Scientist, painter, mechanical engineer, sculptor, thinker, city planner, storyteller, musician, architect -- Leonardo da Vinci, builder of the first flying machine, was one of the great universal geniuses of Western civilization. His voluminous notebooks, the great storehouse of his theories and discoveries, are presented here in 1566 extracts that reveal the full range of Leonardo's versatile interest: all the important writings on painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, astronomy, geography, topography, and other fields are included, in both Italian and English, with 186 plates of manuscript pages and many other drawings reproduced in facsimile size.
The first volume, which contains all of Leonardo's writings on aspects of painting, includes discussions of such basic scientific areas as the structure of the eye and vision, perspective, the science of light and shade, the perspective of disappearance, theory of color, perspective of color, proportions and movements of the human figure, botany for painters, and the elements of landscape painting. A section on the practice of painting includes moral precepts for painters and writings on composition, materials, and the philosophy of art. The second volume contains writings on sculpture, architecture (plans for towns, streets, and canals, churches, palaces, castles, and villas, theoretical writings on arches, domes, fissures, etc.), zoology, physiology (including his amazingly accurate theories of blood circulation), medicine, astronomy, geography (including has famous writings and drawings on the movement of water), topography (observations in Italy, France, and other areas), naval warfare, swimming, theory of flying machines, mining, music, and other topics.
A selection of philosophical maxims, morals, polemics, fables, jests, studies in the lives and habits of animals, tales, and prophecies display Leonardo's abilities as a writer and scholar. The second volume also contains some letters, personal records, inventories, and accounts, and concludes with Leonardo's will. The drawings include sketches and studies for some of Leonardo's greatest works of art -- The Last Supper, the lost Battle of Anghiari, The Virgin of the Rocks, and the destroyed Sforza monument.

Sometimes seeing is more difficult for the student of art than believing. Taylor, in a book that has sold more than 300,000 copies since its original publication in 1957, has helped two generations of art students learn to look.

From the art of the Greeks to that of Renoir and Moore, this work surveys the ever-changing fashions in what has constituted the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form.

Booker Prize-winning author John Berger reveals the ties between love and absence, the ways poetry endows language with the assurance of prayer, and the tensions between the forward movement of sexuality and the steady backward tug of time. He recreates the mysterious forces at work in a Rembrandt painting, transcribes the sensorial experience of viewing lilacs at dusk, and explores the meaning of home to early man and to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in our cities today. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos is a seamless fusion of the political and personal.

Gustav Gl ck, director of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, wrote as early as 1922 of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) that his drawings were perhaps his ultimate artistic achievement. This founder of Secessionsstil and leader of the revolt against the Viennese academies was able to achieve greater freedom in his drawings than in his more laboriously executed paintings. While there are only about two hundred completed oils, the drawings number in the thousands, and are reported to have at times quite littered his studio. He himself considered them finished works, and often exhibited them alongside his paintings.
Klimt's subject matter is almost exclusively the female body, naked or half clothed. For this he earned the reputation of erotic artist, and while he did not suffer the outright persecutions of his successors Schiele and Kokoschka, he was nevertheless subjected to the trials that a frankly erotic artist had to undergo in Vienna, where the everyday subject of conversation was the current love affairs of celebrities but where audiences were shocked by the sight of a dancer's naked legs. An issue of Ver Sacrum which reproduced one of his drawings was confiscated by the authorities.
The drawings reveal above all that concern of great draughtsmen from Michelangelo through Blake the marriage of subtle grace and expressive dynamism that is the human body. Like that of these two past masters, Klimt's method is essentially linear. He knew, as they did, that line, rather than shading, the creation of volume or the use of color, is the natural medium for expressing the freedom of the living human form. As he matured as an artist there was an increasing awareness of this and a greater and greater spontaneity that approached, finally, the lightness of a net of gauze.

Increasingly prized by collectors worldwide, Oaxacan woodcarvings are among the most popular form of folk art available today. These fanciful, brightly colored figures created by rural Mexican woodcarvers reflect the myths and traditions still very much a part of the carvers' daily lives. A spectacular gallery of over 160 full-color photographs beautifully portrays these artisans and their work, while an informative text examines the intricacies of the carvers' craft. The only volume devoted exclusively to this distinctive and magical art form, Oaxacan Woodcarving will inspire and inform anyone with an interest in folk art, photography, or anthropology.

When he stands before Giorgione's La Tempesta, Booker Prize-winning author John Berger sees not only the painting but our whole notion of time, sweeping us away from a lost Eden. A photograph of a gravely joyful crowd gathered on a Prague street in November 1989 provokes reflection on the meaning of democracy and the reunion of a people with long-banished hopes and dreams.

To the general public, Alphonse Maria Mucha (1860-1939) is perhaps best known for his posters of Sarah Bernhardt and magnificent decorative panels such as "The Seasons" -- works that continue to grow in popularity and value as the resurgence of interest in Art Nouveau increases. Among graphic artists and commercial designers, Mucha is praised for the innovative style books that pioneered the use of Art Nouveau in commercial packaging, design, and ornament.
The most important of these style books was Documents D coratifs, published in 1901 at the height of Mucha's fame as the high priest of the Art Nouveau movement. While the artist's fame rests largely on his posters, it is in the smaller works of the style books, or design portfolios, that the refinement of his technique can best be appreciated. The present volume, carefully reproduced from an extremely rare and valuable set of originals, contains all 72 plates of the Documents D coratifs portfolio. Included are designs for jewelry, wallpaper, stained glass, furniture, and tableware; figure and botanical studies; and a selection of Mucha's famous panneaux d coratifs. Eighteen of the plates are in full color, while the remaining 54 are reproduced in two or more color tones.
In addition to numerous innovative designs for practical and decorative objects, the elegant draftsmanship and meticulous execution that characterized all of Mucha's work is evident in studies of langorous nudes, portrait sketches, delicately rendered plant and animal motifs, exquisite modeling of drapery and cloth, and the flowing, fantastic forms created as experiments in pure design. In the Foreword by Gabriel Mourey, specially translated for this edition, Mucha's own philosophy of art, and the relation of the Documents to the rest of his work, receive an appreciative and informative discussion.
Hitherto available only in scattered sources, or in the libraries of wealthy collectors, the complete Documents D coratifs is now available in this inexpensive one-volume edition. Lovers of Mucha's work, admirers of Art Nouveau, and the application of that style to the decorative arts, will want to own this fine royalty-free collection by one of the greatest masters of the technique.
" Documents D coratifs is] . . . an encyclopedic source for Mucha's style in every branch of decorative and applied art and one of the few books on design where even individual plates are sought after by collectors." -- Marina Henderson, The Graphic Style of Alphonse Mucha

A treasury of jewelry and objets de vertu, masterpieces created by the great house of Cartier.

Written in accessible, nontechnical language, this book's twenty-three essays provide invaluable conservation guidelines for a variety of materials and media. Focusing also on proper storage techniques and environmental control, contributors offer information on emergency planning, disaster management, and identifying damages that may require professional treatment.