In a world filled with great museums and great paintings, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the reigning queen. Her portrait rules over a carefully designed salon, one that was made especially for her in a museum that may seem intended for no other purpose than to showcase her virtues. What has made this portrait so renowned, commanding such adoration? And what of other works of art that continue to enthrall spectators: What makes the Great Sphinx so great? Why do iterations of The Scream and American Gothic permeate nearly all aspects of popular culture? Is it because of the mastery of the artists who created them? Or can something else account for their popularity? In Famous Works of Art—And How They Got That Way, John B. Nici looks at twenty well-known paintings, sculptures, and photographs that have left lasting impressions on the general public. As Nici notes, there are many reasons why works of art become famous; few have anything to do with quality. The author explains why the reputations of some creations have grown over the years, some disproportionate to their artistic value. Written in a style that is both entertaining and informative, this book explains how fame is achieved, and ultimately how a work either retains that fame, or passes from the public consciousness. From ancient artifacts to a can of soup, this book raises the question: Did the talent to promote and publicize a work exceed the skills employed to create that object of worship? Or are some masterpieces truly worth the admiration they receive? The creations covered in this book include the Tomb of Tutankhamun, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, El Greco’s The Burial of Count Orgaz, Rodin’s The Thinker, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and Picasso’s Guernica. Featuring more than sixty images, including color reproductions, Famous Works of Art—And How They Got That Way will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered if a great painting, sculpture, or photograph, really deserves to be called “great.”

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.

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.

Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen provide answers to these and other questions about world-famous works of art. Guiding our eye to revealing details, they also shed fascinating light on fishions and lifestyles, loves and intrigues, politics and people, and transform our encounter with art into an exciting adventure. Book jacket.

Published on the occasion of a series of exhibitions that will travel throughout North America, Europe, and Asia from Feb. 2011 to Feb. 2014.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

In the first volume to collect the paintings and drawings of Clarence Major, readers are offered six decades of unique, colorful, and compelling canvases and works on paper—works of singular beauty and social relevance. These works represent Major’s personal painterly journey of passionate commitment to art. This generous selection of more than 150 paintings and drawings shows us the melding of rich ideas and fertile images, the braiding of imagination and motif. With their pleasing arrangement of elements, the works come vividly to life. Major often juxtaposes a decorative scheme with his own unique choice of color combinations, reinforced with rigorous brushstrokes that release chromatic energy. The paintings complement and challenge the great traditions of Realism, Impressionism, and Expressionism. Major is primarily a figurative and landscape painter. Here we find landscapes of singular vitality, rich in color and design, dramatic landscapes, and cityscapes representing, among other things, Major’s extensive travels in America and Europe. We are also treated to Major’s signature figurative work. In these paintings, he ventures fearlessly into familiar yet unexpected areas of richness. Also included is an introductory essay, “The Education of a Painter,” written by the artist, which further sheds light on and helps to lay a biographical, social, and historical foundation for this essential volume, reflecting a lifetime of serious commitment to painting at its best.

