The Oxford Companion to Western Art

The original Oxford Companion to Art, edited by the late Harold Osborne, has been a mainstay for over three decades, a renowned one-volume guide to the world of art. Now comes The Oxford Companion to Western Art, almost completely rewritten, covering many more artists and their works, and offering fresh treatment of topics of contemporary interest, including patronage, taste, theory and criticism, materials and techniques, and the new art history. Written by 100 distinguished art historians and scholars, here are 2600 alphabetically arranged entries, almost half of them covering artists from classical times to the twentieth century. Other entries discuss art styles and movements, art forms (such as battle painting, landscape, caricature, or stained glass), specialist terms, and materials and techniques in all media. There is strong emphasis on location as a focus for art. Not only are there regional and cultural surveys, but also entries on specific places of importance such as Paris or Urbino. Moreover, museums and galleries are collected under their city headword so that the reader can easily find the major sites within a particular locality, such as New York, Boston, or Madrid. In addition, entries chart the critical fortunes of the art of the major European countries, covering for example patronage and collecting of Italian art in France, Spain, Britain, Germany, the USA, and in Italy itself. The contributors examine art theory, scholarship, and criticism, from Aristotle and Pausanius to Sartre, Panofsky, and Foucault. Everyone who loves art, whether artist, critic, scholar, or aficionado, will want to own this essential reference.