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Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) is best known for his magical, timeless 35mm street portraits taken in Paris and its suburbs. Fresh, unstaged, and full of poetry and humor, his photographs portrary everyday people (in everyday places, doing everyday things) frozen in time, unwittingly revealing fleeting personal emotions in a public context.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed one of the greatest minds of all time; his importance and influence are inestimable. This two-volume, midsize format comprehensive survey is the most complete book ever made on the subject of this Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and all-around genius. With huge, full-bleed details of Leonardo's masterworks, this highly original publication allows the reader to inspect the subtlest facets of his brushstrokes.

This volume reproduces 139 Japanese woodblock colour prints by 43 famous masters of ukiyo-e, the popular art of the 17th to the 19th century. The originals are in the Riccar Art Museum in Tokyo, the world's largest and most celebrated collection of such prints. On account of their rarity and value, 87 of them have been designated Japanese National Treasures or Major National Cultural Heritage Items. 

From a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, George Eastman's career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak died in 1932, and left his house to the University of Rochester. Since 1949 the site has operated as an international museum of photography and film, and today holds the largest collection of its kind in the world. 

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), one of Spain's most revered and controversial painters, is known for his intense, chilling, and sometimes grotesque paintings depicting the injustice of society with brutal sincerity. A court painter to the Spanish crown, he captured, through his works, a snapshot of life in Spain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Featured artists: Max Ernst, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Johannes Baader, Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, and Man Ray

"With this book, priced very reasonably, the finest work of one of photography's giant figures is all yours."

If Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) remains an enigma today, it is little wonder. Even his contemporaries found the Dutch painter's work difficult to decipher—and it still presents riddles to contemporary art historians.

Part of the problem in decoding his shocking and richly allegorical paintings is that virtually nothing is known of the artist himself, apart from his birthplace. There is no record of his life or training, no personal letters, diaries or notebooks, and no contemporary insights into his personality or thoughts on the meaning of his art. 

The greatest and finest atlas ever published

"This book is gorgeous. Whether you're a cartography enthusiast or not, this remains a risk-free purchase."-Italian Magazine, London

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the most typical and the most individual Impressionist painter. His long life he dedicated to a pictorial exploration of the sensations which reality, and in particular landscape, offer the human eye. But while Monet the painter was faithful and persevering in the pursuit of his motifs, his personal life followed a more restless course. Parisian by birth, he discovered plein-air painting as a youth in the provinces, where one of his homes, Argenteuil, has come to represent the artistic flowering and official establishment of Impressionism as a movement, with Monet as its creative leader.

On April 15th, 1874, in the Parisian studio of photographer Nadar, was the opening of the first group exhibition that was uninhibited by government interference and the dictates of an official selection committee. This date has gone down in the annals of art history because it marks the birth of the Impressionism. Impressionistic paintings now rank among the most popular works of art and are the pride of any museum or collection worldwide. However, in 1874 the public response to the exhibition, and to Impressionist painting, was not adoration but rather shock and even outrage. 

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is now universally acclaimed: museums pride themselves on his paintings, crowds flock to his retrospectives. His work shows art at its most light-hearted, sensual and luminous. Renoir never wanted anything ugly in his paintings, nor any dramatic action.