Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. This book presents the readings of Caravaggio's pictures, which show how he created their drama, immediacy and humanity, and how completely he departed from the conventions of his time.
Investigates the philosophy, art and development of the contemporary Belgian surrealist painter
Traces the extraordinary evolution of eight world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver
The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all? This is the intimate story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, and peopled by a cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets. Written with dazzling literary flair, drawing on new archival research, THE ROMANOVS is at once an enthralling chronicle of triumph and tragedy, love and death, a universal study of power, and an essential portrait of the empire that still defines Russia today.