The Books That Shaped Art History ─ From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss

Written by some of today’s leading art historians and curators, this new collectionprovides an invaluable road map of the field by comparing and reexamining canonicalworks of art history. From Emile Male’s magisterial study of thirteenth-centuryFrench art, first published in 1898, to Hans Belting’s provocative Likeness andPresence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, the book provides a concise andinsightful overview of the history of art, told through its most enduring literature.Each of the essays looks at the impact of a single major book of art history,mapping the intellectual development of the writer under review, setting out thepremises and argument of the book, considering its position within the broaderfield of art history, and analyzing its significance in the context of both its initialreception and its afterlife. An introduction by John-Paul Stonard explores howart history has been forged by outstanding contributions to scholarship, and bythe dialogues and ruptures between them.