Great Paintings is a sumptuous, visual guided tour of 66 of the world's greatest paintings. Ranging from works by Zhang Zeduan, a 12th-century Chinese master, to modern masterpieces by Rothko and Anselm Kiefer, the paintings are arranged chronologically, providing an excellent visual introduction to the history of art. The book starts with how to "read" a painting. Annotated paintings show how to identify the key elements of a picture. The major part of the book is a magnificent visual gallery of iconic paintings. The story behind each painting is fully explained, unlocking the often hidden meanings of symbols and details. Each painting is then analyzed visually, using pull-out details and overlays, to help the reader understand the key features, composition, and techniques. Artists' biographies and features on historical and social context explore how landmark paintings have been influenced by what has gone before and how they go on to inspire what comes after them. Reading Great Paintings is like being taken around a gallery by a personal guide who helps you to look at paintings-both familiar and new-in fresh and fascinating ways. Understanding paintings has never been so easy. Contents (provisional list of paintings) PRELIMS INTRODUCTION: LOOKING AT ART PREHISTORY TO 15TH CENTURY 1. Quingming Riverside, Zhang Zeduan (Chinese) 2. Lamentation of Christ, Giotto (Italian) 3. The Madonna Enthroned, Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italian) 4. The Annunciation, Fra Angelico (Italian) 5. The Arnolfini Portrait, Jan van Eyck (Flemish) 6. The Baptism of Christ, Piero della Francesca (Italian) 7. The Hunt in the Forest, Paolo Uccello (Italian) 8. Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli (Italian) 16TH CENTURY 9. The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish) 10. Great Piece of Turf, Albrecht Du ̈rer (German) 11. Mona Lisa, Leonard da Vinci, (Italian) 12. The School of Athens, Raphael, (Italian) 13. The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Michelangelo, (Italian) 14. Bacchus and Ariadne, Titian, (Italian) 15. The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger (German) 16. Spring Morning in the Han Palace, Qiu Ying (Chinese) 17. The Peasant Wedding, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish) 18. Spring, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, (Italian) 19. Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons, Kano Eitoku ( Japanese) 20. Akhbar Tames the Savage Elephant, Hawa'l, Basawan and Chatai (Indian) 17TH CENTURY 21. David with the Head of Goliath, Caravaggio (Italian) 22. Self Portrait as "La Pittura", Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian) 23. The Judgement of Paris, Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish) 24. Charles I on Horseback, Anthony van Dyck (Flemish) 25. Portrait of Rembrandt, Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch) 26. Las Meninas, Diego Velásquez (Spanish) 27. The Art of Painting (The Artist's Studio), Johannes Vermeer (Dutch) 18TH CENTURY 28. Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, Jan van Huysum (Dutch) 29. Marriage a la Mode: The Toilette, William Hogarth (British) 30. Mr and Mrs Andrews, Thomas Gainsborough, (British) 31. Allegory of the Planets and Continents, Giambattista Tiepolo (Italian) 32. Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, Joseph Wright of Derby (British) 33. The Death of Marat Jacques-Louis David (French) 19TH CENTURY 34. The Valpinçon Bather, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (French) 35. The Third of May 1808, Francisco de Goya (Spanish) 36. The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Casper David Friedrich (German) (with inset: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai (Japanese) 37. The Hay Wain, John Constable (British) 38. The Fighting Temeraire, J.M.W. Turner (British) 39. The Artist's Studio, Gustave Courbet (French) 40. The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet (French) 41. Olympia, Édouard Manet (French) 42. Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, James McNeill Whistler (American) 43. The Dancing Class, Edgar Degas, (French) 44. Van Gogh's Chair, Van Gogh (Dutch) 45. La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat (French) 46. The Child's Bath, Mary Cassatt (American) 47. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, Paul Gauguin (French) 48. The Bathers, Paul Cézanne (French) 49. The Waterlily Pond, Claude Monet (French) 50. Lake Keitele, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finnish) 20TH CENTURY 51. The Kiss, Gustav Klimt (Austrian) 52. Composition VII, Wassily Kandinsky (Russian) 53. Berlin Street Scene, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German) 54. Northern River, Tom Thomson (Canadian) 55. Red Canna, Georgia O'Keefe (American) 56. Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow, Piet Mondrian (Dutch) 57. Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Salvador Dali (Spanish) 58. Guernica, Pablo Picasso (Spanish) 59. Nighthawks, Edward Hopper, (American) 60. Without Hope, Frida Kahlo (Mexican) (with insert: The Scream, Edvard Munch 61. Autumn Rhythm, Jackson Pollock (American) 62. Untitled, Mark Rothko (American) 63. Marilyn, Andy Warhol (American) 64. To a Summer's Day, Bridget Riley (British) 65. The Dance, Paula Rego (Portuguese) 66. Athanor, Anselm Kiefer (German) GLOSSARY INDEX AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Discover the hidden details concealed within depictions of powerful figures of the past, from the sixth-century prostitute turned Byzantine Empress Theodora to military leader and famous co-author of history's rudest letter Ivan Sirko. Part detectives, part historians, Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen dissect 13 historical masterworks, complete with...