• 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-84379-660-2
• Barcode: 9781843796602
• Approximate length: 44,000 words
• Formats: iPad/iPhone, Kindle, Nook, Kobo

What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities in eras utterly remote from our own? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age—religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece to the revolutionary years of the 19th and 20th centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind. He has always started with reality, but has selected and reshaped that reality to create a parallel world: a world of the imagination.

About the Author

Peter Whitfield is the author of more than a dozen works of history and literary criticism, including English Poetry: a New Illustrated History and A Universe of Books: Readings in World Literature. For Naxos AudioBooks he has also written The Story of the Bible, The History of Western Art and The History of English Poetry. He has also published three collections of his own poetry.