Categories: Art Books Art Theory Art History Art History: Renaissance Paintings Human Figures Depicted In Art Portraits In Art


What Great Paintings Say. 100 Masterpieces in Detail
4.43 (360 ratings by Goodreads)
Hardback Bibliotheca Universalis English
By (author) Rainer & Rose-Marie Hagen


This important addition to our understanding of art historys masterworks puts some of the worlds most famous paintings under a magnifying glass to uncover their most small and subtle elements and all they reveal about a bygone time, place, and culture.

Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, authors Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen allow even the most familiar of pictures to come alive anew through their intricacies and intrigues. Is the bride pregnant? Why does the man wear a beret? How does the shadow of war hang over a scene of dancing? Along the way, we travel from Ancient Egypt through to modern Europe, from the Renaissance to the Roaring Twenties. We meet Greek heroes and poor German poets and roam from cathedrals to cabaret bars, from the Garden of Eden to a Garden Bench in rural France.

As we pick apart each painting and then reassemble it like a giant jigsaw puzzle, these celebrated canvases captivate not only in their sheer wealth of details but also in the witness they bear to the fashions and trends, people and politics, loves and lifestyles of their time.



About the series

Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!


Product details

Format Hardback | 788 pages
Dimensions 140 x 195 x 48.26mm | 1,174g
Publication date 01 Dec 2022
Publisher Taschen GmbH
Publication City/Country Cologne, Germany
Language English
ISBN10 3836559269
ISBN13 9783836559263
Bestsellers rank 36,514