The Story of Painting

This book is quite simply "the best" history of painting on the market today, whether you wish to use it as a foundation for further studies or as a complete painting course.

• Beckett covers great works from ancient Egypt to the 1990s, though her focus is on the Gothic period and later.
• The book includes several pristine, full-color illustrations on every page, with descriptive and analytic notes about the artists, their paintings, and the world at large.
• Sister Wendy analyzes many works in depth, magnifying details and discussing everything from the characteristics of the paints the artists used, to their brushstroke techniques, to the facial expressions and placement of their subjects, to the symbolism of the pictures. Amazing!
• If you would like to learn about painting, you can hardly do better. (Text is not great for early elementary school, but the pictures may be.)

Oversize hardcover, full-color illus throughout. Some nudes.