AP Art History Reading Suggestions by Artistic Period:
Art Theft/Cultural Treasures:
1. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the
History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo
2. Monuments Men by Robert Edsel
3. Priceless by Robert Whitman
4. Lost Lives, Lost Art by Melissa Muler
5. The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick
6. The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick
Ancient:
1. The Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos (about theft
of antiquities in Iraq, written by a Marine/Attorney)
2. Who Owns Antiquity? By James Cuno (written by museum
director about the issues of patrimony and return of art to
its geographic place of origin)
3. Disarmed: The Story of the Venus de Milo
4. Nefertiti by Michele Moran
5. The Heretic Queen by Michele Moran
Medieval:
1. The Lady and the Unicorn: A Novel by Tracy Chevalier
2. Cathedral of the Sea by Idefonso Falcones (novel about
Inquisition in Spain and cathedral built at that time)
Renaissance:
1. Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King
2. Michelangelo and The Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King
3. The Feud that Sparked the Renaissance by Paul Robert
Walker
4. Leonardo’s Swan by Karen Essex
5. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
6.
7.
8.
9.
The Agony and the Ecstasy (Michelangelo) by Stone, Irving
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunat
The Pope's Elephant by Silvio Bedini [belonging to Leo X]
Alexandra Lapierre's Artemisia: A novel about Artemisia
Gentileschi is enjoyable and backed by some pretty serious
research.
10.
The Passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland.
11. Anna Banti's Artemisia,(translated by Susan Sontag)
a remarkable act of projection and sisterly communication
across the centuries. Banti, significantly the wife of
Roberto Longhi, signals at the start of this
unclassifiable work (is it fiction, art history, time travel and
reincarnation? it works as all of the above) 12.
Giovanni and Lusanna by Gene Brucker
13.
“Set against the grindstone of social class, this story
of Lusanna versus Giovanni, gleaned from the archives of
Renaissance Florence, throws a floodlight on relations
between the sexes” – No better introduction to the complex
realities of life (and love) in Florence during the
Renaissance.”
14.
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science,
Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel
15.
Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon by
Donald Sasson
16.
I, Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis
17.
Math and the Mona Lisa by Bulent Atalay
18.
Murder of a Medici Princess by Caroline Murphy
19.
Leap by Terry Tempest Williams on Bosch’s Garden of
Earthly Delights
20.
As Above, So Below A Novel of Peter Bruegel by Rudy
Rucker. (discussion of Bosch as well)
21.
Steven Ozment, The Burger-Meister's Daughter [16th
Century Germany]
22.
The House of Medici: The Rise and Fall by:
Christopher Hibbert
Baroque:
1. The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr (about Caravaggio and
modern art restoration science: how to reconcile the
existence of two paintings attributed to the same famous
artist)
2. Peter Robb, M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio
3. Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (Vermeer)
4. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland (Vermeer)
5. Rembrandt’s Whore by Matter, Sylvia
6. The Painter by Will Davenport (novel set in contemporary
times about Rembrandt)
7. Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of
the Global World by Timothy Brook
8. The Passion of Artemesia
18th Century:
1. A Venetian Affair: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in the
18th Century by Andrea Di Robilant
2. Jane Kamensky's and Jill Lepore's Blindspot (though a bit
racy) is a good historical fiction about a colonial-era
American painter.
19th century:
1. Strapless is about the John Singer Sargent painting
Madame X with some art historical insights. (Way better
than novel titled Madame X about Sargent)
2. Dancing for Degas by Kathryn Wagner
3. Judgment of Paris by Ross King (about Impressionism)
4. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent
Weeks in Provence by Martin Gayford Lydia Cassatt
Reading the Morning Paper by Chessman, Harriet Scott
5. Lust For Life (Van Gogh) by Irving Stone
6. Naked Came I (Rodin) by David Weiss
7. Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland (about
Renoir’s famous painting)
8. Life Studies: Stories by Susan Vreeland (short stories
about many 19th c. artists)
9. The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay
10.
Luncheon of the Boating Party
11. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent
Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford
12.
The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe
20th Century:
1. The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland (about Canadian painter
Emily Carr) is enjoyable and highlights the cultural divide
between Canadians of European descent and First Nations’
people.
2. Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in
Contemporary Society (1997), a collection of essays on
contemporary artists edited by Linda Weintraub A few of
the authors are well respected critics in their own right,
such as Arthur Danto.
3. Naked by the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre
and Ana Mendieta by Robert Katz.
4. Uncle Andy's: A Faabbbulous Visit With Andy Warhol. by
James Warhola, Author, Illustrator
5. Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the
Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (about
architecture in Chicago and the building of the World’s Fair,
juxtaposed with the story of a serial killer in the city at
that time and how he uses architecture).
6. A Moveable Feast by Hemingway is good for the circles in
Paris
7. Barbara Kingsolver's new book Lacuna, which is loosely about
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
8. Picasso’s War by Russell Martin
9. Picasso: The Real Family Story by Oliver Widmaier Picasso
10.
Picasso My Grandfather by Marina Picasso
Also a movie that is good for 1930s America/WPA projects is
The Cradle will Rock.
Spanning Many Periods:
1. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling
the Self (Clarendon Lectures in English Literature) by
Marina Warner
2. The Power of Art by Simon Schama
3. Loot by Sharon Waxman (non-fiction by NY Times reporter
about cultural patrimony issues, covering many periods
4. The Art Thief by Noah Charney
5. Iain Pears' Jonathan Argyll art history mystery novels
6. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen
Greenblatt
7. The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Lost Symbol by
Dan Brown