Giovanni Andrea Gilio’s Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters (1564) is one of the first treatises on art published in the post-Tridentine period. It remains a key primary source for the
Jusepe Martínez’s Practical Discourses on the Most Noble Art of Painting (ca. 1673–75), though little known today, was highly influential on art, artists, and artistic practice and theory in Spain lon
Futurist Painting Sculpture (Plastic Dynamism), a truly radical book by Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916), claimed a central position in artistic debates of the 1910s and 1920s, exerting a powerful influen
Principles of Art History by Heinrich Wolfflin (1864–1945), a revolutionary attempt to construct a science of art through the study of the development of style, has been a foundational work of formali
Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammern, to princely collectors in sixte
Cardinal Paleotti (1522-97) completed two of the five volumes he had planned for Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane and had them published in 1582. There was a Latin translation in 1594, a
In the 1790s and early 1800s, the art world experienced two big events: First came the military confiscation of masterpieces from Italy and northern Europe in order to build a universal museum in Pari
The field of art history was and is heavily influenced by the thinker Alois Riegl and a new translation of one of his books is a welcome event. This volume makes available in English for the first tim
Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease t
Julien-David Le Roy's Les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece, initially issued in 1758, first revealed to European eyes the wonders of Greek classical architecture. Overnight, Greece became t
Published in 1765, Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Osservazioni is an impassioned defense of the superiority of Roman architectural "invention" over the "beautiful and noble si
