Gifts for
ART LOVERS

 This is a rather eccentric collection of items I’ve given or received  with great pleasure.
The books below have wonderful illustrations. For more books on art,
see the Recommended Readings page on this site.  

If you find the recommendations and suggestions useful, please help fund the site
by making your purchases through the links.

ANDRES, Glenn, John M. Hunisak and A. Richard Turner. The Art of Florence (2 Volume Set). Principal photography by Takashi Okamura. A breathtaking book: two thick folio volumes in a slipcase, with the most gorgeous full-page color photographs yet printed of Florentine art from ca. 1200 to 1600, including every major painting, sculpture and building, with works by Giotto, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Alberti, and Michelangelo, and many others. The text is authoritative and readable.

AVERY, Charles.   Bernini: Genius of the Baroque. Photographs by David Finn. An important scholarly text, with about 400 gorgeous photographs (80 of them in color) by David Finn.

AVERY, Charles.   Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture. Another major critical study with splendid photos by David Finn.

CONNOR, Janis, and Joel Rosenkranz. Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939. Fabulous photographs by David Finn. Includes extensive biographies and commentaries on works by MacMonnies (the best photos I've ever seen of his Nathan Hale), and works by Harriet Frishmuth, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington, Paul Manship and others.

CUMMING, Robert. Annotated Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained. The 45 works featured in this large-format (14"x 10") book offer a quick guide to the history of painting, with annotations explaining the paintings and the artistic and historical context. Excellent color reproductions show one painting per two-page spread. Among the works discussed are Giotto's Adoration of the Magi, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, Raphael's School of Athens, Rubens' Samson and Delilah, Vermeer's Artist's Studio and Wright of Derby's Experiment with an Air Pump.

CUTLER, Laurence S., and Judy Goffman Cutler.   Maxfield Parrish: A Retrospective. This catalogue of a 1995 exhibition includes a good biography of Parrish and over 130 excellent color illustrations of his works, many taken from the original paintings rather than prints. Most of Parrish's works shown in Dianne Durante's lecture "NIneteenth-Century Artist-Entrepreneurs" are included here.

DUBY, G., and Jean-Luc Daval, eds.  Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present. Vol. I: 8th c. BC to 15th c. AD. The next step up from Janson for sculpture-lovers: a detailed survey of sculpture from ancient times to the present, with over 1,000 photographs (good but not splendid), some in color. Duby covers how and why sculpture is created, and its historical and political background. Only the last 200 or so pages (of over a thousand) deal with modern sculpture.

FRANCIS, Dick. To the Hilt. One of Francis' best: painter Alexander Kinloch is called from the remote Scottish highlands to save his stepfather's horse and his grandfather's heirloom sword. An excellent plot, as usual, and somewhat more character development than is usual in Francis' mysteries. (This isn’t illustrated: it’s just one you might not think of.)

GILBERT, Alma.   Maxfield Parrish: The Masterworks. 3rd ed. Nice illustrations of the most popular and most important of Parrish's works, by one of the authorities in the field.

JONES, Roger, and Nicholas Penny.   Raphael. Combined biography and critical study, readable and with excellent photos, many in color.

POPE-HENNESSY, John Wyndham, and John L. Hennessy. Introduction to Italian Sculpture. 3 vols. The definitive survey of Italian sculpture of the 13th to 17th centuries; covers Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque sculptors (including Michelangelo and Bernini) with well written, comprehensible text.

STEVENSON, Neil. Architecture: The World's Greatest Buildings Explored and Explained. Covers 50 buildings constructed over 3,500 years, among them the Temple of Amon at Karnak, the Parthenon, the Colosseum, Santa Sophia, Durham Cathedral, Florence Cathedral, the Taj Mahal, the Crystal Palace, the Empire State Building and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. In the same series as Cumming's Annotated Art, it includes excellent double-page photos, discussions of the buildings and biographies of the architects.

 WAGNER, Margaret E.   Maxfield Parrish and the Illustrators of  the Golden Age. Covers not only Parrish but his contemporaries. Good photos, with excerpts of the stories they illustrate.

WALLACE, William E. Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture,  Painting, Architecture. The best picture book currently available on Michelangelo, including photos of the renovated Sistine Chapel ceiling.