Great Books on Art and Art History
Introductory books
- The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich
- Arts and Artists by Jeremy Kingston
- The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern by Carol Strickland and John Boswell
- Ways of Seeing by John Berger
- The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
Books on the history of styles
- Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture by Johann Joachim Winckelmann
- Writings on Art by Johann Joachim Winckelmann
- The Critical Historians of Art by Michael Podro
- Renaissance and Baroque by Heinrich Wölzin
- Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance by Heinrich Wölzin
- Principles of Art History by Heinrich Wölzin
- Abstraction and Empathy by Wilhelm Worringer
- The Life of Forms in Art by Henri Focillon
Books on connoisseurship
- Italian Painters of the Renaissance by Bernard Berenson
- Drawings of the Florentine Painters by John Murray
- On Art and Connoisseurship by Max J. Friedländer
- Fakes by Otto Kurz
- Fake? The Art of Deception by Mark Jones
Art dictionaries
- The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists by Peter and Linda Murray
- The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts by John Fleming and Hugh Honour
- The Oxford Companion to Art by Harold Osborne
- The Oxford Companion to Decorative Arts by Harold Osborne
Handbooks on styles and periods
- Pelican History of Art by Nikolaus Pevsner
- Oxford History of English Art by T.S.R. Boase
- Phaidon Colour Libraries by Phaidon
- World of Art by Thames & Hudson
- A World History of Art by Hugh Honour and John Fleming
- A History of Art by H.W. Janson
- An Introduction to Italian Sculptue by John Pope-Hennessy
- The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art by Heibonsha
- Encyclopedia of World Art by McGraw-Hill
Books on technique
- Sculpture by Rudolf Wittkower
- The Techniques of Greek Sculpture by Sheila Adam
- The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques by Ralph Mayer
- An Introduction to the History of Woodcut by A.M. Hind
- A History of Engraving and Etching by A.M. Hind
- Drawing in the Italian Renaissance Workshop by Francis Ames-Lewis and Joanne Wright
Books on taste and collecting
- The Rare Art Tradition: The History of Art Collecting and its Linked Phenomena by Joseph Alsop
- Taste and the Antique by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny
- Painting and Experience in the Fifteenth-Century Italy by Michael Baxandall
- The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market by Martin Wackernagel
- Patrons and Painters by Francis Haskell
- Rediscoveries in Art by Francis Haskell
- The Economics of Taste by Gerald Reitlinger
Books on subject-matter in art
- Art in France: The Twelfth Century by Emile Mâle
- Religious Art in France: The Thirteenth Century by Emile Mâle
- Religous Art from the Twelfth to the Eigtheenth Century by Emile Mâle
- The Survival of the Pagan Gods by Jean Seznec
- Studies in Iconology by Erwin Panofsky
- Meaning in the Visual Arts by Erwin Panofsky
- A Heritage of Images by Fritz Saxl
- Symbolic Images by E.H. Gombrich
- Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art by James Hall
- Signs and Symbols in Christian Art by G. Ferguson
- Landscape into Art by Kenneth Clark
- The Nude by Kenneth Clark
- Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century by Charles Sterling
Books on social history in art
- A Social History of Art by Arnold Hauser
- Meditations on a Hobby Horse by E.H. Gombrich
- Florentine Painting and its Social Background by Frederick Antal
- Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Revolution of 1848 by T.J. Clark
- The Obstacle Race by Germaine Greer
- Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art by Griselda Pollock
- Art in Modern Culture by Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris
Books on the psychology of art
- Art and Psychoanalysis by Peter Fuller
- Painting as an Art by Richard Wollheim
- Painting and the Inner World by Adrian Stokes
- Art and Illusion by E.H. Gombrich
- The Sense of Order by E.H. Gombrich
- The Image and the Eye by E.H. Gombrich
- Art and Visual Perception by Rudolf Arnheim
- The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response by David Freedberg
Books on the philosophy of art
- Artistic Theory in Italy by Anthony Blunt
- Giotto and the Orators by Michael Baxandall
- Idea: A Concept in Art Theory by Erwin Panofsky
Books by leading art critics
- Modern Painters by John Ruskin
- The Renaissance by Walter Pater
- Ruskin Today by Ruskin
