How do experts spot masterpieces? Paintings are not always signed or noted in historical records, so how can we tell an obscure gem from an altered image? Scientists, conservators and art historians use a range of methods to examine the physical natu...

How did economic conditions influence painters in seventeenth-century Italy? How much did they earn? What is known about their socio-economic status and their aspirations? How did they maximize profits? Did they adjust their prices in response to mar...

This is a magnificently illustrated and enlightening journey through the visual portrayal of love and sexuality in Western art. Even in the modern world where explicit imagery is manifest, an erotic painting from half a millennia ago can still manage...

Paula Murphy, the leading expert on Irish sculpture, offers an extensive survey of the history of sculpture in Ireland in the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the large public works produced during the Victorian period. The works of su...

Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, and Auguste Rodin – The names of these brilliant nineteenth-century artists are known throughout the world. But what is remembered of their wives? What were these unknown women like? What roles did they play in the lives a...

Innovation is at the heart of the National Gallery's British collection. William Hogarth developed a fascinating new form of satirical narrative painting; George Stubbs turned horse painting into an epic art form; and, Joseph Wright captured the dram...

Few, if any, early modern European cities boasted a population as racially, ethnically and religiously diverse as Renaissance Venice, from German merchants living in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi to the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto. This innovative an...

The print repertoire of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England has been neglected historically, and this remarkable book rectifies a major oversight in the history of English visual art. The book provides an iconographic survey of the sin...

Formerly part of the popular "Pocket Guides" series, "Allegory" is published in a new edition as "A Closer Look", with a wealth of beautiful reproductions. This informative guide helps readers understand the language of allegory within Western painti...

Formerly part of the popular "Pocket Guides" series, "Angels" is published in a new edition as "A Closer Look", with a wealth of beautiful reproductions. This informative guide helps readers identify angels and their significance in a painting – be i...