“What are the best Art History books?” We looked at 17 lists and came away with over 280 unique titles.

Art is great. Unfortunately (fortunately) it has been around for hundreds of thousands of years and spans the entire earth in every city and location where humans and that dancing bird from Planet Earth live. Because there is so much art and it has been around from so long, it is impossible to see it all. Luckily there are individuals who dedicate their lives to documenting and recording the techniques, styles, and history of artists and cultures around the world.

Below you will find the top 18 non-fiction and fiction art history books with images, summaries, and links. At the bottom of the page the additional 268 books as well as the 17 sources we consulted can be found.

Happy Scrolling!

The 18 Top Art History Books Of All-Time

18 .) Art in Theory 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas by Charles Harrison & Paul J. Wood

Lists It Appears On:

• Best liberal Arts Colleges
• Widewalls

This popular anthology of twentieth-century art theoretical texts has now been expanded to take account of new research, and to include significant contributions to art theory from the 1990s.

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17 .) Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King

Lists It Appears On:

• Best liberal Arts Colleges
• Millsaps College

Brunelleschi’s Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes (among some of the most renowned machines of the Renaissance) to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers’ platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction–all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse and his own personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him. This drama was played out amid plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence– events Ross King weaves into the story to great effect, from Brunelleschi’s bitter, ongoing rivalry with the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti to the near catpure of Florence by the Duke of Milan. King also offers a wealth of fascinating detail that opens windows onto fifteenth-century life: the celebrated traditions of the brickmaker’s art, the daily routine of the artisans laboring hundreds of feet above the ground as the dome grew ever higher, the problems of transportation, the power of the guilds.

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16 .) Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell

Lists It Appears On:

• Millsaps College
• The Week

“In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father’s nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father’s will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

But once there he is confronted with obstacles: an art world that refused to validate his style, extreme poverty, and a war that led him away from his home and friends. But there were bright spots as well: his deep, enduring friendships with men named Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, Manet – a group that together would come to be known as the Impressionists, and that supported each other through the difficult years. But even more illuminating was his lifelong love, Camille Doncieux, a beautiful, upper-class Parisian girl who threw away her privileged life to be by the side of the defiant painter and embrace the lively Bohemian life of their time. “

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15 .) Gardner’s Art Through the Ages by Fred S. Kleiner; Christin J. Mamiya; Helen Gardner

Lists It Appears On:

• Best liberal Arts Colleges
• Concordia University

The market-leading text for the art history survey course, GARDNER’S ART THROUGH THE AGES has served as a comprehensive and thoughtfully crafted guide to the defining phases of the world’s artistic tradition. With this book in hand, thousands of students have watched the story of art unfold in its full historical, social, religious, economic, and cultural context, and thus deepened their understanding of art, architecture, painting, and sculpture. By virtue of its comprehensive coverage, strong emphasis on context, and rich, accurate art reproductions, GARDNER’S ART THROUGH THE AGES has earned and sustained a reputation of excellence and authority.

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14 .) History of Modern Art by Elizabeth C. Mansfield and H.H. Arnason

Lists It Appears On:

• Art Books
• Best liberal Arts Colleges

History of Modern Art is a visual comprehensive overview of the modern art field. It traces the trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. The seventh edition deepens its discussions on social conditions that have affected the production and reception of modern and contemporary art.

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13 .) Show Time: The 50 Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art by Jens Hoffmann

Lists It Appears On:

• Art news
• Widewalls

This monumental new book explores the recent history of exhibition-making, looking at the radical shifts that have taken place in the practice of curating contemporary art over the last 20 years. Tracing a history of curating through its most innovative shows, renowned curator Jens Hoffmann selects the 50 key exhibitions that have most significantly shaped the practice of both artists and curators. Chosen from the plethora of exhibitions, biennials and art events that have sprung up across the world since the 1990s, each exhibition reviewed here has triggered profound changes in curatorial practice, and reanimated the potential of contemporary art. The book includes an international roster of curators, and exhibition venues that span the globe, from the USA, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey and Spain.

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12 .) Strapless by Deborah Davis

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Millsaps College

The subject of John Singer Sargent’s most famous painting was twenty-three-year-old New Orleans Creole Virginie Gautreau, who moved to Paris and quickly became the “it girl” of her day. A relative unknown at the time, Sargent won the commission to paint her; the two must have recognized in each other a like-minded hunger for fame.

