Bøger i Lives of the Artists serien

The brilliance of Peter Paul Rubens' career changed forever the perceptions of painting and painters. These three biographies of the artist show the impact of his life and art on three very different observers.

A compilation of important biographical writings on William Blake, a painter, printmaker, poet, and mystical thinker who became one of the leading figures of Romanticism.

Originally published: London: Pallas Athene, 2015.

A new title in the successful Lives of the Artists series, which offers illuminating, and often intimate, accounts of iconic artists as viewed by their contemporaries. The most notorious Italian painter of his day, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) forever altered the course of Western painting with his artistic ingenuity and audacity. This volume presents the most important early biographies of his life: an account by his doctor, Giulio Mancini; another by one of his artistic rivals, Giovanni Baglione; and a later profile by Giovanni Pietro Bellori that demonstrates how Caravaggio's impact was felt in seventeenth-century Italy. Together, these accounts have provided almost everything that is known of this enigmatic figure.

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) had a short but prolific career as a photographer, taking up the camera in her late forties. Her work, with its distinctive, softly focused style, was not appreciated during her lifetime, and the first earnest treatment of Cameron as an artist came decades after her death in the 1926 book Victorian Photographs of Famous Men and Fair Women by Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry. Reprinted in this volume, the 1926 text contains a vibrant account of Cameron's life by Woolf, who portrayed her great-aunt as a vivacious woman full of talent, energy, and passion. Roger Fry's essay "Mrs. Cameron's Photographs" is the first serious scholarly study of her work, in which he argues that Cameron's photographs show that the medium could be elevated from one of rote, mechanical reproductions to a form with true artistic potential. Readers will also find Cameron's autobiographical essay "The Annals of My Glass House," and her only surviving poem, "On a Portrait." Twenty plates from the original volume are supplemented with additional photographs that enrich our understanding of Cameron's style and the Victorian era. An introduction by Tristram Powell acquaints the reader with this fascinating woman and her major contributions to early photography.

Part of the Lives of the Artists series: highly readable short biographies of the most popular artists

This volume brings together the groundbreaking criticism of Emile Zola, from his vigorous defence of the iconoclastic young painter to the memorial essay written after Manet's untimely death. A new introduction by Robert Lethbridge sets Zola's essays in the context of Manet's career and his relationship with the writer. 49 pages of illustrations

Two essays remembering Degas by the most acute observers of the avant-garde art of their time, Walter Sickert and George Moore. Introduced by Professor Anna Gruezner Robins, a leading expert on Degas and his British admirers

Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564) is perhaps the greatest artist in the entire Western tradition. In painting, sculpture and architecture he created works that went beyond anything imagined before. This book draws a picture of Michelangelo - the man and the artist. It features 45 pages of colour illustrations covering his achievement, and more.

Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto in the thirteenth century, Vasari traces the development of Italian art across three centuries to the golden epoch of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Great men, and their immortal works, are brought vividly to life, as Vasari depicts the young Giotto scratching his first drawings on stone; Donatello gazing at Brunelleschi's crucifix; and Michelangelo's painstaking work on the Sistine Chapel, harassed by the impatient Pope Julius II. The Lives also convey much about Vasari himself and his outstanding abilities as a critic inspired by his passion for art.

Texts by and about the pioneering woman artist of the Baroque, Artemisia Gentileschi, some printed for the first time in English.

Warhol led an utterly individual life and endures as a transcendental and fascinating cultural figure

Launching the 'Lives the Artists' series: highly readable short biographies of the most-popular artists

Scion of an artistic dynasty, Giovanni Bellini is arguablythe greatest Venetian painter of the early Renaissance. Hisastonishing naturalism revolutionised altarpiece painting andis still a source of wonder, as any visit to Frari in Venice willconfirm.

The first biographies of Caravaggio: key documents of one of the greatest revolutions in the history of art.