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Much more than just another ordinary survey of art history, this absorbing, heavily illustrated volume reveals the always interesting and often surprising cross-influences and connections among 50 of the most important painters in European and American art. Handsome and enlightening illustrated spreads present "trees of influence," each of which focuses on a major artist or significant school of art. Included are time lines, reproductions of paintings, and capsule analyses of the works being discussed. For example, a two-page spread on the seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer shows readers Influences on Vermeer's work: Older contemporary artists who inspired him, including Pieter de Hooch, Carel Fabritius, and artists from the city of Utrecht who were influenced by the Italian realist painter Caravaggio. Also influencing Vermeer's work were seventeenth-century advances in lens making that included development of the camera obscura. That device helped artists capture realistic details in their paintings. A Time Line spanning Vermeer's life: Major events from his birth in the city of Delft in 1632 to his death in 1675. Later artists inspired by Vermeer: including twentieth-century painters Edward Hopper and Salvador Dali, as well as filmmakers and composers of our own era. Other artists and their works are examined in similar detail. They include Piero della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Hieronymus Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht D¼rer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and others. Related art movements and schools are discussed with illustrated examples, and include the Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical eras; Romanticism and Realism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Impressionism; Postimpressionism; Modernism and its trend toward abstraction, including its many schools and movements--Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Op Art, Kinetic Art, Video Art, Post-Modernism, and others. Approximately 225 color illustrations include reproductions of the famous works being discussed.