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11 .) The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Novel of Michelangelo by Irving Stone

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Millsaps College

A masterpiece in its own right, this novel offers a compelling portrait of Michelangelo’s dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known.

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10 .) The Duchamp Dictionary by Thomas Girst

Lists It Appears On:

• Art news
• Widewalls

From alchemy and anatomy to Warhol and windows, The Duchamp Dictionary offers a pithy and readable text that draws on in-depth scholarship and the very latest research. Thomas Girst includes close to 200 entries on the most interesting and important artworks, relationships, people, and ideas in Duchamp’s life—from The Bicycle Wheel and Fountain to Walter and Louise Arensberg, Peggy Guggenheim, Katherine Dreier, and Arturo Schwarz. Delightful, newly commissioned illustrations introduce each letter of the alphabet and accompany select entries, capturing the irreverent spirit of the artist himself. 59 color illustrations

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9 .) The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe

Lists It Appears On:

• Millsaps College
• The Guardian

Wolfe’s style has never been more dazzling, his wit never more keen. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. The Painted Word is Tom Wolfe “at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent”

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8 .) An Outline of European Architecture by N. Pevsner

Lists It Appears On:

• King’s College
• Readings

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) was one of the twentieth century’s most learned and stimulating writers on art and architecture. He established his reputation with Pioneers of Modern Design, though he is probably best known for his celebrated series of guides, The Buildings of England, acknowledged as one of the great achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. He was also founding editor of The Pelican History of Art, the most comprehensive and scholarly history of art ever published in English.

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7 .) Art and Illusion by E.H. Gombrich

Lists It Appears On:

• King’s College
• Readings

Considered a great classic by all who seek for a meeting ground between science and the humanities, Art and Illusion examines the history and psychology of pictorial representation in light of present-day theories of visual perception information and learning. Searching for a rational explanation of the changing styles of art, Gombrich reexamines many ideas on the imitation of nature and the function of tradition. In testing his arguments he ranges over the history of art, noticing particularly the accomplishments of the ancient Greeks, and the visual discoveries of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, as well as the impressionists and the cubists. Gombrich’s triumph in Art and Illusion arises from the fact that his main concern is less with the artists than with ourselves, the beholders.

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6 .) Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy by M. Baxandall

Lists It Appears On:

• King’s College
• Readings

Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style of pictures in a given historical period, this new edition to Baxandall’s pre-eminent scholarly volume examines early Renaissance painting, and explains how the style of painting in any society reflects the visual skills and habits that evolve out of daily life. Renaissance painting, for example, mirrors the experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. The volume includes discussions of a wide variety of painters, including Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Luca Signorelli, Boccaccio, and countless others. Baxandall also defines and illustrates sixteen concepts used by a contemporary critic of painting, thereby assembling the basic equipment needed to explore fifteenth-century art.

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5 .) The Books that Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss by Richard Shone & John-Paul Stonard

Lists It Appears On:

• Readings
• Widewalls

Written by some of today’s leading art historians and curators, this new collection provides an invaluable road map of the field by comparing and reexamining canonical works of art history. From Émile Mâle’s magisterial study of thirteenth-century French art, first published in 1898, to Hans Belting’s provocative Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, the book provides a concise and insightful overview of the history of art, told through its most enduring literature. Each of the essays looks at the impact of a single major book of art history, mapping the intellectual development of the writer under review, setting out the premises and argument of the book, considering its position within the broader field of art history, and analyzing its significance in the context of both its initial reception and its afterlife. An introduction by John-Paul Stonard explores how art history has been forged by outstanding contributions to scholarship, and by the dialogues and ruptures between them.

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4 .) Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Lists It Appears On:

• Readings
• Widewalls

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language.

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3 .) Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Millsaps College
• The Week

History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius . . . even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

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2 .) The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari

Lists It Appears On:

• King’s College
• Questia
• The Wall Street Journal

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term “Renaissance,” was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.

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1 .) The Story of Art by Ernest H. Gombrich

Lists It Appears On:

• Art A GoGo
• King’s College
• Lavinia Goes
• Readings
• The Guardian
• The Wall Street Journal

The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject.

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268 Additional Art History Books
(Appear on a single list each)

Fiction and Non-Fiction Art History Book Sources