- The Lamp of Beauty: Writings on Art by John Ruskin by John Ruskin
- The Letters of William Morris to his Family and Friends by Philip Henderson
- The Painter of Modern Life by Charles Baudelaire
- Art in Paris by Charles Baudelaire
- The Masters of Past Time by Eugène Fromentin
- French Eighteent-Century Painters by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
- Pages from the Goncourt Journals by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
- Genius of the Future by Anita Brookner
- Vision and Design by Roger Fry
- Cézanne: A Study of his Development by Roger Fry
- Lat Lectures by Roger Fry
- The Meaning of Art by Sir Herbert Read
- The Tradition of the New by Harold Rosenberg
- The Anxious Object: Art Today and its Audience by Harold Rosenberg
- Art and Culture by Clement Greenberg
Anthologies
- A Documentary History of Art by Elizabeth Holt
- The Expanding World of Art 1874-1902 by Elizabeth Holt
- The Art of Greece by J.J. Pollitt
- The Art of Rome by J.J. Pollitt
- The Art of the Byzantine Empire by Cyril Mango
- Early Medival Art by Caecilia Davis-Weyer
- Gothic Art by Teresa G. Frisch
- Italian Art by Creighton Gilbert
- Northern Renaissance Art by Wolfgang Stechow
- Italy and Spain by Robert Enggass and Jonathan Brown
- Neoclassicism and Romanticism by Lorenz Eitner
- Realism and Tradition in Art by Linda Nochlin
- Impressionism and Post-Impressionism by Linda Nochlin
- Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance by D. S. Chambers
- Artists on Art by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves
- Nineteenth-Century Theories of Art by Joshua C. Taylor
- Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics by Herschel B. Chipp
- Art in Theory: An Anthology of Changing Ideas by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood
- Chapters on the History of Art by Pliny
- Description of Greece by J.G. Frazer
- Guide to Greece by Pausanias
- The Spirit of the Brush by Shio Sakanishi
- Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of Saint Denis and its Art Treasures by Abbot Suger
- The Various Arts by Theophilus
- The Craftsman's Handbook by Cennino d'Andrea Cennini
- On Painting and Sculpture by Leon Battista Alberti
- The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci by J.P. Ritcher
- Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci
- Leonardo on Painting by Martin Kemp
- The Letters of Michelangelo by E.H. Ramsden
- The Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo by Creighton Gilbert
- The Poetry of Michelangelo by James M. Saslow
- The Life of Michelangelo by Alice Sedgwick Wohl
- The Writings of Albrecht Dürer by W.M. Conway
- The Painter's Manual by Dürer/W.L. Strauss
- Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects by Giorgio Vasari
- The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Charles Hope
- Life of Brunelleschi by Antonio Manetti
- Life of Bernini by Filippo Baldinucci
- Dutch and Flemish Painters by Carel van Mander
- Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors by Antonio Palomino
- The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens by Ruth Saunders Magurn
- Sir Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art by Robert R. Wark
- The Analysis of Beauty by William Hogarth
- Memoirs of the Life of John Constable by C.R. Leslie
- Complete Correspondence of John Constable by R.B. Beckett
- Journals of Eugène Delacroix by Lucy Norton
- Letters of Eugène Delacroix by Jean Stewart
- Goethe on Art by John Gage
- The Letters of Gustave Courbet by Petra ten-Doesschate
- Théodore Duret's Manet and the French Impressionists by Théodore Duret
- The Letters of Camille Pissarro by John Rewald
- The Letters of Degas by Marcel Guérin
- The Letters of Cézanne by John Rewald
- Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir
- The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh
- The Letters of Gauguin by Paul Gauguin
- Noa Noa: Gauguin's Tahiti by Paul Gauguin
- Gentle Art of Making Enemies by James McNeill Whistler
- My Life by Oskar Kokoschka
- Diary of a Genius by Salvador Dalí
- On Modern Art by Paul Klee
- Why Abstract? by Hilaire Hiler
- The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell by Robert Motherwell
- Concering the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky
- Matisse on Art by Henri Matisse
- Kandinsky: The Complete Writings on Art by Wassily Kandinsky
- Dada by H. Richter
- Surrealism by P. Waldberg
- The Cubist Painters: Aesthetic Meditations by Guillaume Apollinaire
- Surrealism and Painting by André Breton
- Modern Artists on Art by Robert L. Herbert
- Henry Moore on Sculpture by Philip James