This book is intended as a brief introduction to major works of art since the Renaissance. However, it also provides online links to museums and other websites that offer a larger perspective on the history of art. The book is designed as a traditional textbook, in that each chapter begins with learning objectives and also contains exercises to help students focus on key ideas. It also has a glossary of terms. Each chapter ends with a bibliography for further reading. The book is designed for the general college reader, although it provides a good introduction for students who plan to major in art history.
Introduction: Why Art History?
Chapter 1: God is in the Details: Northern Renaissance Painting in the Fifteenth Century
Chapter 2: Art+Math=Perfect: The Early and High Renaissance in Italy, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Chapter 3: Renaissance Reboot: Later Art of the Sixteenth Century
Chapter 4: Art as Power and Persuasion: The Southern Baroque
Chapter 5: The One Percent and Everyone Else: The Last Spanish and French Courts and the Rise of Democracy in the Seventeeth and Eighteenth Centuries
Chapter 6: Origins of the Tree Huggers: Romanticism in the Early Eighteenth Century
Chapter 7: Naturally Unrel: Towards Abstraction in the Late 19th Century
Chapter 8: The Physics of Art: Abstraction, Emotion, and Memory in Early Twentieth-Century Art
Chapter 9: Chaos and the Psyche: The Impact of World War and Freud in Mid-Twentieth Century Art
Chapter 10: Back to the Figure: Art at the End of the Twentieth Century
Chapter 11: What Now? Contemporary Art in the Twenty-First Century