A hundred key paintings analysed and their significance explained. Short biographies of world famous artists and brief accounts of the art movements they represent. The artists are: Duccio, Giotto, Simone Martini, van Eyck, Uccello, van der Weyden, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Bellini, Mantegna, van der Goes, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo da Vinci, Bosch, Piero di Cosimo, Durer, Grunewald, Cranach, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Carpaccio, Raphael, Titian, Holbein, Bronzino, Tintoretto, Clouet, Bruegel, Veronese, El Greco, Hilliard, Caravaggio, Rubens, Hals, Poussin, van Dyck, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, de Hooch, Hobbema, Watteau, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Hogarth, Chardin, Boucher, Reynolds, Stubbs, Gainsborough, Fragonard, Goya, David, Blake, Friedrich, Turner, Constable, Ingres, Gericault, Delacroix, Courbet, Palmer, Millet, Frith, Madox Brown, Millais, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Whistler, Homer, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Rousseau, Eakins, Gauguin, van Gogh, Seurat, Munch, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Klimt, Picasso, Braque, Hopper, Modigliani, Duchamp, Chagall, Magritte, Dali, Bacon, Wyeth, Pollack, Lichtenstein, Hockney.

Masterpieces under the microscope: Paintings' hidden secrets revealed This important addition to our understanding of art history's masterworks puts some of the world's most famous paintings under a magnifying glass, to help us look much, much closer at images we might have thought we knew well. Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen help us become detectives of details, solving the mysteries of a masterpiece through its most small and subtle elements. Is the bride pregnant? Why is just one candle burning in the chandelier? And what does the mirror in the background reveal? As they address these and many more intricacies in some of art's most celebrated scenes, the authors not only offer us a vastly enriched appreciation of these paintings, but also shed light on the fashions and lifestyles, loves and intrigues, politics and people that first informed and inspired these works. Delve in and be dazzled, as even the most familiar panels and canvases come alive anew in all the intricacies of their composition and in a very real sense of context of time and place.

This is a new release of the original 1939 edition.

These are the kinds of question Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen ask when faced with world-famous masterpieces. In the language of today they comment on the fashions and attitudes, trends and intrigues, love, vice and lifestyles of past times. Book jacket.

Give the gift of art with this beautifully illustrated volume tracing the development of European painting over six centuries through one hundred pictures--each significant and by a different artist

100 Best Paintings in New York combines art history, commentary, and tourists’ guide to provide you with a deeper understanding and appreciation of New York’s greatest works of art. The descriptions draw attention to fascinating details in each work and look at why, where, or for what occasion they were painted. A biographical chronology of each artist accompanies the essays as well as a sample listing of works by other contemporary painters. From Jan van Eyck to Mark Rothko, from Diego Velazquez to Georgia O’Keefe, 100 Best Paintings in New York covers the complete spectrum of masterpieces in New York’s great galleries. 100 Best Paintings in New York will inform and amuse both visitors and residents who wish to make the most of what their city has to offer. This accessible—and occasionally irreverent—guide has been written with both novice and veteran museum-goers in mind. Contains descriptions of works displayed in: the Brooklyn Museum • the Cloisters • the Frick Collection • the Hispanic Society of America • Metropolitan Museum of Art • MOMA • Neue Gallerie • the Guggenheim Museum • Whitney Museum of American Art