In this groundbreaking examination of British war art during the Second World War, Brian Foss delves deeply into what art meant to Britain and its people at a time when the nation's very survival was under threat. Foss probes the impact of war art on...

This comprehensive guide to the buildings of Worcestershire is fully revised and expanded from the first edition of 1968. The county extends from the dramatic Malvern Hills through the Severn Valley to the fringes of the Cotswolds, with architecture...

Mexico City has emerged as a thriving centre of contemporary art. "Escultura Social" features recent work by a group of artists whose influence has already extended far beyond Mexico and focuses on how they have contributed to an international dialog...

"Das Rheingold", "Die Walkure", and "Siegfried". Parsifal. Tristan und Isolde. Both revered and reviled, Richard Wagner conceived some of the nineteenth century's most influential operas – and created some of the most indelible characters ever to gra...

In 1452, Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti unveiled a masterpiece that had been a quarter-century in the making: ten bronze panels depicting intricate scenes from the Old Testament. The monumental gilded bronze doors (each over 15 feet tall) were...

Traditional designs for British farm buildings, including barns, mills, pigsties, cowsheds, dovecotes, and other types, originated in the Middle Ages and developed through the various agricultural revolutions, until the slump of the 1880s brought an...

"Twelfth Night" is one of Shakespeare's funniest plays and also one of his most romantic. A young noblewoman, Viola, shipwrecked in a foreign land and separated from her twin brother, dresses as a man in order to enter the service of Orsino, duke of...

While a painted portrait usually seems to need little explanation, a closer look may reveal that its meaning and even its subject are far more complex than expected. This book charts for the first time the history of French female portraiture from it...

"King Lear", one of Shakespeare's darkest and most savage plays, tells the story of the foolish and Job-like Lear, who divides his kingdom, as he does his affections, according to vanity and whim. Lear's failure as a father engulfs himself and his wo...

How does the artist's self-conception change in old age? How does old age affect artistic practice? In this intriguing study, art historian Philip Sohm considers some of the greatest artists of Renaissance and Baroque Italy and their experiences of a...