European Art History

Historical fiction of the highest order, The Queen’s Lover reveals the untold love affair between Swedish aristocrat Count Axel Von Fersen and Marie Antoinette The Queen’s Lover begins at a masquerade ball in Paris in 1774, when the dashing Swedish nobleman Count Axel Von Fersen first...

A novel of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas’s great romance from the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the...

Author and singer John Potter tells the European story of song. The form has captivated audiences and excited performers for centuries, from the music of the troubadours and the Christian liturgy through classical composers such as Bach and Schumann up to Britten, Berio, and the rise of popular music. Choosing twelve key works, Potter offers a personal tour through this vital tradition, from John Dowland's "Flow My Tears" to George Gershwin's "Summertime." Throughout, he reveals who wrote and sang these joyful masterpieces—and what they mean to singers and audiences today.

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past...

If ever a catharsis in Western European Civilization occurred, it had to have been the period we refer to as the Renaissance. After a thousand years of theocracy, manorialism, feudalism and narrow economic development, Europe was ripe for change. She got it with a vengeance.

The story of dealers of Old Masters, champions of modern art, and victims of Nazi plunder. Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause célèbre. In Belonging and Betrayal, Charles Dellheim turns this story on its head by revealing how certain Jewish outsiders came to...

At the end of 1941, it seemed to many people, especially in Germany, that the war was virtually over. Some began to consider what a postwar Europe would look like after a Nazi victory. With nothing to stop them, the Nazis became the most rapacious looters of art the world had ever seen, to the extent that it has been estimated that the Nazis may have acquired up to 20 percent of all art in Western Europe. Some works were returned after the war, many disappeared, and still others have become the subject of intense speculation.

The future of Russia lies outside the country. Since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, some one million Russians have fled the country and gone into exile. Motivated by opposition to the war, by guilt for their country’s deeds, by personal hatred for the Czar-like Putin, and by a...

I always imagine each of the signoras who lived in this house—where she shelled peas, rocked the grandchild, placed a vase of the pink roses. Now I would like to take one of these women back to my house in California to show her how Bramasole traveled to America and took root, how the doors...

Discover all there is to know about the Renaissance, the period in history that took Europe from the Middle Ages to modern times! Beginning in Italy, the Renaissance was a cultural movement that spread throughout Europe and affected art, science, technology, politics, and thought. From the 1300s...

A black British poet making her thrilling American debut explores the importance of “quiet” in producing forms of community, resistance, and love. “Bulley’s stunning poems draw you in with their melodious versatility, intellect and dexterity; [they] perfectly embody the political through...

Orthodoxy, first published 1908, is Chesterton's spiritual autobiography. Subtitled, 'The romance of faith', Chesterton declares that people need a life of 'practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.'

The untold story of Hitler’s war on “degenerate” artists and the mentally ill that served as a model for the “Final Solution.” “A penetrating chronicle . . . deftly links art history, psychiatry, and Hitler’s ideology to devastating effect.”—The Wall Street Journal As a...