At thirty one, Michelangelo was considered the finest artist in Italy, perhaps the world; long before he died at almost 90 he was widely believed to be the greatest sculptor or painter who had ever lived (and, by his enemies, to be an arrogant, uncouth, swindling miser).
One of the most widely read books on modern design, Nikolaus Pevsner's landmark work today remains as stimulating as it was when first published in 1936.
Artist, architect, poet and philosopher, Leon Battista Alberti revolutionized the history of art with his theories of perspective in On Painting (1435).
A new selection of Vincent Van Gough's letters, based on an entirely new translation, revealing his religious struggles, his fascination with the French Revolution, his search for love and his involvement in humanitarian causes.
Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto in the thirteenth century, Vasari traces the development of Italian art across three centuries to the golden epoch of Leonardo and Michelangelo.
Born into a theatrical family, Chaplin's father died of drink while his mother, unable to bear the poverty, suffered from bouts of insanity, Chaplin embarked on a film-making career which won him immeasurable success, as well as intense controversy.
When John Constable fell in love with Maria Bicknell, granddaughter of a Suffolk country neighbour, he little knew how long it would take to make her his wife.
The Remarkable, Revealing and Irresistibly Funny Memoir from Joanna Lumley'A brilliant blend of anecdote and warm, witty self-analysis' Mail on SundayYou know the icons Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, Purdey in The New Avengers, a Bond Girl, a model, a national treasure.
For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics.
A richly illustrated look at the intersection of art and science in Renaissance EuropeArt played a pivotal role in the development of natural history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
'One of the greatest books of a very great thinker' Michael TannerBeyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age.
A new departure in Penguin Classics: a book containing one of the greatest of all Renaissance woodcut sequences - Holbein's bravura danse macabreOne of Holbein's first great triumphs, The Dance of Death is an incomparable sequence of tiny woodcuts showing the folly of human greed and pride, with each image packed with drama, wit and horror as a skeleton mocks and terrifies everyone from the emperor to a ploughman.
A leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of printIn process and technique, printmaking is an art of physical contact.
A beautifully illustrated examination of the women artists whose inspired search for artistic integrity and equality influenced Expressionist avant-garde cultureWomen Artists in Expressionism explores how women negotiated the competitive world of modern art during the late Wilhelmine and early Weimar periods in Germany.
From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeTooEver since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readersfrom Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith.
The young Thomas Eakins's most revealing letters-published here for the first timeThe most revealing and interesting writings of American artist Thomas Eakins are the letters he sent to family and friends while he was a student in Paris between 1866 and 1870.
How remarkable changes in ancient Greek pottery reveal the transformation of classical Greek cultureWhy did soldiers stop fighting, athletes stop competing, and lovers stop having graphic sex in classical Greek art?
How New York's Lower East Side inspired new ways of seeing AmericaNew York City's Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the "e;other half,"e; was also a crucible for experimentation in photography, film, literature, and visual technologies.
The first history of indigenous photography in the Middle EastThe birth of photography coincided with the expansion of European imperialism in the Middle East, and some of the medium's earliest images are Orientalist pictures taken by Europeans in such places as Cairo and Jerusalem-photographs that have long shaped and distorted the Western visual imagination of the region.
A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artistsBetween the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination-poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious-displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens.
A new look at the interrelationship of architecture and sculpture during one of the richest periods of American modern designAlloys looks at a unique period of synergy and exchange in the postwar United States, when sculpture profoundly shaped architecture, and vice versa.
The first study of album-making in the Ottoman empire during the seventeenth century, demonstrating the period's experimentation, eclecticism, and global outlookThe Album of the World Emperor examines an extraordinary piece of art: an album of paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and European prints compiled for the Ottoman sultan Ahmed I (r.
An illustrious scholar presents an elegant, concise, and generously illustrated exploration of Alexander the Great's representations in art and literature through the agesJohn Boardman is one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Greece, and his acclaimed books command a broad readership.
The first book on the central importance of literary sources in the paintings of Cy TwomblyMany of Cy Twombly's paintings and drawings include handwritten words and phrases-naming or quoting poets ranging from Sappho, Homer, and Virgil to Mallarme, Rilke, and Cavafy.
The last three decades have seen a massive expansion of China's visual culture industries, from architecture and graphic design to fine art and fashion.
How the practice of titling paintings has shaped their reception throughout modern historyA picture's title is often our first guide to understanding the image.
A groundbreaking work of scholarship that sheds critical new light on the urban renewal of Paris under Napoleon IIIIn the mid-nineteenth century, Napoleon III and his prefect, Georges-Eugene Haussmann, adapted Paris to the requirements of industrial capitalism, endowing the old city with elegant boulevards, an enhanced water supply, modern sewers, and public greenery.
*WINNER OF THE NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author*A gorgeous collection of 145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneersfamous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and morewith biographical reflections, all created and curated by an award-winning graphic designer.
A revolutionary exploration of the relationship between human energy and color, visualized through more than 200 photographs from the the Annie Leibovitz of aura photography (New York Times) and a Dutch painter on acid (Vogue).
As he did for Black women in Black Roses, Harold Green III, poet and founder of the music collective Flowers for the Living, now honors the Black men he most admires-groundbreakers including Tyler Perry, Barry Jenkins, Billy Porter, Chance the Rapper, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and John Legend-and celebrates their achievements which are transforming lives and making history.
The poet and founder of the music collective Flowers for the Living pays tribute to all Black women by focusing on visionaries and leaders who are making history right now, including Ava DuVernay, Janelle Monae, Kamala Harris, Misty Copeland, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Robin Roberts, Roxane Gay, and Simone Biles-with this compilation of celebratory odes featuring full-color illustrations by Melissa Koby.
One ofEsquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time *One of The Economist's Best Books of 2022 * ANew York TimesBook Review Editors' Choice *Nominated for The Next Big Idea Club *TheWeekMagazine Book of the WeekFrom Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped Americas idea of the future.
Discover the joys and self-nurturing benefits of plant parenthood, from learning how to begin building your own lush plant family to getting into those fun tips on how to care for your green gurls, with this beautiful, illustrated guide from the dazzling creator of the @plantkween Instagram account.
This first biography of the Kettle's Yard artists reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art Beautifully written A book I have always hoped someone would write NIGEL SLATER'[An] outstanding and enviably well-written biography.
