Bestseller

"Dolnick brilliantly re-creates the circumstances that made possible one of the most audacious frauds of the 20th century. And in doing so Dolnick plumbs the nature of fraud itself . . . an incomparable page turner." --Boston Globe

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren man...

Leonardo's views of aesthetic are all important in his philosophy of life and art. The worker's thoughts on his craft are always of interest. They are doubly so when there is in them no trace of literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. He recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. His ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his m...