He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us?

Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.

He produced the two most famous paintings in hi...

Exquisite cloth-bound edition of the classic art-history text – the ideal gift for every art connoisseur and studentÂ

– Antonio Muñoz Molina, El País

"This wonderful and wise book made me look at the artwork without intimidation or any confusion. It is a great pleasure to be guided by the experienced eye of Alejandro Vergara."

— Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Throughout history, human beings have excelled at creating art of the highest quality. Aristotle wrote that Homer “surpassed all others” while Pliny the Elder referred to “masterpieces that we never tire of admiring�...

In the 1960s the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs, thirteen underground nuclear bombs, and conducted other nuclear experiments in the Algerian Sahara. This secret, still-classified programme occurred during and after the Algerian War (1954–1962). Meticulously culled together from numerous sources by architectural historian Samia Henni, this publication’s wealth of materials documenting the violent history of France’s activities in the Algerian desert offers...

In the 19th century an African possession cult called zār arrived in Egypt and became hugely popular. Jewellery formed an integral part of this cult, and silver pendants with images of spirits started to appear in the early 20th century. And there is more: zār also used beaded jewellery as well as a wide range of other jewels.

Currently, jewellery items with spirit images are sought-after collectors’ items, present in collections of both private collectors and museums. These collections a...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer turns his eye to the seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age Twenty years ago, Benjamin Moser followed a love affair to an ancient Dutch town. In order to make sense of this new place, he threw himself into the Dutch museums. Soon, he found himself unearthing the strange, inspiring and sometimes terrifying stories of the artists who shaped one of the most luminous moments in the history of human creativity, the Dutch Golden Age.

As he explored the hidden wor...

Carel de Moor (1655–1738). His Life and Work, a monograph and œuvre catalogue, is the first scholarly study of one of the most important Dutch portrait painters of his time. The book includes a comprehensive biography, which explores Carel de Moor’s life and multi-faceted career within the context of the economic, political, and social history of the Dutch Republic.

As a result of the authors’ thorough investigation of De Moor’s client networks, several hitherto unknown sitters have...